Q & A with Alice
How did you get into financial services?
I worked in customer services at Aviva after university. Sometimes Financial Advisers would come through to us in error and I thought it seemed like a really interesting job if you could do it well, but unfortunately many that I spoke to didn’t seem to! I originally did an art degree, and subsequently went into mortgage advice, before qualifying as a financial adviser. I joined Insight in September 2021.
What are your areas of expertise?
I love getting involved with Inheritance tax planning or making sense of trusts that may have been inherited and not fully understood.
What advice have you given that helped a client and made you proud?
I love using cashflow analysis to plot out the next few decades for people. It can be really tough otherwise to figure out if you’re close to a comfortable retirement, but these tools can take the guesswork out of it, and it’s always lovely to be able to tell someone they can take that step whenever they feel ready.
That you can often speak to a financial adviser with no cost or commitment to begin with, and that often the coaching and tax differences we can make are as significant as investment returns.
Alice always finds solutions.
We felt at sea working out what to do with pension savings and inheritance after retirement. Finding Alice Ward-Smith at Insight gave us all the answers we needed. She has been invaluable in supporting us with our ongoing questions. Alice’s knowledge and ability to simplify complex financial issues has been fantastic.
More about Alice
What advice have you given that helped a client and made you proud?
I love using cashflow analysis to plot out the next few decades for people. It can be really tough otherwise to figure out if you’re close to a comfortable retirement, but these tools can take the guesswork out of it, and it’s always lovely to be able to tell someone they can take that step whenever they feel ready.
Tell us about something you’ve done to help your community or raise money for charity?
I particularly love helping out where I can with our charity partners, including some volunteering days at the Clare school. It’s always a really fantastic day for everyone involved, and we’re often blown away to hear that the activities or trips to the park simply couldn’t happen without volunteers because of the student/adult ratios needed.
What’s your personal financial freedom dream?
To be able to buy a house in France that’s in really bad nick and do it up. They can be shockingly cheap, and I was close to this in 2023, but then found out I was going to be a mum and had to spend my savings on a 6 year old family car instead!
What’s the one luxury you could never give up?
Eating out, my husband and I have been doing “date nights” where we have dinner together once a fortnight since 2009. It’s important to take some time to focus entirely on each other and not have any distractions.
To take more risks, I was very scared of paying for qualifications myself, if I didn’t know they’d lead anywhere, or of being out of work for even very brief periods, back when I had far fewer responsibilities than I do now. Overall, this likely contributed to it taking longer for me to get where I am, but then I do think the experience I’ve gained along the way has had its own huge benefits.