Chartered financial planner Zoe Dagless talks to Damian Fantato about her experience of setting up on her own and launching her own firm - Meliora Financial Planning.
I set up Meliora Financial Planning very recently, in August of this year.
I set it up because I have had great mentors in this industry. I have been in various different firms, big and small, and I decided what I wanted to do was financial planning and having that small firm, so I have decided to go out by myself.
It was a good experience but I didn’t sometimes appreciate some of the things that were going on in an office, the cost and time it takes to do things.
When you’re in a bigger firm you have one job and you have others to do the admin but when you're on your own you have to be everyone.
I’m an appointed representative of Sense. There are various reasons why I decided to do that, but one of them was that my authorisation was pretty seamless and pretty quick.
The first challenge was I had no expertise in at all was setting up a website. I didn’t even know where to start or what to include on it.
I went for help through NextGen Planners and they directed me to someone who has done quite a lot of websites. They were great at giving me the first drafts. I spent many hours on other financial advice sites.
Another challenge was the admin side of things.
I’ve done admin in the past as a role but when you set up by yourself you are everything and everyone. Setting up meetings, diary management, setting up meeting rooms, sending paperwork to different providers.
It is still an ongoing issue but I have tried some tools where I get clients to put in their own appointments.
I’ve chosen a couple of key London and Hertfordshire areas for meetings. Looking forward when the time is right to outsource, which will hopefully be soon, this is something I will definitely be outsourcing.
Choosing my tech stack was a challenge.
I had always gone to companies where they just had a tech stack and you soon find there are hundreds of providers that nearly do the same thing, but all differently.
What I had to do was rely on mentors to guide me. I had to balance cost as well. The other one was integration.
I was pretty clear in doing research of what I wanted my fees to be to clients so then it was working back from there to establish how much my fixed costs could be.
There is a lot of information from the providers and in fairness they do give you 30 days free trial. The problem is whether 30 days is enough. I feel like I’m only just getting to grips with it three months on. There was almost too much choice.
For my back office I had to use Intelliflo Office. I’m using Cashcalc and FE because they are effectively the same company now. I’ve got various other tools coming in.
I quickly decided I wanted to leave the investments to the experts. I did my due diligence and for discretionary fund management I’ve gone with EBI. It was about cost and the way they do investing.
It probably took me about two concentrated months to do everything in the back office and get a centralised investment proposition up and running.
I looked into how I would charge but some of the other models were so different from my existing client bank so I had to be aware of that. I have heard with subscription models that it can be hard to increase fees.
I think I was initially trying to be a perfectionist. I think a lot of financial planners are but I think you have to let go and go with your gut. Just make the decision and pay for it.
There was a lot of time I was waiting on the fence and I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.
I did reach out to mentors and they did help. A lot of people in this industry will give up their time and I would have gone to them early.
Initially I find the important thing with clients is gaining that trust, either with new clients or clients I had in the past.
It is a long lead time and when you’re in an established business you don't see that as much. It is rewarding but it is about trust building. Time can go very quickly with that sort of thing.
My background is working with women. When you go to a bigger company, that identity can be lost so it was really important that my history reflects my future.
I definitely think there was a different way of working with women and I think that as a general rule women can be quite considered with what they do in finance. That in the past is how I work.
