Former solicitor Lisa Meller entered the world of advice after she felt she was unable to find an adviser who would be suitable for her.
Speaking to FT Adviser as part of our Coffee Corner series, the now IFA at Personal Finance Movement said she was a solicitor for six years in corporate law before she switched careers.
What made you go from that into advice as they are very different?
“Well the first time that I got into looking into my own finances was actually when I attended an event by Female Invest,” she said.
“I attended that and then received this bonus from my work. I was working in an American law firm and we were receiving annual bonuses and so receiving this bonus made me actually look for a financial adviser.”
Meller said she really struggled to find somebody who would do one off advice on a fixed fee.
“That's when I got really interested and I thought, well, why doesn't that exist?” she said.
She eventually sought financial advice but found it didn't help her that much because she felt it wasn't answering the kind of questions she had had and so she decided to spend the money on studying for DipFA instead.
“I did that and while I was studying for that, I kept attending the Female Invest events and other investing for women events and I thought, I really want to do something in this space to change this.”
As a solicitor, she said she spoke to a lot of people in corporate firms who often start earning more than £100,000 a year just after training level.
"Very early on in their careers - when people are still very young - they are earning high salaries.
“I realised that a lot of these young people didn't know that they had to file self assessments and they didn't know much at all about the tax position on pensions,” she said.
“That really motivated me to look into how I would actually go about working in the financial advice profession and so I looked at a lot of different firms, and none of them kind of aligned with my values and the things that I wanted to do.
“Eventually, somebody on my course recommended ValidPath as a network to me and so now I get to run my business exactly in the way that I want.”
That’s amazing and really great to hear you know what you want. How long did it all take?
“I started them in May 2022 and I did them over like a 12 month period while I was working,” Meller said.
After she finished them, she did her FCA application with ValidPath, and then took the summer out travelling.
“I came back and I started in October 2023,” she said.
“I set out this like very kind of detailed business plan and now I'm running my business exactly in line with that as trying to fill that sort of gap of targeting people who are younger - so below 35 often - and trying to create a space for women to come to and see a financial adviser who they can relate to.”
