Diversity and Inclusion Statement

First Wealth are a supportive and inclusive business, who actively seek to consistently attract great talent into the team. We believe it is important to reflect the society that we live in. Our goal is to create an inclusive culture spanning diversity of gender identity, age, ethnicity, religion, nationality, colour, sexual orientation, educational background, and socioeconomic status, and thought. As a company, we strive to be the change we want to see in our profession.

We are committed to being an inclusive environment – a place where we are polite and respectful, and celebrate the work of others. We endeavour to understand multiple viewpoints and acknowledge how our individual differences add value to the team. We empower our team members to call out any unacceptable behaviour of others.

Core Values

We promote and follow our five core values which are Excellence, Ambition, Respect, Happy People and Helping others. Our focus is on attracting individuals to the business with a wide range of experience and abilities to create a more diverse workforce. We are committed and fully support our people managers to become better leaders.

Flexible Working

Having complete flexibility on where and how you work means that our team can decide for themselves how they achieve their activities and goals but allowing you to balance other commitments such as childcare, personal health and wellbeing alongside building a rewarding career. To offer additional support, we have a nursery care funding scheme which is available via salary sacrifice to help reduce costs of looking after younger family members. We encourage our team to work together to ensure we continue to provide great customer service and collaboration to ensure each member feels supported and valued.

Having the freedom to work wherever you choose means that we can best support each employee to work in an environment best suited to them and their individual requirements. Being a dynamic and open-minded employer means that we are approachable and are willing to do our best to support the needs of each person within the team as best we can.

  • All new employees receive a £250 work from home (WFH) allowance, to put towards the cost of creating a comfortable environment at home
  • Generous holiday allowance (min 25 days, max 30) and the ability to purchase additional days
  • Nursery care funding via salary sacrifice – increase the tax efficiency on your childcare payments
  • Equal maternity, paternity and adoption leave – 2 months full paid leave which can be taken over a period of 24 months

Equal Opportunities

We are an equal opportunities employer and will not treat any individual differently from another (please refer to our Equal Opportunities Policy). We are prepared to adapt as best we can to accommodate any new or existing member to the team requiring additional support or who may have specific requirements from additional learning to more bespoke requirements to feel supported, included and engaged within the wider team and business.

Creating the right environment

We are passionate about having an inclusive, positive, and creative environment for our team to be able to focus on their personal wellbeing and career opportunities, as well as wanting to be a part of a wider team who are not afraid to do things differently. We want to continue to create a culture of inclusivity where any individual within the business feels safe and secure within their environment that they can ask for help and support where needed to be able to be at their best.

It does not matter about your previous work experience, how old you are, what gender you identify as, what ethnic group you belong to, or whether you went to university; we focus on your drive and ambition to want to be a part of a team which is bigger than any one person alone, and who is focused on doing their best for the bigger cause.

What matters most

We do not just focus on what matters most for our clients, but what matters most for our team. We encourage open communication and actively listen to our team members; we have our Shadow Board and anonymous feedback channels; we actively encourage our team members to challenge leadership to ensure our future growth and development as a business has our people at the heart of everything we do. Everybody within the business has the opportunity to get involved in various projects, such as Thrive Money (formerly – LTAM – Let’s Talk About Money), our social media educational platform, our B Corp planning group, or Shadow Board, regardless of their role within the business.

We offer free financial coaching and planning to all of our employees, as we believe great financial planning should be available to everybody and not just our clients.

Who can I turn to if I need help?

If you have a concern regarding how First Wealth can support you and any issues you may have regardless of the nature, our People Operations Director, Kerry Burgess is your first point of contact to raise any concerns to. There may be the need for the nature of the issue to be raised to management level if more significant changes are required within the business, but your personal information will be protected and will remain confidential within these boundaries. We ask all new employees to complete a medical assessment form and a conversation is held with our Practice Manager to find out what additional support you may require from us as your employer. We value the differences each of our employees bring to the team and actively encourage individuals to be themselves.

Changing the profession

As a company we innovate, try new things and experiment. If we mess up, we learn from our mistakes and we move forward. We build trust through radical transparency, from our company financials to our future business plans. Financial Services has historically been a predominately white, middle-aged man’s world. We are fully committed to take proactive steps to improve our organisations, diversity and inclusive landscape every day. We are dedicated in taking positive steps to include everybody within the organisation to achieve these goals and will continue to communicate our purpose with the team.

Our purpose

We are a business for good. We are B Corp certified – we care about our environment, our carbon footprint and about working with other like-minded companies. We are passionate about supporting change. Through our ties with the Women in Finance Charter, we have signed up to have 50/50 female/male representation within Senior Manager and Director roles. We are also actively working towards having a larger female Financial Planner presence. Via Thrive Money, we use our Instagram page to provide education to individuals who may not actively be looking for a financial planner, or otherwise be our typical client, but who would still benefit from learning the basics of financial planning from a responsible and reputable source. We actively seek to only work with like minded organisations whose beliefs align with ours in creating a better future.

Working together to get better

We use 360 feedback from our peers, upward as well as downward led reviews to alleviate any management bias when carrying out the half-year and annual reviews. This is then reviewed by the People Operations Director to ensure there is consistency with the reviewer’s feedback and also scoring towards bonus payments are fair and correct.

Rock Star award – Quarterly team recognition of their colleague’s behaviour towards our core values. The team member with the highest number of nominations can receive either £300 gift vouchers or have a charity donation made on their behalf to a charity of their choice.

Recruitment process

Our recruitment process has multiple layers, the initial CV sifting exercise is carried out by the People Operations Director. We then have initial and secondary interviews carried out with a variety of relevant personnel across the team’s dependent upon the role being interviewed for. We believe in cognitive diversity; we want to break the old stereo type of financial services. You do not need 20 years’ experience to apply for a role at First Wealth, but what you do need is a ‘can-do’ attitude and the desire to want to be an active part of the team.

We have:

  • Transparency of job adverts – being more varied in where we advertise to seek a wider more varied audience
  • Clear job specifications – including experience and qualification, as well as soft-skill requirements
  • Wording used within our job adverts and job descriptions are not consciously or unconsciously biased ie, use of words such as enforcement, fearless, exhaustive (which can be seen as more masculine)
  • Refer to our Equal Opportunities Policy within our Employee Handbook for more information.

Employee Engagement

Each year, we carry out an employee engagement survey to ensure our people have a say in how well they feel supported by the business, whether we have any underlying concerns and to ensure our team remain happy.

Who is responsible for Inclusion and Diversity within First Wealth?

Everyone within First Wealth is responsible for Inclusion and Diversity. Our management sets the tone from the top of having a business which values differences in people as this is how we thrive. If everyone within the business had the same educational background, cultural background, sexual orientation, age etc; we would be very one dimensional and miss out on the learnings from different thinking, experiences, and ideas.

First Wealth Culture

  • Our fun and flexible culture ensures people want to come to work everyday
  • We are committed to doing everything we can to support our team’s wellbeing and to create a great work life balance for everyone
  • Triple line focus – social impact, environment and being a profitable business to be able to achieve more
  • We make decisions based on our core values, by hiring and promoting people who adhere to them, and letting go of people who do not
  • Open communication – understand how your mood affects those around you, know who you can talk with to resolve an issue

What else can you expect to receive from us?

Each team member has a personalised learning and development programme, along with the support of their colleagues and People Operations Director. We will support you to achieve the qualifications and knowledge required through our exam and study programme, including covering any costs for professional memberships and study days for each exam. We have a clear remuneration package, including how you can earn additional bonus rewards through your efforts towards your personal and business success.

Our employee wellbeing is important to us, you will also receive a monthly wellbeing allowance, via Heka. Heka allows each employee to use their subscription however they please. You have complete flexibility over which activity or service best suits your needs and circumstances.

Please refer to our Employee Handbook for further information on the benefits mentioned here, in addition to pension contributions, private medical, income protection, life protection and additional bonuses such as employee referral, marriage and new baby bonuses and our one month paid sabbatical for every 5 years of being a team member.

Being a team is important

Each quarter we hold a business catch up and planning session with the wider team and we encourage every member to attend. These are typically kept to the morning, being held at a venue where we can deliver any company updates and then the afternoon/evening will consist of a more social team event (in or around London). Zoe is our team social organiser and is more than happy to receive suggestions so we can keep these events varied and inclusive for everybody.

We also encourage frequent social events to take place amongst the individual teams, or at role level. Flexible working has led us to think more creatively about keeping the team as one and together, but with innovative thinking we can combine a team based, professional and friendly culture with the flexibility we offer. We understand the importance of being a responsible employer in allowing the whole team to live their best lives.

Read our Diversity and Inclusion Policy here

You are now leaving First Wealth's website

First Wealth (London) Limited does not endorse the linked website or any of its contents, and is not responsible for the accuracy of the information contained within it.