Financial planning is rarely eternally rosy, something Fiona Sharp, a CFP and Resolution Accredited Divorce Specialist knows very well. A former Royal Air Force traffic controller, Sharp made the journey to financial services in 1995, where she started as a tied agent with Clerical Medical. Although the job revolved around selling products, Sharp contends she received excellent training.
After Clerical Medical was sold, she went to work with National Farmers Union Mutual, where she started to focus on financial planning for women by running seminars on pensions and savings for farmers' wives and staff. This further lead her to an all-female team at Fiona Price & Partners in London, Finance4Women in Cambridge, Almary Green in Norwich and finally at Verve Financial, which she co-founded.
At Verve Financial, she specializes exclusively in financial planning during a special circumstance: divorce.
While divorce isn't the most uplifting topic, it's a common one, so much so that Sharp doesn't take on general financial planning clients unless she’s doing someone a favor. So, what's Sharp's process like, and how is it different than what a mainstream financial planner does?
"Every client is different," Sharp explains. "They all come to you at different stages in the divorce timeline. Some may be more geared up to the changes in their lives because they've been going through the process for some time. If you catch people right at the very beginning, then there's a lot of support and help you can give them."
And support doesn't just mean financial support, Sharp is speaking about support, "…both practically and emotionally from an empathy and reassurance perspective." Indeed, when it comes to divorce, handling the non-tangibles is of utmost importance to a financial planner.
Another key point when it comes to divorce is that what you don't say might be just as important as what you do.
"I listen. A lot. I don't say very much at the first meeting. I'm very non-judgmental. I think you have to be because people are opening up and telling you all sorts of things that they may not have told anyone else - their lawyer, their friends. You're an unconnected third party that it's okay to open up to."
In fact, if there's one thing that's applicable from divorce-specialized financial planning to generalized financial planning, it's listening:
"Speak less than more. Over the years we acquire a lot of knowledge, a lot of information, and it's natural for us to want to show the clients that we can explain all of this. We know everything that there is to know about pensions or ISAs or inheritance tax."
But, as Sharp says, "…if we don't listen to what the client is telling us, if we don't take notes of their objectives, fears, and goals," then the true meaning of planning can fall by the wayside.
Considering the emotional weight of what her clients are discussing with her, being that ear can be draining. Sharp keeps a tight professional circle of people who are "absolutely crucial so I can go and talk to them myself or refer my clients out. I don't mean therapy, I mean how do I deal with this? This has cropped up when I'm not sure what to say."
Sometimes, Sharp will walk away from a client when she realizes they're more interested in the presentation of a formal adviser than they are her holistic process:
"I've been doing this long enough to know whether I am the right person for the job. If they want someone who's sitting in a nice office with a posh coffee machine, that's not me. If they want buckets of reassurance, common sense and empathy to get them from a to b, I am that person. But not everyone wants that."
The patience and understanding that Sharp uses is absolutely necessary - particularly when she works with both divorce parties simultaneously. Sometimes people will know exactly what they want and the tasks ahead will be simple, other times…
"I've had a few situations where people have really argued in front of me about the smallest of things and fought blazing. I've had to say, let's just take a break. You go have a cup of tea in the lounge, you stay here and then we'll reconvene. The great English cup of tea is the answer to everything."
Not panicking and reminding everyone to stay calm keeps the financial process of divorce moving smoothly. After all, "People don't want to argue in front of you. They want you to be able to help them, even if they're feeling a bit prickly. They'll want to listen."
Using visual models can often contribute to this sense of calm. "Something like Voyant, that's visual, says a lot. It's true on lots of different levels, if you show someone a cash flow that shows they genuinely won't run out of money, it can help take the fear away. Once the fear is gone, it leads them to listening to the advice."
In the recent past, Sharp has run seminars for family lawyers (she gets the majority of her referrals from family lawyers) about the importance of cashflow and how it can help "reality test" financial settlements. Sometimes, simply showing the parties they'll be okay, the tension is quelled.
Lastly, Sharp keeps things clear and simple: "I try and write my suitability reports as though I'm talking to people. I try and take out all the jargon. It's really important to be patient and to be kind, because you never really know what people are going through."
