In Focus: Modern financial planner  

'I haven't had to look far to see how I add value'

The first tier, Enable, is a free six-month guidance service, offering online information and events. Empower is a two-year commitment for £65 per month, aimed at those earning above £45,000 who have some financial planning needs, and Enhance is for those with more complex needs, charged at £125 per month.

The firm's mission is to be its client's "best financial friend", says Ngoma. The firm targets female clients, but would not exclude others.

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"It's just that the specialisms are in the way that women work," she explains, "so women like to collaborate, they don't want to be talked at, they'd rather be talked to, there's a certain language... their dependents can be very different from men, how they want to work, they're working from home, flexibility, part time, all those kind of aspects, which isn't any exclusion to anyone else but it's just a specialism that Women's Wealth have."

Finding a niche

After she is fully qualified Ngoma's aim is to"hopefully help a lot of people that are like myself, who are in the accumulation phase".

She says she doesn't want to fall into the trap of needing people to be wealthy to have her help. "I want to be able to help people that are at my stage of life," she says.

Her niche is 'marriage or mortgage' because she knows many people, like her, "generally can't do both" and she sees this as a "messy" life stage.

Mental health and finance 'go hand in hand', says Ngoma (Carmen Reichman)

"As a side note... I do also want to open myself up to women who are child-free by choice," she adds. "I have a lot of family traditions, like you should have a mortgage by a certain age, you should be married by this age, you should have kids by this age, I want to help people step away from that if that's not what they want."

This involves a lot of coaching and asking people to be honest and diving deep into goals that sometimes people tend to hold on to, she says.

"Mental health and finance go hand in hand. If you are worrying about your money your mental health will suffer and vice versa... And on the flip side, if you are doing well with your money your mental health is going to improve."

However, when she's fully qualified she wants to "niche myself even more", most likely by targeting certain age groups or locations, or those who are "most like myself" in order to add the most value, she says.

Ngoma says her customer service and management background has allowed her to pick up a range of soft skills that are useful for financial planning.

"Luckily I've come from a background where... you basically sit and wait for someone to come up to you and then in whatever short amount of time that they are speaking to you you gauge what they need and you suggest what you think might be suitable for them," she says laughingly.