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Spotlight on…. Sue Barlow

Posted on: September 14th, 2024 by stevejordan@fivewealth.co.uk

Sue Barlow has been a fundamental part of Five Wealth since its foundation back in 2016. Here, Sue tells us all about her time at Five Wealth so far and gives us an insight into her role as practice manager.

Tell us a bit about you and your role?

I’ve worked in financial services since I was 18. I’m now in my 50s, which makes this a long time! Having been in financial services for so many years, I like to think I have a lot of knowledge of and experience in many aspects of the industry.  I understand why and how the industry has got to where it is now. I was also amongst the first to sit and pass the Pensions Management Institute Certificate in Pensions Automatic Enrolment (CPAE), so that’s quite interesting!

Outside of work, I’m married to my husband, Paul, and we have two teenage daughters. We live in Wigan with our dog, Barney the Pomtzu. In my free time, I’m a member of the Wigan Community Choir, so you might catch me out and about performing at one of our concerts.

How has your role changed from when you first began to now?

 When I joined Five Wealth back in 2016, I worked with Chris Little, one of the founding directors of Five Wealth (who has recently retired), as a financial planning manager.  I also managed client and in-house schemes, which remains one of my core responsibilities.

My role now also covers a lot of different areas in the office – primarily HR, accounting, health and safety, and employee benefits. I also cover group schemes, including workplace pensions, death-in-service, and private medical cover.

Best part of working at Five Wealth?

The best part of working at Five Wealth is the incredible team. The people here truly make Five Wealth what it is: down-to-earth, approachable, knowledgeable, and always supportive. Also, the hybrid work model we now have has been a game changer for me. After years of commuting between Wigan and Manchester, it’s fantastic!

What advice would you give to someone aspiring to progress in the financial advice industry?

My advice to anyone looking to progress is a positive, can-do attitude is must, and maintaining this is essential to success. As well as this, focus on completing your exams as soon as you can. This way, you’ll have equipped yourself with the necessary knowledge and credentials, allowing you to hit the ground running.

Inspiring the next generation: Five Wealth on financial education

Posted on: August 2nd, 2024 by stevejordan@fivewealth.co.uk

Inspiring the next generation: Five Wealth on financial education

“Waiting until you’re rich to learn about money is like waiting until you’re married to start dating.”  – Fagan and Ver Hage*

Sally Bowles wasn’t wrong when she sang “money makes the world go round” all those years ago in hit musical ‘Cabaret’. Yet we see so many young people grow into adults with little knowledge of how to manage simple finances, let alone create investments or set up mortgages. In fact, research from the Money and Pensions Service’s Financial Wellbeing Survey found that 45 per cent of UK adults don’t feel confident in managing their money day to day. Especially in a cost-of-living crisis, it’s more important than ever to make sure that everyone knows how to manage their money most effectively.

We believe that like any education, finance is best learned young. Whilst it can be thought of as being too complicated or boring, it can be broken down into manageable chunks, typically not taught in schools. A GoHenry study into the effect of financial education from a young age on adulthood adds to a growing amount of evidence to highlight the importance of financial literacy. It found that prioritising financial education could add nearly £7 billion to the UK economy each year.

It’s not just about boosting the economy. It’s about providing education that empowers young people to make informed financial decisions, enabling them to plan wisely and create a stable financial future. It’s also about introducing them to career opportunities they may not have otherwise been exposed to.

Unlocking career potential

Our work experience programme gives young people the opportunity to enter the workplace and learn about the industry by being immersed in the practical environment. Our aim here is to educate the next generation on the range of career options which are available to them.

Approximately 85 per cent of financial planners are male, with only 6 per cent aged under 30. Our work experience programme actively works to try and change this, to encourage people into the industry from more diverse demographics, to protect the longevity and accessibility of the sector.

Sowing the seeds early

Steve Hughes, one of our founding directors, recently visited Davyhulme Primary School during Primary Futures Week. He delivered talks on finances and shared his journey to becoming a financial adviser, with the aim of inspiring the next generation on how to get into the profession.

Steve is also an ‘Education Champion’ for the Personal Finance Society and delivers personal finance workshops in schools to children aged 12-18 as part of a pro-bono initiative. This all forms part of our belief in creating the building blocks of a financial education.

Giving back

Unique to Five Wealth, we also hold ‘Next Gen’ conferences where our clients bring in their children to the office to meet with our team to learn about a range of topics from budgeting, inflation, buying a house, workplace pensions, investing.

We’re passionate about financial education and continuously working on more opportunities to educate the next generation in learning the fundamentals of managing their money. After all, waiting until you’re rich to learn about money is like waiting until you’re married to start dating. It doesn’t pave the way for long term success!

Watch this space for more information about what we’re doing to help educate the next generation.

* Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage in ‘The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money, 2018. 

 

 

 

Top 9 Mistakes When DIY Investing

Posted on: July 2nd, 2024 by stevejordan@fivewealth.co.uk

Top 9 Mistakes When DIY Investing

With investments more accessible than ever and reams of information available online, the idea of ‘doing it yourself’ can seem an attractive prospect to save on advice fees. Part of the value offered by advisers is navigating the potential pitfalls when making a financial plan and managing investments. Below are some of the most common mistakes we see in ‘DIY’ financial planning.

  1. Unrealistic growth assumptions

When planning for the future, assumptions need to be made around investment growth, and in most cases, it makes sense to look back historically over various time periods when creating those assumptions. Individuals can be swayed by recent events and after a particularly good period for markets, this can lead to heightened expectations of returns going forward. This can be dangerous for the financial plan if the actual performance falls short of those assumptions.

  1. Not understanding risk

Most people have a reasonable understanding of the concept of investment risk. Markets can go up and down and it’s all about the long term. However, where things get tricky is understanding how we would expect different types of assets to react in certain economic scenarios, and how much investments could fall. Perhaps more importantly, individuals sometimes fail to marry up their investment risk with the amount of risk they can reasonably afford to take given their own circumstances.

  1. Panicking!

It’s natural to want to sell investments and limit losses when markets have tumbled, but it’s important to continue to take a long-term view and ride out period of volatility – the recovery will come, and you want to be invested when it does!

  1. Unexpected tax consequences

A little bit of information can be a dangerous thing. One example here would be a high earner making large pension contributions. A perfectly reasonable and prudent action to take on the face of it, but it can occasionally saddle the individual with an ‘Annual Allowance Excess Charge’ if their earnings and contributions breach certain thresholds.

  1. Leaving things too late

Burying your head in the sand is extremely common. Whether it’s planning for retirement, putting insurance in place or simply just sitting down and mapping everything out, the sooner you start, the better. Another regret we occasionally hear is around failing to get family members involved in financial planning early enough, whether it’s children or a spouse.

  1. Scams

People can be influenced by what they see on social media and especially around unregulated investments with promises of ‘safe’ 10% + returns. The old adage of ‘if it looks too good to be true, it usually is’ is one to remember here.

  1. Not holding enough cash

When you compare long term returns of stock markets versus cash, there would appear to be only one winner. However, that completely overlooks the main reason for holding cash – liquidity. Holding too little cash can mean that investments have to be sold, often at inopportune times, should unforeseen expenditure arise.

  1. Being under-insured

The more exciting part of creating a financial plan is usually the investments. People can become focused on the returns they can generate and the early retirement they might be able to afford. Less glamorous, but equally important, is putting in place protection to cover the unfortunate circumstances where an individual becomes ill or passes away. This can have huge implications for a family, or even fellow business owners.

  1. Assuming the status quo

It can be easy to assume that things will continue as they are currently, however change is inevitable. In 2020 and 2021, few people were predicting that interest rates would shoot up as much as they have done over the subsequent years, and that will have caught out those who borrowed large amounts with short term fixes or tracker rates. When designing a financial plan, it needs to be flexible enough to navigate changes in the economic outlook, legislation and personal circumstances.

A good adviser should help you avoid making these mistakes, which at worst can be catastrophic to achieving your goals. Even setting aside the financial impact, it’s hard to put a value on the peace of mind that an adviser can deliver.

12 months with Foresight – Becoming the leader for wealth management advice in the North

Posted on: May 10th, 2024 by stevejordan@fivewealth.co.uk

It’s been just over a year since Five Wealth took on £6.7m of investment from Foresight Group, which marked the beginning of a new stage of growth for the business.

By partnering with Foresight, our goal was to build on the success of the last seven years by creating a platform for our next generation of advisers and directors to continue to grow the business through a combination of organic growth and targeted acquisitions.

Working with Foresight, and our investor Director, Matt McLoughlin, has been a wholly positive experience  and been hugely beneficial for our business. Foresight have been exactly who they said they would be, supporting the management team in delivering the original plan we presented to them at outset.

The investment also enabled us to bring in Tim Parsons, as non-exec Chairman, and Jonathan Partington, as Finance Director, both of whom have made significant contributions to our development over the last twelve months.

In short, twelve months on, the business has not only grown in terms of assets under management and the number of clients looked after but importantly it has a whole new level of structure and governance which stands us in good stead for further growth from here on.

 

Building a business to scale

To deliver on the plan presented to Foresight, scalability is key, and we are well on our way to achieving what we set out to do.

Some  changes are clearly visible such as refreshing our brand to align with the needs of our clients, whether they be high-net worth individuals, business owners or professionals. We’ve also updated our client proposition and been more active in producing content for distribution externally via LinkedIn and a whole range of business publications.

Whilst less visible but of equal, if not greater, importance to our service delivery and scalability is the work we have undertaken in streamlining our internal processes.

We have also launched a more structured professional training programme for our paraplanners, as well as a host of promotions. Amy Grace, Liz Schulz, and Rick Gosling have all joined the management team and are playing an active part in taking the business forward.

 

Relationships that last a lifetime

Since our inception, our goal has always been creating relationships with our clients that last a lifetime, whether that’s working with ambitious business owners, or advising families in building intergenerational wealth. This hasn’t changed and if anything, our proposition is even more closely aligned to this goal.

This greater focus has  positively impacted on our numbers and, since August last year with Foresight’s backing, our assets under management have grown significantly, increasing by 10% to £771m. Turnover has increased by 8.2% compared to the same period in the prior year and in the process we have brought on board over 30 new client family groups.

As we continue to grow, our ambition is to become the leader in financial planning and investment management in the North, and whilst we recognise we are still in the early stages of this journey we are making good progress.

 

Helping to realise ambition

We’ve learnt a lot since partnering with Foresight and made a lot of progress in a short period of time building on a solid platform created since 2016. Over the coming years, the intention is to build on this via a combination of organic growth, suitable acquisitions, new adviser additions, and greater efficiency across the business. In a profession with a high average practitioner age, we also intend to continue our focus on building the business with a relatively young but highly qualified team.

As we embark on our second year with Foresight, we are ready to move onto the next phase of our journey updating our original plan taking a more positive long-term view. Our ultimate aim is to create a sustainable, growing business with a long-term focus which provides security for our clients across the generations and our young and enthusiastic team.