What does it take to build a thriving financial planning business without spending a fortune on advertising? For Farida Rouane, Company Director of Upside Finance, the answer has always been straightforward: do a brilliant job, and let your clients do the talking.
Farida made the leap from employment to running her own independent financial planning practice three years ago and she hasn't looked back. Starting out as a mortgage broker, she went on to study her Diploma in Financial Advice (DipFA) with LIBF, which opened the door to offering a full wealth provision service. Today, her business runs almost entirely on referrals and glowing client reviews, with no paid leads in sight.
In this interview, Farida shares her practical, no-nonsense approach to earning positive client feedback, building a personal brand that attracts the right people, and staying grounded when you're the only person in the business.
Can you tell us about your current role?
I work for my own company, Upside Finance, set up three years ago. Prior to that I used to be employed and I made the leap to self-employment and it's been really good. I started off as a mortgage broker, and then from going self-employed, that opened up more opportunities, which caused me to study for my DipFA. So now alongside mortgages and protection, I now offer a wealth provision.
What does a typical day look like as an independent financial planner?
So it's really different to when I was employed. Manage my diary myself. I don't have any administrators or anyone else. It's just me. So day-to-day looks a lot like admin in the morning. We have a 7-year-old daughter, so she'll go to breakfast club in the morning and then my day will start around 8:00 AM. I have my diary very much organised so that I've got any task that I need to do, and I'll complete those. I'll go through my emails, get everyone replied to, and then it's a matter of, appointments, it might be, prepping cases, it might be agreement principles. It's a whole host of things.
It's really varied because obviously it's not just mortgage or insurance anymore, I might be doing research for a pension, I might be looking into some ISAs. Ultimately, it's a really varied day, but it's super flexible because it's just me.
What is your approach to excellent client service?
You're not doing a great job unless you are getting positive feedback. So for me, it's all about making sure I do the very best for my clients and the outcomes as they should be. I've got a really personal approach to my clients so I'll make sure that I'm contactable and reachable in all kinds of formats, whether they want to WhatsApp me, text me, drop me an email, give me a call, and then throughout the process I'll ensure that I'm available.
What I want to do is make sure that they know I'm their first port of contact, and I also want to ensure that they feel safe and that they can trust me with any queries and if I don't have the answer, I'll help them find the answer. And ultimately that all stems down to the end result, which is that they're happy. That normally derives from, feedback. I always ask for feedback if it's possible, whether it's a Google review or a VouchedFor review. I find it's really important to understand how I helped them. If I didn't do something so great, what did I do? What didn't I do and how can I fix that? Fortunately for me it's been very positive feedback, so I've not had any kind of negatives, but it just goes to show that by ensuring that you're giving the very best service and following, a positive journey with your clients, they then feedback and experience that as well.
Does Farida's story inspire you to study with LIBF?
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CeMAP is the first step to becoming a qualified mortgage adviser
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Why is positive feedback so important in building a financial planning business?
I believe positive feedback is super, super important in building a financial planning business. I think the key reason is obviously it's just a reflection on you. If people are looking at your profile, they're checking your Google, VouchedFor it gives them an indication of who you are and how you work. There's personal comments, what you did, how you approached it. I think they make people relate to you and go: 'oh, she sounds like someone I could work with', 'she sounds approachable', 'she doesn't just deal with high net-worth clients'- those kind of things. I think it's really important.
I also think that it's super important not just for the clients that are seeing it or potential clients seeing it, but it's really also important for me because it makes me ensure that I'm doing the best job. It makes me review process and practice if, potentially I did get some constructive feedback, which meant that I needed to change something or maybe that didn't go to plan. I do think it's super, super important. I think for me, especially, I went from employed, which has been for a significant amount of time to self-employed for a few years, and setting up Google reviews it's enabled my old clients to find me and get in contact with me. I get messages like, 'I've hunted you down', 'I've been looking for you', which is amazing.
I don't advertise, ultimately my reviews are probably the biggest thing and they speak volumes for me and because of those, my clients have referred pensions to me and investments and obviously protection as well because protection is obviously a bigger world when you step into the wealth forum.
How do you go about actively encouraging clients to share their experiences with you?
I think it's really important to have reviews and one of the ways that I tend to ask for reviews, because I feel you have to ask, if you don't ask, you're not going to get. With every single transaction that completes, I would always send my client an email just to say thank you for trusting me, provide a summary of what we've done, just as a recap. It's really easy to misplace documents and emails, we liaise a lot, so it's that final email, that final summary just to confirm everything and then I'll finish it off with: 'I hope that you've appreciated my service. If you have, I'd be super grateful if you can leave me some reviews. They really help support my business'. And then I'll put some links to Google and VouchedFor, and then I'll always say as well: 'if you think of anybody that you think I could help feel free to share my contact details.'
Does feedback keep you accountable and motivated?
Feedback for me is just a constant reminder of why I'm doing what I'm doing, and it's a reminder to maintain my service levels and my standards. It provides accountability. It's really easy to become complacent when you get busier. I think if you can be consistent and you don't take on too much work and you make sure you service the people that are a priority to you, then it keeps you grounded, focused and just ensures that you keep doing the best job. I would hate to have one of my, and it will go the same for a new client as well, but if I had a client that I've been seeing, say, three or four times over the last 10 years and that client contacts me like 'I really need to sort a remortgage out, I know I've left it really late, but can you help me?' and I'm too busy, I'd be gutted because part of my business and the reason I'm successful is because of all of these historic customers that come back to me and reach out to me and ensure that, I still am there at the centre of their financial planning needs.
Is an online presence important for financial planners?
I think you should most definitely have an online presence if you're a financial planner.
I do have social media for my business. I have an Instagram account. I use Facebook, I have a TikTok. I have a website. I have a Google Reviews page, business page on Google, I have a VouchedFor and I have LinkedIn, which I suppose is pretty much social media now as well. So I have all these things and if someone searches for me, they can find me. If they add me, I know they're probably a potential client. I do think it's so important to have a presence.
Are you ready to develop solid financial planning skills?
The learning experience with LIBF was very supportive, with clear goals and markers to be achieved throughout the programme. This really helped me stay on track with my studying."
Julie Soar
Mortgage and Protection Adviser
When I studied CeMAP, it gave me a really good foundation to start speaking to clients. It really did explain all the things that I knew but didn't understand or even just know how to put them into real life scenarios.
What advice would you give other financial planners about developing a personal brand?
So I think in order to build a good professional brand, it starts with what are you trying to represent or what message are you trying to send out? I had to come up with a business name, I didn't want something too weird. It needed to say 'finance' in the title. I thought that was really important. I made sure that my business name reflected me and it had a positive stance. So my business is called Upside Finance, it's about looking at the positives in finance. That's how I represent myself. I'm independent, it is just me, I'm a female, and I think it's really important to give out the right message with your logo, with your branding, with your web presence, social media, et cetera. You need to make sure you're approachable. I didn't want to be a firm that was so heavy on business. 'We do this, we only take clients that have £500,000...' I wasn't about that. It was like, 'this is what I can do for you and this is why I want to do it for you.' I feel that's so important. I feel it's really important that you get your branding, your image, everything right, and you make sure that's clear and that message is sent out to people.
And by doing that, you then attract the right people. I know that the people that I deal with, I'd say probably 99% of the time, are the people I want to deal with. They appreciate my help. They understand what I'm trying to do for them. And I feel that's all driven by the message I send out through branding, marketing, social media. It is really important and it definitely plays a huge role in business, but I think you have to get it right before you do it, so that you are not trying to give out the wrong impression.
How do you encourage client referrals?
One of the biggest questions I always get asked is, 'how do you get so many referrals?' And the answer is, I just do a good job, and I genuinely believe that. I don't advertise, I don't pay for leads. Don't do any of that. What I do is make sure that I do the absolute best job for my clients, because genuinely, that's the thing that makes me feel good at the end of the transaction. I feel like I've done the right thing for my client and they go away feeling happy. That will reflect in their feedback that they feel that they've had a good experience enough to tell someone else 'Oh, you should call Farida. I'll give you her number.' And then an email or a text has landed in my inbox and then I've reached out and I'll always make sure I reach out really quickly as well, I don't sit on these things, I always will get back to you, at least within an hour or so and that's how I'm getting referrals.
How have your LIBF qualifications helped you provide excellent service?
When I studied CeMAP, it gave me a really good foundation to start speaking to clients. It really did explain all the things that I knew but didn't understand or even just know how to put them into real life scenarios.
It definitely helped with my career and the way that I worked with my clients because I just felt I had so much more understanding and I felt like I could answer more complex questions. And then when taking DipFA, that really transformed how I worked and how I dealt with my clients because what that ultimately did is it opened up everything that I think my clients probably wanted as the next stepping stone that I couldn't give them, especially while I was employed and even when I first went self-employed, because I could only offer mortgages and protection. So by taking the DipFA, it enabled me to really understand that world. I feel like the course manuals are really detailed. You get practice exams, there's lots of examples of case studies, which will really help. When I passed those exams, I was completely elated. I was so happy, I can now do what I wanted to do. I can now reply to those customers that say: 'can you help? I've got loads of savings', 'I haven't got a pension, I'm self-employed...' And I was like: 'absolutely, I can do those things for you'.
It opened up a better way of working with my clients because, I wanted to offer such a rounded service. I think being able to do everything for your client at the right times when they need it is so important. So taking those exams has not just helped me do that, but it's also helped me build such a good understanding to be able to do that properly.
Would you recommend LIBF to others?
I would recommend LIBF to other people. My experiences with CeMAP were great. It worked for me, especially as someone that doesn't like taking exams. It was just a very approachable way to learn, test your knowledge, but it didn't feel overwhelming or daunting. I loved the structure of DipFA. I really liked the structure, I liked the approach. I also liked their online portal. I think they're quite modern. I liked the training material. I like that they're really approachable, you can give 'em a call.
So a hundred percent. I think it's good. I like it. It's modern, it's easily accessible. I find it approachable. I like the fact that there's other qualifications that I'll probably look to take in the future that all link into what I'm already doing.
The key to Farida's success
Farida's success boils down to something refreshingly essential: show up for your clients, communicate clearly, and keep doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. The reviews, the referrals, and the growing reputation follow naturally from that.
Her journey also shows just how much of a difference the right qualifications can make. LIBF offers two courses that proved pivotal for Farida: CeMAP for those looking to build a career in mortgage advice, and the Diploma in Financial Advice (DipFA) for advisers ready to extend their offering into wealth management, pensions, and investments. Both are designed with real flexibility in mind and ideal for professionals who, like Farida, are building something of their own while still making time for life outside of work.
Try our online programmes that fit around your commitments
That’s the best thing about LIBF – managing studying alongside work. It was structured in a flexible way that I meant if I wanted to get ahead, I could. If I fell behind, I could catch up."
Sonny Kurmi
Financial Adviser
Photos of Farida by Cherry Beasley - Simply C Photography