To celebrate International Women's Day on Tuesday 8 March, St. James's Place Financial Adviser Academy interviewed Amanda Redman, Chartered Financial Planner with St. James's Place.
After an extensive and successful career as a Senior Director in international business and marketing, Amanda established her company, Amanda Redman Financial Planning, through the Academy programme, and joined St. James's Place Wealth Management in 2013 as a Partner Practice. She is a Pensions Specialist and enjoys working with female clients, who often have few financial planners to choose from who can relate to their personal circumstances and experiences. She was named Best Woman in Financial Services in the national Best Businesswomen Awards 2020, and is the author of Dare To Be Fair, a rallying cry to empower women to be confident decision makers and steer their own financial futures.
Read the highlights of Amanda’s interview here:
How was the career transition from marketing to financial advice?
It was a big change, and I would say it took me a couple of years of thinking it through whilst I was still at my old company to decide what I wanted to do next. There were some key drivers for me. I was getting a bit tired of the corporate politics within the business – to progress further, they wanted to live overseas, which I didn’t really want to do. I didn’t want the family to have to relocate, and I’ve always wanted to be my own boss and be my own decision maker. So, I got an opportunity to take redundancy from my company, which was very important in terms of giving me the financial security I needed to spend a year or so training and then developing my new business as a financial adviser. It wasn’t a snap decision. I obviously did lots of research into the best way of becoming a financial adviser, and as soon as I came across St. James’s Place and looked into the Academy programme and the career change programme that is offered, I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do.
How much support did you have from St. James’s Place?
The support is always there in a multitude of different formats, which is what I’ve really enjoyed about developing my career and business with St. James’s Place. You always have great support through the exam process – for example, the workshops that SJP run before you take any exam are fantastic. In terms of managing the personal and the professional, we all have Partnership Development Managers that work with us right from day one. You get more support in those first few years when you’re new and you’re still learning. But even now I have a fantastic Partnership Development Manager who I still go to for support with the right strategies for my growth and for how to best expand my business with additional advisers. The the role of the Development Managers is so crucial because their focus and their main responsibility is to help us to grow and develop our businesses ensuring we are are doing all the right things for our clients whilst remaining compliant. To have that support, as well as the technical knowledge and expertise, is just a fantastic business model. I have the flexibility to write my own business plan, which I do every year, to set my own targets. I’m not beholden to anybody else other than myself for achieving those targets, but I know that whatever I need to help me achieve that growth, I can access through SJP.
You are passionate about women achieving their financial goals and have written a bestselling book about this. Can you tell us more?
Yes, I’ve written a book called Dare To Be Fair. It’s written for women of all ages, and it’s intended to be a rallying cry for women to make sure that they are fully involved in their own personal finances and are not just defaulting to their husband or partner to make some of those longer-term decisions for them. I work with a lot of women going through divorce – often, unfortunately, it takes a bit of a crisis like a divorce or a bereavement for women to realise that they don’t understand their personal finances. That is the wrong time to suddenly realise that you don’t fully know what assets you have, and whether you have any debts. Most women are very involved in short-term decision making around their money, but the longer-term decision making is often left to somebody else. The book brings together the experiences I had in the corporate world as a working mum and some of the challenges around that. My big soap box has always been the gender pay gap – which still exists. It’s complex for many reasons, but the decisions we make at the point when we start our families, and in particular whether we choose to go back part-time, full-time, or take a career break, have significant long-term implications for us financially. It’s something that we don’t typically take into account when we are making that decision about what we want best for our children as well as for our own careers. It’s so important to get a good understanding, and to strive to be independent as much as possible financially, and to be self-sufficient.
For a woman looking to change career and begin something new, would you recommend the Academy?
The Academy represents the best way to train and have the opportunity to become the best in your field. St. James’s Place do this far better than any other organisation out there. And not just for women, but if you’re a working mum and you’ve always got that challenge about juggling commitments and needing flexibility, then this sort of work is perfect, because you can choose ultimately what hours you want to meet with clients. So, for example, I personally don’t have evening meetings and I don’t have meetings at the weekends with clients, but I know some of my colleagues do. It depends on the people that you’re speaking to and how you want to do things. You can build in as much flexibility as possible. Also, with the younger generations, I think the working from home experience has made a lot of guys realised that it’s nice to be able to do the school run every now and again, which will hopefully lead to a lot more sharing of that childcare responsibility. It’s just as important for men to have that choice and flexibility without feeling like they need to be present in the office all the time to get their next promotion. This sort of work, where you’re self-employed but have the fantastic backing and support of an organisation like SJP, just gives you that blank canvas to create a business that you can be proud of and that will fit in and around your own family commitments at whatever stage they are.