Financial Coaching
A Financial Coach can provide guidance across all areas of your finances, helping you to improve your relationship with money and set goals, take action and overcome any obstacles in the way.
They can help you put a plan in place for your financial goals. Your plan will often tell you how much to spend, save, invest or set aside for the long term (pensions, life insurance…).
Once you have your plan, a coach can teach you everything you need to know to choose the right products, funds and policies - or point you to the right expert / source of advice.
Financial Coaches’ limitations
Financial Coaches cannot recommend specific regulated financial products. For example, they could recommend you invest £100/month in a “stocks and shares ISA”, but they could not recommend the “Vanguard Life Strategy Fund”. Instead they will teach you how to choose your own funds, and/or point you in the direction of useful information.
Financial Coaches usually can’t help people with complex situations, for example people:
Looking for specific investment product advice, or with larger/more complex investment needs
Deciding between retirement income options
Who are based internationally
Wishing to transfer pensions
Financial Coaches are trained to identify whether people need more advanced advice and refer them to an appropriate specialist.
Why VouchedFor lists Financial Coaches
The UK faces a large “advice gap”. There are not enough Financial Advisers to help everybody, and most people don’t need the level of advice (or fees) which a Financial Adviser has to charge to cover all their regulatory and qualification costs.
Financial Coaches usually charge a lot less than Financial Advisers, reflecting the lighter-touch service that they provide.
How VouchedFor vets and monitors Financial Coaches
From November 2020, VouchedFor will allow Financial Coaches to be listed on the website if they’ve been:
Trained by:
WiseMonkey
MoneyPanel
Quiver
Initiative for Financial Wellbeing
Or Accredited by:
Octopus MoneyCoach
Coaches will be asked to upload and display evidence of having completed one of the above.
On a financial coach profile, we will clearly display that they are a coach, alongside explanations of what this means:
“A Financial Coach can provide guidance across all areas of your finances, helping you to improve your relationship with money and set goals. [Coach Name] is not a Financial Adviser and cannot recommend specific regulated financial products.”
Alongside this, we will check whether a coach is routinely monitored and/or assessed by an FCA regulated firm or not, and we will clearly display this on their profile as well.
Coaches are able to add any one of the below relevant services:
1. Financial Planning
Get help with setting specific financial goals, seeing how close you are to achieving them and forming a plan to get on track; whether that is planning for an early retirement or planning to buy your first home.
2. Financial Mentoring
Financial Mentoring gives you practical tools to help you make decisions. For example, setting a budget, assessing how much investment risk you are willing to take, or using a mortgage calculator to arrive at the best mortgage approach for you.
3. Financial Coaching
Through the process of being asked insightful questions, financial coaching helps you develop a better relationship with money, feel calmer and more in control, and build habits that can help you achieve your financial goals.
More information
Financial coaches who meet the above criteria are welcome to apply for a VouchedFor profile on our sign up page.
If you are a Financial Coach and want to be listed on VouchedFor, but do not meet the criteria, you are welcome to reach out to us on customer_service@vouchedfor.co.uk. We will be constantly reviewing our policy on Financial Coaching as the industry and profession develops.