William Johnson

Name:: William Johnson
Age:: 27
Role/Title:: Consultant
University/Degree:: University of Liverpool / Geography & Economics

Describe your role.

I am a Financial Services Consultant working for The Oval Group. I have a responsibility to provide financial advice and consultancy to both corporate and personal clients. My main area of specialism is pensions but I also work with employee benefits, protection and investments.

How did you get into insurance?

I started with holiday work in the retail banking sector at Alliance & Leicester, this introduced me to the idea of providing financial advice, however I felt that I wanted to explore Investment banking as a career and therefore secured an internship with Barclays Capital. Experience of both retail and investment confirmed my interest in financial services but neither really satisfied the way in which I wanted to work.

So I looked at the intermediary sector - and won a place as the first graduate trainee at Bland Bankart - a Midlands-based insurance broker and IFA. I was lucky in a sense in that I had a hand in shaping the graduate programme at the company - I spent 2 months in each of the operating divisions, generally working on a project basis, and eventually settled on an offer to train to be financial services consultant.

I took my CII professional qualifications and became an FSA registered adviser. Initially I shadowed other consultants and have gradually built up a bank of clients and contacts such that I am now in my third full year as a consultant.

What does your role entail?

Like all consultants I am responsible for producing a threshold level of income for Oval. My daily activities are mostly built around the need to generate income. In reality that income is probably split 50/50 between servicing existing clients and generating new clients.

The bulk of my activities revolve around company and director's pension schemes, I provide a great deal of 1-2-1 counselling for members of group schemes and often meet people to discuss joining schemes, making transfers and retirement planning. A lot of my time is spent providing advice to these clients. I also meet regularly with the directors of client companies working on both their company's strategy with regard to reward and benefits and their personal financial situation and how that interacts with their business interests.

What do you most enjoy about your role?

I enjoy the flexibility and the autonomy. Essentially I look after my own profit / loss account across my client bank. I enjoy client contact, particularly at the director / board level, and when strategy is being discussed. I will be with clients approximately 50% of the working week.

The consultancy / sales environment provides excellent earnings potential with the right business. If you are creative, motivated and technically proficient then financial services is a very rewarding career.

Describe a typical working day

Not surprisingly, I don't have a 'typical day'. In a typical week I will usually do several one-to-one pension meetings with scheme members, spend some time writing 'suitability letters' and reports for both corporate and personal clients, make sure I meet the compliance requirements of the advice that I give, meet a prospective corporate client for the first time, deal with some pension related queries, and progress sales initiatives with new and existing clients.

What's the single most challenging aspect of your job?

Most people would say that having sales targets is the most challenging aspect of the job, but to be honest that is just part and parcel of the role and you have to accept it. For me the most challenging aspect is to have enough technical knowledge and experience to meet the requirements of the companies I have contact with.

To overcome this I have tried to move away from the 'traditional IFA' tag and think more as an employee benefits consultant where we help client companies to challenge the status quo and to really think about what it is they are trying to achieve with reward.

What would you say are the main benefits of working in the industry?

As a young financial services consultant the financial rewards are of course very attractive. However one of the main attractions is the exposure to different clients and industry sectors, you really get a feeling for what is going on in the economy and what pressures businesses face - helping them to gear up and face those pressure is very satisfying at a professional level.