At 7am the morning of our catch up, The Verve Group chief executive Cathi Harrison found herself unexpectedly in Sainsbury’s.
“My little boy was asking for pancakes but I didn’t have the stuff in, so I ended up doing the weekly food shop,” she says.
While most mums would turn to a bowl of Cheerios, it’s this get-up-and-go that has taken Harrison from self-employed paraplanner to support service powerhouse.
Last month, after a gruelling year and a half process, Harrison’s four companies – Para-Sols, Apricity, The Art of Finance and Verve – were consolidated into one: The Verve Group. With it came an almighty tech project, combining each business’ system into a single, brand-new solution, Dextera.
If I had to do just one thing, day in day out, my head would explode
“Anybody who has ever gone through a big tech change or restructure – or both – will say that, when you get to the end of it, you never realised how hard it was going to be. And if you did, you wouldn’t have done it,” says Harrison.
Luckily, pressure is something the chief executive thrives on.
“I’m not one for overly planning and organising. I’m very impulsive. It’s very much ‘here’s an idea’ and I run with it.
“It can drive people crazy but it’s the only way I can get stuff done because if I have to take time putting in extra unnecessary steps, I would never get anything done.
“With a little boy and four businesses, scattering myself across all of them sits comfortably with me. If I had to do just one thing, day in day out, my head would explode. My comfort zone is chaos.”
Growing pains
It’s an approach I struggle to relate to, living off lists and trying to be super organised, but, boy, is it working.
Harrison admits the business today is bigger than she ever imagined and, after setting July as a month for the consolidation changes to bed in, August looks set to be the start of even better things.
I had a passion for what I was doing and, in those later years, a frustration for what I was seeing and a desire to challenge that
“It’s like day one with a new company and growth from here is going to be phenomenal. We have a blank slate with some really solid foundations beneath it.”
The journey to this point has been extremely organic but the growing pains that have come with it is something Harrison is glad to see the back of.
She started out in the industry in 2005 as an administrator at an advice firm, before discovering a passion for paraplanning. In 2009, she went freelance and started her first business, Para-Sols.
“Those first few years self-employed, I never thought I’d have a big company or any employees. There was no grand vision. But what I did have was a passion for what I was doing and, in those later years, a frustration for what I was seeing and a desire to challenge that. So, it’s ended up evolving.”
The first frustration came when Harrison struggled to find the right paraplanners to work at a growing Para-Sols. Paraplanning was not a very well-known career and there were too few on the ground. So she launched recruitment programme The Grad Scheme to spread the word, train people up and bring them on board.
The next challenge came from an incompatibility with the company’s third-party compliance service.
By the end of 2021, I had accidentally ended up with four separate companies
“I was never really that passionate about compliance but the situation got me thinking. I realised it was another area that seemed broken and that hadn’t really evolved much. So when I came back from maternity leave, I decided to launch my second business, Apricity.”
By this point, plenty of firms were outsourcing admin, paraplanning and compliance to Para-Sols and Apricity, but some wanted these services in-house. The Art of Finance was born to train their staff up to Harrison’s well-respected standards and way of working.
Verve was launched in 2019 with the intention to pull all of that together, but it spiralled into yet another trading company providing extra support for advice firms.
“By the end of 2021, I had accidentally ended up with four separate companies, four brands, four sets of accounts and four teams. It was really complicated,” says Harrison.
Too many parts
Not only was it complicated for Harrison, it made it difficult for advice firms to engage with different parts. A client of Para-Sols needing help with compliance, for example, would have to speak to a different person at Apricity, sign a different contract and learn a different system, despite the two teams sitting metres apart in the same office.
Growth also slowed.
“If I had a new idea for a new service, or if advisers asked for something, I wouldn’t know where to build it. Everything just felt so clunky and I knew I had to make a change.”
So how have her clients responded?
“It’s been a mixed bag,” she says. “Once everyone got into the system, fine. But everyone’s so busy. We were worried we’d overcommunicated the strategy; we’ve been talking about it for months, pushing the narrative and the story.
It’s like day one with a new company and growth from here is going to be phenomenal
“But a lot hadn’t seen the strategy and we’ve had questions. ‘Why are you rebranding?’ ‘What was wrong with the tech?’ We’ve had to hammer it home a bit.”
With a 14-year history and one of the most recognised names in paraplanning, losing the Para-Sols brand, in particular, was a big risk. Another challenge came with having to make redundancies to align some of the roles in the business.
Speaking to an excited and enthusiastic Harrison just as the rebrand crossed the finish line, you imagine her taking it all in her stride. But she admits herself: “If you’d have spoken to me two weeks ago, I’d have been shouting, ‘nothings working!’ and my mum would be babysitting my son.”
The result of all the hard work is a completely unique offering in the world of support services – covering all bases in admin, paraplanning, compliance and training.
“There’s no direct comparison out there, no competitors. The likes of Simplybiz and Threesixty don’t do paraplanning – the firms using them will still ask us to do that.”
Finger on the pulse
Working with over 300 firms through Verve and being part of, and an unmistakable voice for, the wider advice community, Harrison has her finger on the pulse of what advisers dealing with.
The big three challenges at the moment centre on regulation, technology and consolidation, she says.
If everybody does their bit, I think we will make a change
“I always try to be pragmatic and positive from a compliance point of view, saying that the FCA isn’t trying to make our lives difficult, it has a responsibility to look after the end client. But I can completely see why advisers just think it’s too much now. There’s more and more stuff they need to do.”
On the advice gap, she says there’s only one way of knowing if enough is being done to close it – when companies are inundated with people who want a career in advice but no one is out there who needs it. So, nowhere near, then…
“People are trying to address the gap in a number of ways: growing a business, bringing more people in, technology. The answer is a mix of all of that. But we’re a long way from saying we’ve created too much supply and there’s not enough demand for advice.”
Ever the optimist, Harrison believes she has the solution.
“The way of fixing financial services is twofold. One is with what The Verve Group is trying to do, supporting more advice firms, making it easier for them to grow and making them more efficient so they can see more clients.
“The second part is with our grad scheme and Verve Foundation, which is about getting new people to come into advice as a career. We’re also about to launch some new initiatives in financial education.
I can completely see why advisers just think it’s too much now. There’s more and more stuff they need to do
“It’s not an overnight thing but people need to move from talking about the various challenges in finance to actually doing something about them. Sometimes it’s one big initiative, sometimes it’s lots of different things. But if everybody does their bit, I think we will make a change.”
The juggle
It is difficult to believe debates on the concept of women “having it all” are still being had in 2023. However, there is no denying the motherhood and career juggle can be an immense struggle. Some even say it just seems to be getting harder.
With a mass of successful businesses under her belt and such tenacity, I am keen to hear how Harrison does it.
“Motherhood takes multitasking to a whole new level because you’re always doing something or thinking about something,” she says.
“But it also helps me compartmentalise. I work really hard because I enjoy it and I’ve always wanted to, but I don’t want it to be at the expense of spending time with my son. I’m so fortunate because it’s my business, so I can do the school runs and work before he wakes up or after he’s gone to bed. It works for my character.
“No one is perfect – you will always feel guilt as a mum. But I think I can look back and feel I worked really hard and managed to grow a successful business without compromising the stuff I want to do with my son. And I hope he’ll see that too.”
Relationship industry
Thankfully, a career in advice is now an attractive and popular option for working mothers. Indeed, for women in finance more broadly, the sector has gone through a remarkable shift over the last decade.
A self-confessed wine lover, Harrison makes a fascinating observation about the parallels between the journey women in the wine industry and women in finance have been on.
I can look back and feel I worked really hard and managed to grow a successful business without compromising the stuff I want to do with my son
She points to a recent article, which starts: “Just a generation ago, women were regarded as something of a curiosity in the wine industry.” Today, there are women making decisions and driving change in all areas of wine. Is the conversation over?
“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Is the fact there are more women in wine changing the approach to wine making, in that nurturing attributes are leading to more natural practices again? Or is it the fact wine is more focused on nature now that is attracting more women?
“It’s the same with finance. Is it because we’ve moved away from products, sales and transactional advice that we are attracting more women; or is it that we have attracted more women into advice and that in itself has made it more of a relationship industry?” she says.
Whatever the answer, females embarking on a career in finance today are fortunate to have many successful women to look to as role models. Harrison is clearly one of those.
She Tweeted in January: “Ready to kick the backside out of 2023.” It’s another thing she can tick off the to do list.
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