www.wealthandfinance-news.com 14 Wealth & Finance International - September 2017 Looking ahead, regarding her own career, Georgina mentions her goals for the future, detailing how she is going to achieve this mission. Looking to expand, Petrus Financial and Georgina will look to continue to deliver the highest possible standard of service to clients, which will ensure it is able to spread its presence, both domestically and worldwide. “Ultimately, my own personal goals for the future are to continue to build on the growth and success we have experienced so far at Petrus Financial and expand our capacity to enable us to support more advisers in delivering robust and effective financial planning services to clients.” Contact: Georgina Warwick Contact Email:
[email protected] Address: Gainsborough House, 59-60 Thames Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TX, UK Phone: 01753 752360 Website: www.petrusfinancial.co.uk Founded in 2005, Petrus Financial Services work with a variety of clients, offering objective and independent financial advice, all of which are personally suited to the client. Ensuring its clients get the best service from the firm, the company helps them to build their wealth, protect it, enabling them to pass it on to future generations. Georgina goes into detail about her role within the firm, as well as referencing some of her previous roles at the company. “My previous roles have included both paraplanning and advice with independent firms as well as administration and broker consultant roles with life companies. This experience has given me a greater understanding of each element required to deliver good financial planning outcomes to clients, which is vital when developing not only the proposition offered by the firm, but processes and workflows that enable it to be delivered efficiently.” Working as a woman in the finance industry, Georgina discusses what challenges she has encountered and how she has overcome them. However, she does acknowledge that sometimes the challenges, notably gender discrimination, have made her more determined as a person, leading to her success. “Within the industry, I have been extremely fortunate not to have experienced significant gender discrimination in my career so far. I am naturally a determined person and can be quite stubborn when challenged. Where I have faced assumptions outside of Petrus that I cannot achieve something or, on occasion, that I am there to fetch the refreshments or make up numbers, it has made me even more determined to deliver.” Providing us with an overview of the financial sector, Georgina comments on what other major challenges there are for women, including networking, before going on to explain how she believes this can change. “Networking can be a major challenge for women in financial services, although things have progressed a lot in recent years, there is still a bit of a boy’s club in some sectors of finance. Women only networking events seem to be helping widen circles and build confidence for women. Hopefully these will continue to evolve into open networking events to reduce the divide.” Regarding what advice she would give to other women looking to succeed in the finance space, Georgina believes that results are a key indicator of performance, and easier to highlight than in other industries. She then goes on to explain what attributes she believes are vital to reaching the top, and is keen to mention how important confidence is with regard to a person’s own performance. “Within the financial services sector, performance is more transparent than in many other professions and therefore easier to demonstrate through results. This, together with larger companies now taking the lead to try to even out the playing field and remove the gender bias means now can be a positive time for everyone in financial services. “Essentially, the attributes I would recommend are; self-confidence, determination, and a thick skin to just keep going in spite of pockets of resistance. Always take time to listen to other points of view and never stop learning. If you are knocked back from one route, dust yourself off and consider other paths to your goals.” Georgina Warwick is Operations Director at Petrus Financial Services. We spoke to Georgina as we discuss her role and find out about her success. Best Financial Advisory FirmDirector - UK WFB17008