Almost two years have passed since I joined Money Marketing (MM), but it feels as if my first day was just a couple of weeks ago.
Yet, at the time this Weekend Essay will be published, I will have left the publication after 95 weeks and four days. I joined MM at quite an odd time, as the reporting team was being completely restructured.
I still wonder why former editor Justin Cash and current editor Katey Pigden chose to hire me. I was just a recent graduate with no experience, based in a foreign country and with an approximative command of the English language (all this during lockdown).
Personally, I wouldn’t have hired myself. Why bother with the administrative and logistical burdens of hiring someone who won’t add any value in the immediate term?
There are plenty of talented journalism graduates in the UK and plenty of experienced journalists had been made redundant at that time.
Whatever the rationale behind their decision was, I am very grateful for the opportunity they gave me.
I had spent the previous months unemployed and stuck at home. I had more or less renounced a career in journalism and accepted I had wasted money and time on a journalism degree that would have led to nothing.
I was open to any job at that point, as long as it paid money.
That’s why, there was no hesitation when MM made me an offer. I had no idea what financial services were or what financial advisers did. The only thing I knew was that it was the opportunity I had waited for and I had to seize it. I would figure out the rest later.
I am not going to lie, ideally I would have wanted to find a job in my own country, but the French job market being what it is (with a 7.2% unemployment rate as at Q4 2022 vs 3.7% in the UK), I knew I should have my luggage ready.
If I were to describe my (almost) two years at MM, I would say it was a constant learning curve.
First of all, I have learned a lot from seasoned journalists and colleagues with distinctive approaches to their job.
I think I can indulge the presumptuousness to claim that I have improved as a writer thanks to them.
It is not an easy area to cover, with a lot of technical concepts to acquire when you’re completely new. So, I appreciate the patience the editors have had with me.
As importantly, those two years at MM enabled me to learn about the financial sector as a whole.
Prior to that, finance was completely abstract to me. I saw financial professionals as some kind of dubious wizards pulling off incomprehensible tricks with figures made out of thin air.
Even though MM focuses on the financial advice profession, I now have a clearer understanding of how finance works and what the different professions in this industry entail.
There were perks at a personal level as well. Reading insights from professionals and talking to financial advisers taught me a bunch about how to handle my own money.
It was in a sense a crash course on how to manage your finances in the UK and they certainly helped me to navigate the financial intricacies of this country.
In my previous host country (Austria), I didn’t have this chance and fell in all sorts of traps. Perhaps those unfortunate experiences led me to be more cautious in the UK.
As the word intermediary suggests, financial advisers act in a sense as a connector between retail clients and the different financial services.
Therefore, covering the financial advice profession also led me to explore other areas such as pensions, investment, protection, regulations, etc.
It rapidly became obvious to me which of those areas I liked the most: investment.
I wouldn’t say it has grown into a passion, that would be excessive, but I dedicate a significant amount of my free time to prepare for professional certifications in the investment management sector.
And when I am not doing that, I am reading books about investments or magazines for retail investors.
This is quite peculiar from someone who has never invested a single pound in his entire life, but I intend to put my money where my mouth is this year.
As time went by, it became clear that this is the topic I wanted to focus on and dedicate my working time on.
Yet, although MM does cover investment to a certain extent, it is not the primary purpose of the publication.
This is essentially what lead me to the conclusion that it was time for me to move on.
I would like to thank all the financial advisers who took the time to provide comments for my stories or to explain me what their job is about and what is their conception of it.
I am also grateful to the people on the providers side who often have been available to talk me through the technicalities of their sector (especially in the pension space).
Obviously, there are some ongoing topics I would have liked to keep covering. For instance, I am curious to see the outcome of the Consumer Duty once firms will have implemented it or how the quarrel between Chartered Insurance Institute and the Personal Finance Society will end.
I guess that’s something I will find out as a reader (of MM for example) rather than as a journalist.
I hope I wasn’t too irritating. I am fully aware that I have at times written technical inaccuracies, especially in some of my Weekend Essays and leaders. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t written those pieces or perhaps in a different way.
That being said, I have always done my best to report and write stories that would be of interest to financial advisers. I also tried as much as I could to reduce the knowledge gap between the pros and myself.
I wish you, your employees and your firm well.
So long.
As a bonus, five stories I particularly enjoyed writing:
1- The risks and rewards of advising sport professionals
2- Has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made defence stocks ESG friendly?
3- Cover story: Inside the CII-PFS civil war
4- MM Meets Mel Stride: Holding the FCA’s feet to the fire
5- First Person: From the green to the office – David James Wealth CEO
