October 2015 – More things than money

One of my clients said to me a few days ago “sometimes there are more things than money” and I was inspired by how she was spending her time helping those less fortunate than her. Another client was telling me how she was helping in her local foodbank and how she was helping terminally ill people – her stories were moving. A dear client died last week. Norman was a spritely 88 year old and he was helping in his community right up to the end. One morning he didn’t get up. I shall miss his good humour. From my experience in helping clients over the last 25 years no one ever says I should have spent more time in work or made more money. It’s the difference that we make and the friends that we touch that matters. Dreda was definitely right, there are more things than money. So how does that fit in with being a financial adviser? I think that if I can use my knowledge and skill with money so that my clients can spend more time where it matters that is my contribution, it is where I make a difference. Moving on to another client conversation I was asked what I did with my time and it is quite understandable that many do not appreciate how much time it takes to operate in the most regulated business in the world. Two days last month were taken up with our annual inspection and while we passed with flying colours, preparation and follow up took 5 days. Our half yearly report for the FCA (the RMAR) was completed on 1st October which took another full day. Another day was spent in London with Dimensional keeping up to date with my investment knowledge and another day working with a group of advisers from Nucleus keeping up with best practice. A typical month sees 50% of my time taken up with business requirements. I love being with my clients and ideally I would love to spend more of my time with them: With my additional support staff and use of technology to improve business efficiency I am aiming to increase my client time to 60% or more during 2016. Our telephone reception service has been changed to ‘All Day PA’ and I hope that you will see an enhanced service as they bed in. They literally are ‘all day’ and you can speak to a live person into the evening or even at 3 a.m. in the morning! Why not go to our website click on ‘Client View’ on the home page and send us your feedback to let us know how they are doing. We have found that over 50 clients are using our Text to Email service where they send text messages and we receive them as emails (and we send emails and they receive them as texts). The ‘TxtUs’ number has been changed to 0780 000 6208. If you haven’t used the service yet why not send us a text and see how it works? By the way don’t try to phone the number because it’s for texts only.