We help to alleviate the stress of day-to-day money management
We make life simpler for clients by taking care of the sometimes boring but important things such as subscribing to their ISA each year, thus making their portfolios more tax efficient over time. This is all, of course, combined with the work the investment team do to mitigate risks within portfolios and rebalancing them when appropriate.
Helping clients to visualise their financial future is invaluable to them and rewarding for me. Our online planning tools give people an idea of how their finances may progress depending on their specific goals and objectives.
Managing clients’ expectations
Providing assurance is key to what we do so I also spend a part of each day communicating to clients how their portfolios have performed and may behave in the future. This could be through the regular monthly updates we send to clients, but sometimes also by telephone or face-to-face conversations.
I’ll also highlight Netwealth attributes such as our complete transparency on holdings and avoiding investing in illiquid or unquoted companies as ways that further reinforce our stability.
A role reinforced through key internal relationships, and technology
Two key relationships are pivotal to how effectively we can serve clients. Our developers implement our ideas on how to present data to clients in more interesting and useful ways. They also help us to deploy pioneering features like those that encourage clients to use their tax allowances quickly and efficiently, and a new tool which will give clients even more control over their retirement plans.
Working closely with the client services team is also crucial. They implement the instructions of the client and make sure transfers to and from other providers go smoothly. Every week we have a transfers meeting to check the progress of transfers from other providers. It helps that we’re all on the same page – we all want to ensure that each client’s journey is as effortless as possible.
Things that make life more interesting
Helping clients to achieve their objectives is fulfilling, yet I also like to push my own limits to keep things interesting. I work a little bit on the tech side of things to help design and improve how our Customer Relationship Management software functions.
I host webinars, too, to explain various financial planning concepts and investment ideas to clients. It’s unusual to be presenting to a live audience! But I also recognise the value of doing things which are initially slightly outside your comfort zone.
Winding down
Because I help people to plan ahead effectively, it wouldn’t be encouraging if I didn’t practice what I preach! So I like to make sure all the boxes for each day are ticked off – and key tasks for the following day are lined up.
Although I value my time off, I never really switch off completely. When checking emails from clients, I may forward them to a colleague but sometimes a personal response is warranted. And I’m always catching up on financial and industry news, but that doesn’t feel like work as I enjoy it!
I’m fairly active, too, so after work I will often go for a game of squash with the team here – with product owner Dave, Simon from the investment team or Joey from the dev team.
One of my favourite books is ‘Thinking, fast and slow’ by Daniel Kahneman. It is not directly related to investing but because it analyses how we act and make choices, its lessons apply when we help clients with our insights, but also in guiding and empowering them to challenge their own assumptions and decisions.
Please remember that when investing your capital is at risk.