“I have seen quite a few firms in the industry which are very old fashioned”, Aegis Financial Planning chartered financial planner, Samantha Kmieciak, has said.
Kmieciak, who has been a financial adviser for 14 years and is a mum of two, argued some companies within the industry, while not deliberately, demonstrate some bias towards women when it comes to working from home.
When discussing her work/life balance, Kmieciak recounted that, before becoming self-employed, it could be difficult to work and provide adequate care for her children.
“When I was employed I had to do a set amount of hours at my work, come back home and carry on working until about six o'clock, and balance that with having to take my children to various activities,” she explained.
This is something that has improved since becoming self-employed as she added that it has become “slightly easier”, allowing them to work around her children a lot more effectively.
However, before making this transition when she was looking for work at firms, Kmieciak recounted seeing some firms that seemed “very old fashioned”.
She stated that some firms demonstrated inadvertent bias towards women as “the average adviser is a man in his 50s and they don’t have the same work/life balance that a woman with children has to have when it comes to things like school”.
“A lot of companies are in the mindset that you have to be in the office from nine to five and that’s it which can be very difficult to do when you’ve got two children,” she additionally stated.
As an example of this, she recounted that, before she was self-employed and was looking for work, she encountered a few firms who said “because you've got kids and you need to do the school run, that's not going to work”.
While acknowledging that this has improved in recent years, especially following the working from home rush that occurred following the Covid-19 pandemic, Kmieciak suggested that this trend may be starting to regress.
“Now I think a lot of other companies would say you can work from home one or two days a week but that you still need to be in the office for the majority of the time,” she said.
“I haven't found an employee role where they really take into account my situation, but I don't know how many women financial advisors there are with young kids,” she added.
Industry issues
Additionally, speaking on the current issues in the financial services industry, Kmieciak identified one in particular as the most significant.
“More regulation, more regulation, and yet more regulation,” she said.
She explained that, as a result of these kinds of constant changes, it's “very difficult” to keep on top of them, especially within the context of the ongoing elections that are “going to be an issue obviously”.
Career journey
Recounting her career journey, Kmieciak said that, before joining the financial services industry, she had served in the Navy for four years.
