This episode of the The Money Compass podcast was published on Wednesday 18th January 2023. You can listen again by heading to our episodes page, or on your favourite podcast player.
In this episode, we are introduced to the new host, Lukas, joining Emma on the Money Compass Podcast.
Episode Highlights
Emma Knights and Lukas Spyrou introduce themselves as the new hosts of The Money Compass Podcast. They explain what is so important to them about helping you to navigate your way to financial success.
“The Money Compass Podcast allows us to share our experiences, views, and tips on all things finance to a wider audience than just our existing clients.”
Rediscover the Conversation
Emma Knights and Lukas Spyrou
Hi, Welcome to the Money compass, the show that will guide you through the world of money and finance with me Emma Knights and me, Lukas Spyrou, exploring investments, retirement, taxes and protection and helping you navigate your way to financial success.
Emma Knights
In today’s episode, we thought we’d get to know each other a little bit. So hopefully you can find out a bit more about who we are and what we do. As you know, I’m Emma, and I have Lukas here with me today.
Lukas Spyrou
Hi, Emma.
Emma Knights
Hello. Tell everyone a little bit about who we are and what we do, Lukas.
Lukas Spyrou
We are financial consultants based in Norwich, with an independent firm called Face to face Finance. We help all different types of individuals and businesses with anything to do with their finances really, from their retirement planning their investments, and we even do quite a bit of estate planning.
Emma Knights
You might be thinking, so why are these two people, financial consultants, recording a podcast together? Well, finance isn’t seen as the most exciting subject, so we thought we’d like to try and bring it to life a bit and make it a little bit more interesting for people and share some information on the knowledge we have that we can pass on to other people.
Lukas Spyrou
When did you start as a financial consultant Emma?
Emma Knights
So, in 2018, I started on my qualifications and kind of started with the company, but it was only the end of 2019, that I got all of my qualifications and started actually being able to go and give advice to people. It’s still relatively new, but that’s why it’s nice to be able to talk about the topic and be really fresh with it.
I think it’s one of those things that nobody particularly enjoys talking about, most of the people in the industry are a lot older, and yes, they’ve got all the experience, but actually, we can bring so much value and pass it on to the next generation.
Lukas Spyrou
Yeah, I totally agree with that Emma. Picking up on your point about a lot of advisors being in the industry who are a bit older, in fact, the average age of financial advisors at the moment is 62. Those under 30 coming in, there’s about 5.7% of advisors in the entire country.
Emma Knights
I’m quite happy, I fit into that category what about you, Lukas? You don’t quite fit in there anymore.
Lukas Spyrou
Not quite, I just get into the under 40 category. Let’s not go there and let everyone know my age. But again, the under 40s, there’s still only under 20% of us. So I do think it’s really important for young people, not only to come into our industry, but just young people in general, really start thinking about their finances, and start putting plans in place for their future. Hopefully, that’s where we can come in and help.
Emma Knights
Definitely, I think another thing that I particularly like about where we are, and what we do is that the firm that we work for is an independent firm. So, we’re directly regulated by the FCA, which means that we can always search the entire market to find products for our clients, which we like to be able to do. We don’t like being restricted to only be able to use certain products and different things.
But when you think of it, there’s around about 50,000 financial advisors in total, but there’s only about 11,000 left that are directly regulated. It is definitely narrowing down completely. It’s good to be able to still offer that to people so that they can still get a view of the entire market, when they’re taking advice from somebody.
Lukas Spyrou
Yeah, and as you say that gives us the opportunity to pick from the whole of the market rather than just sort of be guided by what certain providers can offer, and we can actually tailor our advice to specifically suit your needs. I did mention earlier that we are based in Norwich but we do have clients all over the country. We can come to see you out and about in your home and we can also do things via Zoom. The company is called Face to Face Finance, and that is how we feel the best way that any advice is given, should be. Just to get that that relationship going with the client.
Emma Knights
Definitely, I think the other nice thing about us being the younger new generation of financial planning is that when you have a financial advisor, you tend to work with them over a long period of time. It’s not just a case of you do one transaction and you never speak to them again, a lot of the work that we do is building a relationship with our clients over a long period of time.
I know that the older advisors that we work with, some of their clients have been working with for over 30 years. That’s a long time, a big span of somebody’s life! To be able to start that journey with someone who is also young means that we’re possibly going to see them all the way through their financial journey, and their financial plan and follow them through it. It’s not going to be a case of, you’ve met me and I’m now in my 60s and I’m going to retire before you’ve even reached the later parts of your life. It’s nice to be able to go on that full journey with someone and see how their life pans out.
Lukas Spyrou
Yes, and it’s not just overnight! You’ve got the next generation too. So, as you said, it’s good in that lifelong relationship with someone, but it’s also with their family. They’re going to have children, they’re going to have grandchildren, and we can help with all that type of planning as well, for the next generations. Whether that’s keeping the investments going, helping protect the assets that the grandparents or parents have worked so hard for, and just keep that wealth within the family.
Emma Knights
Definitely. Go on Lukas, what’s your favourite part about the job?
Lukas Spyrou
Is getting out every day, and aside from drinking other people’s coffee and eating their biscuits.
Emma Knights
I was going to say, if you ask a lot of people in our office, what we actually do, is drinking tea and eat biscuits.
Lukas Spyrou
All joking aside, it is getting out and meeting individuals and realising that everyone is different, at a different stage in their life, and have different goals and objectives. I also enjoy the challenge of planning for those different situations and helping people get to those goals, whether that’s going on an exotic dream holiday, or if it’s just something simple. Releasing enough money to buy a new car or help the grandkids go to university. It really has a huge variety every day and going out and meeting people is what I love doing. So that’s probably the best thing about the job for me.
Emma Knights
I would have to agree with that. It is not only obviously, ideally, you want to see everybody achieve those goals. But I’m not going to lie, sometimes people can’t achieve them, they have an unrealistic goal that they are trying to achieve. It is working with people to understand what is achievable. Or actually, if they do push the boundaries a little bit, what can they actually expect to achieve.
I think it’s just really nice to see someone else understand what it is that we can do. Actually, sometimes you explain something, and when it just finally clicks into place, and almost the penny drops of, ‘oh, I understand that’, and everything falls into place for them. That is actually a really uplifting thing to be able to do for somebody.
Lukas Spyrou
Yes, it’s giving people that knowledge, and that power to do things that they didn’t realise with a bit of simple planning or careful planning, something that they might have thought wasn’t previously achievable, is something that is within their grasp. Just because it could be a wall or law or some form of regulation, they just weren’t aware of, and it’s nice to help people to do that and achieve those things.
Emma Knights
Definitely. Well, hopefully everybody’s got to know a little bit about us and what we do today, I’m sure over the coming episodes, they will get a bit more of our personality, find out about just how many biscuits we eat, and different things along the way. It’s time to put the kettle on.
Emma Knights & Lukas Spyrou
If you’ve enjoyed listening today, why not head over and join our Facebook group The Money Compass. If you have any questions for myself, Lukas, or me, Emma, drop us a message in this group.