Many financial advisers “fell into” the industry and it was no different for Tom Ham, director at Calton Wealth Management.
Speaking to FT Adviser as part of our Coffee Corner series, Ham said he initially wanted to be a professional ice hockey player.
How did you go from ice hockey to financial advice?
“I played ice hockey at a reasonable level at university,” he said.
“After university, I spent a year playing ice hockey and tried to earn a living from it, but it turns out I was absolutely terrible. I wasn't good enough.”
Following this, Ham coached semi professionally for a bit with the Great Britain sledge hockey team, which is the Paralympic version of the game.
“I realised at some point that I was going to need actual food to eat,” he said.
“I got a temporary job at AXA Equitable and that was my first job in financial services.
“I was the guy who you would ring up and complain if your free DVD player hadn't arrived or you hadn't received your pen for enquiring following the adverts on TV."
Ham said after a couple of weeks, the firm offered him a permanent contract and asked if he would like to join the pensions team.
He was offered training on pensions and life insurance and was there for over two years.
After this he moved into a technical support role - which would now be a paraplanning role - for an adviser in Birmingham.
Where did you go from there?
“My first actual advising job was when I did my traineeship at Walters & Shek with a guy called Stephen Walters in Edinburgh.
Ham said he learnt a lot from Walters as he was all about "good financial planning first and investment second".
“He was a really early adopter of index funds and ETFs before RDR was even being mentioned,” Ham said.
“He was working on fixed fees and a lot of the values in my business today are taken from that time working with Walters.”
What would you say has been the biggest change in financial advice?
“Cash flow modelling,” Ham said has been the biggest change. “When I was working with Stephen, he had a 13,000 sales spreadsheet, which was the financial security forecast and it was basically what cash calc is now.
“It was great fun because that's where I learned all my Excel skills, but back then he was doing effectively cash flow modelling. Now we've got all these amazing tools to do it.”
What would you have liked more help on in the early stages of becoming an adviser?
“If I had my time again, I would have spent more time on soft skills,” he said.
“I would have been more patient and spent more time on the soft skills and I would have actively asked for supervision.”
As a young adviser, Ham said when supervisors were in the room, it made him feel awkward.
However, now he has the confidence to actively ask other people to sit in meetings and ask what they thought about where he could improve.
