Working in financial services … a calling?

Normally when someone asks what I do for a living, my answer creates a knee-jerk reaction of eyes glazing over, hunching of the shoulders and the stifling of a yawn before the sarcastic comment “that sounds … thrilling” (or variations thereof!)

And I get it – to an outsider, financial services is Dull (with a capital D).  In fact, to many ‘insiders’ as well, financial services is pretty dull!  But I consider myself truly fortunate to be working in a firm like Solomon’s, with a great team of people, and a fabulous bunch of clients, doing the work that we do.

As a relatively small company, we don’t have hard lines between our roles here, which means we all get some exposure to marketing, finance, report writing, admin, client liaison, writing content, editing, checking each other, creative processes, planning, business growth.  It’s a dynamic work environment for us and it’s the absolute opposite of the toxic workplaces that grace so many threads on social media at the moment.  The team works well together as we all like and respect one another (even when we disagree).

Financial planning is not known as a caring profession (that expression seems to be reserved for medical personnel) but at Solomon’s (as a firm and as a team of individuals) – we genuinely do care about our clients and the work we do with them and for them.  It is a great pleasure and an honour when a client realises they can retire earlier than they imagined; or that they can afford to do something that had seemed out of reach; or quite simply that they can ‘stop worrying’ about some of the ‘big stuff’ like “will I run out of money?” or “what would I do financially if I lost my spouse?”.

Most of our clients have been with Solomon’s for MANY years (some are counting in decades) and we know them very well … to a point of reading an article in the news or social media that reminds us of a client (a football team winning a big event, the sale of a very old and valuable stamp, or an interesting gardening fact – you catch my drift).  We are invested in our clients’ lives (not in a stalker-ish way!) quite simply because we care what happens to them.  We care that they are separating from their spouse, we care that they have been diagnosed with a critical illness, we care that they have lost a parent (or sadly a child).

We aren’t just about the money; we aren’t just about the work; we ARE about people; we are about empathy; we are about relationship.

We are a small firm with a big heart.