Conferences and in-person events have become more important in these post-pandemic times and this week’s CISI Annual Financial Planning Conference was no exception.

More than 300 people, including me, attended the event held in the picturesque Wotton House hotel and conference centre near Dorking in leafy Surrey.

Everyone seemed very busy and pleased to be there. I suspect many were pleased to get away from home working for a bit and connect to other human beings.

Certainly everyone seemed in good spirits and there was a good buzz about the conference which had sold out some eight weeks earlier.

Given the cost of attending was not insignificant, I would suggest that whatever the challenges currently faced by the UK economy, the Financial Planning profession, at least the section that attended the conference, showed nothing but confidence in the future.

I attended several sessions and while technology was a big focus, including areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), one ‘hidden’ theme that came through, was how much planners enjoyed working with clients and cited this as one of the main reasons for doing the job. I heard this view repeated many times.

One comment in particular I heard several times from speakers, in different forms, was ‘only work with clients you love.’

Financial Planners have, in most cases, the luxury of dealing with clients they really like and get on with. This crucial ‘chemistry’ is often forgotten when it comes to building a financial advice company or indeed any business. I wonder how many appointed reps are forced to deal with people they do not like, simply because they are seen as profitable clients. If the chemistry is wrong business can suffer.

Another planner said she loved being asked by clients at client meetings how she and her family were. Clients who ask their planners a bit about themselves and show interest in areas such as holidays and children are worth their weight in gold, several said. They are also most likely to provide the crucial referrals.

Much of this, of course, is just being polite but I wonder if this personal and friendly relationship which many planners enjoy with clients is perhaps the ‘secret sauce’ in Financial Planning. The hard-to-quantify ingredient that makes it all work.

In these days when we’ve lost much personal contact with the people and organisations who serve us in an often impersonal and distant way, Financial Planners are offering something clients really want and value: to be treated like a human being and not a number on a spreadsheet.

It was evident at the conference that many planners and Paraplanners really do love their job and cannot see themselves doing anything else. The conference was as much a celebration of this fact as it was a conference about the technical aspects of Financial Planning and Paraplanning.

People before money is not a bad mantra.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and mainstream news. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Follow @FPT_Kevin