BT’s annual study tour this year took advisers to the United Kingdom.
The five-day trip included meetings with advisers, investors and industry bodies. This short article is part of a series of key lessons learnt from the trip.
Core values are critical to any financial advice firm. They underpin how a company views its strategy – whether that be based on values around people, the environment, the business community or a myriad of other things.
Some of the most successful business models on display in the BT UK Study Tour are those that are very clear in their value proposition and display it publicly.
Firms that show their values, communicate regularly to clients and measure their success continuously are among the most impressive, according to participants of the BT UK Study Tour.
How values work
One example on the BT UK Study Tour is Carbon Financial. They believe in the need to build, and reinforce, its reputation, based on values, awards, supporting and developing the team, through clients and via charitable work in the community. It’s tag line, Partner for Life, is what it tries to achieve with clients.
Its key values are:
- do the right thing;
- free to be different; and
- be the best we can.
Achieving these values builds Carbon’s reputation externally, but also helps support and develop the team internally. Carbon supports the need to do charitable work in the community.
First Wealth’s vision is both simple and ambitious: to change the perception of financial services in the UK forever.
The firm works hard to position itself for future clients, as well as current clients. First Wealth continually asks clients, referrers and staff about their perceptions of the firm. It believes that if First Wealth can integrate financial wellbeing to its core, then it can differentiate its offering and command a premium fee.
Developing and understanding core values makes business sense and is good for clients.
