News and Blogs Building a career in financial advice

Joanne Baker, the Co-Founder and Director of Yorkshire Financial Planning, and newly-minted Chartered Fellow of The London Foundation for Banking & Finance, talks to us about how and why she built a career as a financial adviser

Joanne Baker, who has just become a Chartered Fellow of The London Foundation for Banking & Finance, is the Co-Founder and Director of Yorkshire Financial Planning and began working in financial services over twenty years ago. But, like many people who find that being a financial adviser is extremely satisfying, she started out down a different path.

Joanne initially took a degree in Hotel & Catering Management and her first role after university was as an industrial kitchen designer for restaurant chains including Frankie & Benny’s and La Tasca. It wasn’t entirely accidental that Joanne found herself in design: she’s dyslexic and many dyslexics have particular strengths in visuospatial processing.  However, when the hospitality sector went through a downturn, Joanne needed to find a new role and she joined Halifax Bank, where she found she could bring other strengths into play.

“I loved working in the call centre talking to people about their mortgages, I found it really interesting and so I did the first CeMAP exams,” she says. [CeMAP is the Certificate in Mortgage Advice and Practice.] “Then I joined Nationwide as a mortgage adviser and did CeMAP in full and, among other qualifications, the Diploma in Financial Advice (DipFA).”

Dyslexics do not relish reading a lot of textbooks. Studying alongside a full-time career is even harder. How did Joanne manage that? “For me, yes, reading a dry textbook isn’t necessarily the most thrilling thing to do. That’s not my learning style,” she says. “It was tough doing both alongside each other, but it was interesting from the perspective that you learn as you go and you can apply the knowledge.”

It’s clearly beneficial to be in a role that you enjoy and are good at. However, working as a financial adviser is, arguably, not just a job. What motivates Joanne in her work?

She adds that though knowledge and experience of finances are a pre-requisite for a financial adviser, the career is “really forged on listening to clients, on building relationships and on understanding what the client’s needs, goals and objectives are, and then trying to anticipate what they might need going forward. Only when you understand those do you then apply finances to the equation and find a solution,” she says.

And good financial advice is not just ‘one and done’. “You have to review, review, review,” says Joanne, “because their circumstances change, and they may not realise they’ve changed and that it’s impacting either what you’re recommending or their overall financial goal. Things will need tweaking along the way. It’s about that relationship and continuing to service them, spend time with them.”

Does Joanne enjoy being a financial adviser? “Yes, hands down. No debate, not even a question,” she says. “I love finding solutions. I like problem solving and I like understanding and building those relationships. So yeah, I absolutely love it.”

Joanne saw first-hand how important financial advice can be when she was still a child. Her father was taking out a life insurance policy and the adviser had suggested adding her mother “for a pound more”, which her father did. “My mum died not very long after the plan was taken out, but the insurance meant that the mortgage was paid and the family was looked after. As a result of that, I feel very strongly about protecting clients, making sure they’re in the best position should the worst happen.”

Every career has its challenges, though, and Joanne says that the main one for her is the negative – and very false – perception of financial advisers as being akin to scammers. “I don’t think people understand what financial advisers do,” she says.

What would Joanne say to someone who feels that financial advice isn’t worth the money? “That it’s often the value you can’t see that adds the most value,” she says. “There are lots of things that a financial adviser does automatically that the client won’t know about. What they might see could involve identifying something that could be tweaked for their benefit. And, if you pay nothing, you get very basic information. You then have to make your own decision.”

One of the biggest decisions in Joanne’s own life was deciding to go into partnership to launch a business, Yorkshire Financial Planning, three and a half years ago. “We had talked about it for many years,” says Joanne. “We worked together at Nationwide, and I loved my time there. It was a wonderful, nurturing place to work. However, Nationwide restricted the advice that could be provided and we had a very clear view of what financial advice should look like. We wanted to be able to look at all aspects of clients’ lives and be there every step of the way.”

Joanne says that getting the business up and running was “possibly the scariest thing” she has ever had to do. “We’d both set aside a year’s worth of salary, we’d been saving hard to be able to take the leap. We went from knowing our jobs within Nationwide inside out to knowing nothing, to being able to look at not quite the whole of the market, but a far bigger range of products and services. We had to learn how to set up a business, do our accounts and juggle all these different plates, so that first year was really tough.”

Is there any advice that Joanne would give to people who want to follow the same route?

“Don’t start your chartered qualification midway through your second year of running your own business,” she says with a smile. “But, in all seriousness, build a strong support network to enhance your growth and development. Never underestimate the benefits of a mentor as they will have a wealth of experience to share.”