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‘Deep in the trenches’ with clients: Adviser Rebecca Pritchard
It doesn’t take much effort for Rebecca Pritchard to put herself into the shoes of the clients sitting across from her in a consultation – she is often only about a decade ahead of them.
Pritchard, a senior financial planner at Rising Tide Financial Services in Melbourne, specialises in millennial clients, professional couples with young families, and recently separated women. In most of these areas, she relates very well.
“I saw firsthand the value of good financial advice when I was younger; I first got advice when I was 22, with my then-boyfriend, now husband. And I’m 35, with children aged three and four, so I’ve been in the trenches there for the last few years. I sometimes joke with my husband that a divorce is the next life event we need to go through together, to help me relate better to clients.”
Pritchard’s interest in financial advice was sparked during her commerce degree at Melbourne University in the late 2000s; in fact, even earlier. “I grew up in a household that was really disrupted by financial stress, and as a student, I was obsessed with money. Then I did a financial planning subject in my degree, and I loved it. Coming out of university, I got a job in corporate finance at KPMG, and it was during that time I met Keryn, and the rest is history.”
‘Keryn’ is Keryn Batsilas, who was then lead adviser at an advice practice called Wealth Enhancers. “I saw an advertisement for an after-work wine-and-cheese event called ‘Money Makeover,’ and it struck a chord. I was responsible for the financial decisions for my boyfriend, and I was anxious about making the wrong decision when trying to set us up for the future,” she says.
After the Money Makeover event, Pritchard started talking to Batsilas. “I loved the conversation, I really felt that Keryn ‘got’ me and where I was coming from. Not only that, from our conversation I realised that corporate finance wasn’t where I wanted to be professionally.”
Looking back, Pritchard recognises that the approach changed how she thought about and interacted with her finances. “Prior to getting advice, I was pretty simple,” she says. “I had a cash flow system, a property and a super account, but I thought I needed more than that. We told Keryn about our plans to have a family and build the life we wanted, and her advice built a framework that allowed us to grow so that as we moved through our careers, and our incomes increased, we had a place to direct our money that wasn’t consumption.”
“It was all about incorporating financial decisions into all aspects of your life, in a very holistic manner. It’s the antithesis of ‘let’s sit down once a year and have a conversation about your finances,’ and it’s a philosophy I’ve taken and built-on through my career.”
The conversation certainly had an impact: Pritchard retrained at night, quit her job and became a planner working at the same practice, Wealth Enhancers. “I joined their team in 2014 as a financial adviser and we had an incredible period embracing financial coaching and doubling down on the desire to only advise millennials,” she says.
After five years Pritchard sought other opportunities and eventually partnered with friend and mentor, Matt Hale from Rising Tide Financial Services. “That was about five years ago,” she says. “It gave me the opportunity to join a team that offered stability yet the enormous potential for growth.”
There, Pritchard focuses on her specific client groups, but also works with a collaborative advice team for all clients of the business. She is known as a passionate and forceful advocate for financial health and literacy, and filling the “gaps” in peoples’ lives.
“For instance, after a relationship breakdown a lot of women are not in great financial shape,” she says. “I work with many who actually wanted to get financial advice while in their relationship but had a reluctant partner and now, as they’re taking ownership of their situation, I help them find their feet, reset and relaunch for a new phase of life. It’s a massive need – research from The Demographics Group says the peak divorce age for women is 46, and those women have a long time to live.”
And while Pritchard hasn’t experienced everything her clients have, she relates well to a lot of what they are going through. “I’ve spent the last five years deep in the trenches, having two small children, returning to work, dealing with childcare expenses and the additional demands on our time and energy,” she says. “And I know about the financial considerations of pregnancy and the post-partum period, because it wasn’t long ago for me, and I found that the resources that existed then were pretty rubbish, to be honest.”
But above all, it is a “really enjoyable” career, she says.
“I think about what my husband and I have achieved in life, and we’re really proud of the goals that we’ve accomplished. That wouldn’t have happened without financial advice. I sat where my clients are sitting, I got the benefit of good advice that compounded, and it is an absolute privilege to do that for others.”
