Supporting client financial wellbeing

Two of our planners, Alice Sanders and Olivia Perry were recently interviewed by Citywire about their experiences of working with clients who were in or had been in relationships were coercive control included their access to our understanding of their finances.

This article was published by Citywire New Model Adviser on Friday 13th March.

Advisers see rise in financial abuse with clients

One financial adviser is writing a book based on her experience advising clients in financially and emotionally controlling relationships.

Advisers at NMA Top 100 firm Connor Broadley say they are supporting a growing number of people in financially abusive relationships since the pandemic.

Planner Alice Sanders said abuse, like coercive and financial control, can be subtle but it can be much more explicit too.

Sanders recalled cases where one partner was effectively giving a ‘wage’ to the other. She is usually ‘given a heads up’ about any abuse from the psychologists and family lawyers she works with but noted that she is increasingly spotting signs of abuse herself.

In Sanders’ personal experience, abuse often comes from a husband who is controlling of his wife’s finances after she has given up work to look after their children.

Sanders has supported wives who rely on their husband for a spending allowance because all their money and income is in the husband’s name, with the allowance being used to look after, feed and clothe their children.

Often, Sanders said, this leaves the wife without any money to spend on herself. On the more extreme end, Sanders has encountered clients whose partners limit their showering, or say the heating is ‘not allowed’ to go above a certain temperature in order to control how much money they spend.

‘Some clients’ cards have bounced at the grocery store, and they cannot give their children any pocket money, yet their husbands are sitting on millions of pounds,’ she said.

‘Trauma-informed approach’

Where she suspects that one party is ‘being silenced’, Sanders explained how she uses a ‘trauma-informed approach’, using tools like strategic pauses or separate consultations so clients are able to speak freely about their financial decisions.

Sanders has seen a rise in abusive relationships since the pandemic and is currently writing a book alongside a psychologist and family lawyer on supporting people facing financial abuse.

‘There are cases there where my client has told me that her ex-husband was manipulative, abusive, and narcissistic,’ Sanders told Citywire.

‘As someone who is not emotionally involved in that, I can just switch off from it,’ she said.

Sanders said some clients apologise when they feel they have treated an advice meeting ‘like a therapy session’ and encouraged other financial advisers to recognise ‘where our job stops’ and engage professionals in other fields to support clients where necessary.

Sanders said that ‘in a number of meetings’ she has had with divorcees she doesn’t discuss money at all, ‘we just have a chat,’ she explained.

Olivia Perry, another planner at Connor Broadley, said she follows a trauma-informed approach to financial advice that focuses on ‘financial wellbeing’ rather than ‘financial resilience’.

Resilience often focuses on the stability of an individual’s savings, while her wellbeing approach prioritises client’s internal sense of certainty, control and safety. To support this, some of the team has received specialist training from psychologists on navigating difficult conversations around money and mental health, especially those which risk unintentionally triggering past financial traumas.

This trauma is often shaped by early life experiences, Perry explained, like a parent’s financial struggles or the burden of having to manage a family member’s ‘messy estate’ after they have died.

Perry notes how many young people are also facing intense pressure from ‘finfluencers’ on social media, a pressure which is undermining their financial wellbeing as they fear ‘falling behind’.

Ultimately, the shift toward a trauma-informed approach at firms like Connor Broadley makes use of the people-centred approach that is now commonplace in financial planning. But by moving beyond the sterile ‘boardroom’ environment and acknowledging the deep-seated psychological scars left by coercive control and financial abuse, advisers like Sanders and Perry are further prioritising client safety and wellbeing through the services they provide.