Why one adviser left her job to set up an investment app for mums
Being a family wealth manager helped Sophia Jarvis to spot a gap in the market with a lack of investment apps aimed at parents, in particular women.
Speaking to FT Adviser, Jarvis discussed her decision to leave the wealth management industry and set up her own investment app ‘Mia Wealth’ -which is the first app in the space designed with women in mind.
She explained: “We have an issue in this country whereby only 16 per cent of advisers are women. And as a result of that, I was really proud that actually the majority of my clients were women and a lot of them had children in their life.
“Through the conversations I was having with them, I was helping them with their own wealth management strategy, but they were also asking me to help them with children and making sure they could invest for their children.
“So I was setting up junior stocks and shares Isas and child pensions through my role as an adviser, but I was getting frustrated with the processes. Often it took weeks to set up. It was a lot of paper applications but also it was costly, because if you go through an adviser, you often have to pay an advice fee in order to be able to set up these accounts.
“While we can justify an advice fee for adult accounts, for children, I just didn’t feel like sometimes there was value in doing so. So I ended up waiving my advice fee when I was setting up children accounts, because I didn’t want there to be a barrier to entry.”
Jarvis ended up setting up a lot of children accounts for free and from a commercial perspective this was not viable and not sustainable for her.
This prompted her to look outside of the wealth management industry to see what was available in the form of investment apps.
I thought, I’m going to have to do this myself, because I couldn’t find the right solution out there to help, particularly women.
“I just couldn’t find the right solution. So I started talking to my clients about some of the big providers out there, and some of the investment apps that we all know.
“The feedback I was getting from a lot of them was they were overwhelmed with the choice, because there were too many funds to choose from. They didn’t really understand the language being used or even the colour schemes used and they felt like a lot of them had been built with men in mind.
“So for women in particular, using these platforms, they were finding it not a simple solution and quite overwhelming. So then I thought, ‘I’m going to have to do this myself’,” she added.
Before Jarvis took the plunge she surveyed 500 women across the UK from various backgrounds to find out whether they were concerned about their child’s financial future.
The survey revealed 93 per cent of respondents were concerned and 88 per cent said they would be interested in using a platform to help improve their children’s financial future, which highlighted to Jarvis there was a demand.
App for ‘modern families’
Mia Wealth is designed on the notion that investing for your children shouldn’t be complicated, according to Jarvis.
She wanted to highlight that although the app was created as a solution aimed at women, it was inclusive to everyone and is the app for “modern families”.
It works by people signing up and inputting the financial goals they want to achieve for their children.
“We will then create a solution for you through those goals, through visual projections and a compound interest calculator, to determine how much that person needs to start contributing in Isas from now until when the child turns 18 or until, let’s say 60 for the child pension, which is also something we are offering.
“It’s about focusing on the end solution as to why they’re wanting to put that money away for their child, as opposed to the actual products themselves.
“In terms of affordability, this is something that’s really important to me, I want to make this affordable to as many people as possible.
“It’s something that we asked in the survey as well as, what would you pay for an app like this, and also what your minimum contribution would be? So we’re still in the stage of finalising what that looks like, but we do want to make sure that it’s affordable for more people,” Jarvis explained.
Financial education
Jarvis highlighted her passion for financial education and wanted to create a community through her app for people to access expert guidance.
Social media was also tool Jarvis used to build this community and to give people access to financial information.
She said: “We’re not going to be product pushing on social media. It’s very much about building a community where if people want to learn about this topic, they can come to our social media pages, on Instagram and TikTok to educate themselves.
“I’m so passionate about financial education and empowering people to make informed decisions, not just for themselves, but in this scenario, for their children. And I did a webinar recently where I spoke about the five steps to give your child a financial head start.
“Those are the themes that we’re going to be talking about on social media. And then if people do feel inspired and feel confident to do this for themselves and do this for the children in their life, then they can sign up to our waitlist ahead of launch through our social media pages.”
Jarvis also discussed how we were experiencing a very “exciting time” in society currently because of the transfer of wealth that was occurring between generations and genders.
“The reason that I’m so passionate about launching Mia is not only to help improve the lives of millions of children across the UK, help solve the UK housing and retirement crisis, but also to capture this shift in society and provide a solution for the intergenerational wealth transfer that we’re having, but also the transfer over to women,” she said.
alina.khan@ft.com
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