I have been fortunate enough to recently join WKM Wealth Ltd, as their Operations Manager. Now in my second month with the business I take time to reflect upon how accurate my perceptions of this new world I entered were.

For the past 18 years I have been in sales roles, starting off as a rep and working my way up to National Account Management across a number of different products and sectors. The world of Financial Services has been far from mine. In fact, I knew I had pensions but understanding them and what I could do with them was not something I gave any thought to!

My perception of the Financial Services Sector was probably best aligned to either what I’d seen watching The Wolf of Wall Street; that dog eat dog world, or my own ideas of people sat behind a computer screen, number crunching and baffling their clients about what they should do with their money to get the best returns.

Some of my perceptions were very wrong, and some weren’t far off; at Wattam Kirby Mee, the team do crunch the numbers to get the best return for their clients but the approach they take to reach this point is far from my previous ignorant opinion. The insight and knowledge that the team has at WKM is mind blowing, not only discussed monthly at our Investment Committee meetings, where insight and data is shared by our Investment Director, Ben Wattam, but also around the office when a new piece of information becomes available.

The care and attention taken to then use this insight to best shape our clients’ portfolios, and partnering with businesses that we believe will help us provide the best service to our clients, is where my perception Vs reality was not aligned – there are no quick deals or bullish ways to operate within WKM, every client is considered individually to ensure their bespoke needs are being met.

I have been fortunate enough to have met (virtually) several of our clients now and to see the time taken to understand them and their needs, and then to compose and relay the relevant information on each individual basis. The WKM team really take time to break the information down to ensure we don’t baffle our clients and that they are fully aware of what’s happening with their investments.

In short, perception is reality but I can say that my reality has massively changed. There’s a long way to go for me to fully embed myself within this complex world but so far my new reality is an exciting one!

Thanks for reading.