'We're dealing with people whose attention spans are shorter'

Hussain, who runs Harmony Financial Services, based in Nottingham, says the way advisers are trained is outdated, making them ill-equipped to deal with a new demographic of clients.

This is why he has adapted his practice, in particular cutting down the "boring" bits and offering clients a variety of ways to engage with him.

"I find whenever people are trained in our industry, they're usually trained by people who aren't really in touch with the demographics of today," he says.

"Generally people in the mid-60s, late-50s, who just think, effectively, people's buying habits are still the same as they were in the 80s.

"We're dealing with people whose attention spans are shorter. So I tend to break up the advice process now into mortgages and protection and not overload the client initially."

Harmony also uses technology to his advantage, for instance in the onboarding process, to avoid "boring" the client with gathering basic facts.

"So anything that's important to us as an adviser is done in less than 15 minutes," says Hussain. "And that way we're adding value to the client. Every other conversation we have now is all about you and questions you've got about your house purchase."

He explains: "That was a massive annoyance to me when I'd sit there with a client at my former employer for an hour and a half asking them basic information. [Also] picking up soft facts, but the soft facts are more picked up through conversations with the client, not by asking them their name and date of birth."

He says the purpose of his firm is to be a small boutique and to be approachable. Clients can contact him via multiple channels, from email to voice messages over Whatsapp, at all hours. He says this works well with the under-45s in particular.

A local business

Harmony Financial Services was set up in Nottingham in 2017 and consists of Hussain, along with a videographer for social media and a marketing person.

Hussain, a commercial media graduate, started recording his own videos during lockdown but found "they didn't look that great in regards to quality", so now he has a university graduate who helps out on an ad hoc basis, shooting content such as short videos in which Hussain answers mortgage and protection-related questions posed by people on social media.

He tries to upload a few videos per quarter, "just to keep us active and keep me comfortable in front of a camera". Although he adds: "Social media is great, but what we've always found is personal relationships are what drive our business more than anything."

The business has clients from around the country, something Hussain says is "bizarre" given that he no longer advertises.