The past three days I had the privilege of a work experience placement at Informed Choice.
As an A-Level student, I had little knowledge of the world of financial planning and was eager to find out more. The main aim of this placement was to explore this sector of finance in more detail as I consider my future career options.
What initially surprised me was the amount of depth that the financial planning process went into. I was also not aware of the varied types of investments available to clients, and had not heard of many of them before.
It was interesting to see the different investment portfolios available to clients depending on their risk profile, personal preferences and ethical choices.
I spent some time with the Informed Choice Paraplanning team, learning about how financial plans are developed, and some of the complex calculations that take place within them.
They showed me how a variety of different graphs are created and how they can forecast things such as cash flow in the future.
The team also showed me how they create their monthly investment updates, looking at both the domestic and global economic situation.
I also worked with the administration team, watching them sorting out client requests, ensuring that financial plans were being implemented correctly and that any changes made to plans were carried out.
I then visited the marketing team at Bamford Media and listened as a podcast interview for Informed Choice Radio was recorded.
This podcast was about how blockchain technology can be used in small countries as a basis for currency as many are currently tied to the USD. This is an exciting new opportunity that could give a much higher level of financial independence to these countries.
An afternoon was spent shadowing one of the financial planners and we went over a previous client meeting that had taken place.
We discussed how to analyse the profitability of the business and the different factors that play into this. This then brought up the discussion as to how to quantify subjective factors and then used this to create formula for calculating profitability.
My short time at Informed Choice was a great help to me as I continue to explore the world of finance and the careers that it can offer. It was also interesting to see what it was like to work in a smaller business, something that I had never done before.
Thank you very much to all the Informed Choice team for allowing me to do work experience here and for arranging this placement!
