FOCUS FEATURE JILLIAN THOMAS


The average financial planner in Britain is 58 and male, while less than 2% of the nation’s financial planning practices are owned by women – despite research showing that firms with at least one female board member perform 45% better than all-male set-ups. It means Jillian Thomas, and her 11-


strong team featuring nine women at Future Life Wealth Management, stands out from the crowd. She’s happy to play the “pied piper” role


in leading the way for other women to break down barriers, but Jillian is keen to point out she just wants to give young people the opportunities they may not otherwise get. “Irrespective of gender, I take people


who are looking for a career, and am prepared to invest in people who are prepared to invest in themselves so they receive the opportunities they deserve,” says the managing director, who spends more than £20,000 on training costs every year. “The only boundary to success is the


desire to achieve, so to me the most important thing I can do as a business owner is to be supportive so my employees are in a situation to get the best out of themselves.” While Jillian admits to have been on the


receiving end of some “shocking” comments from male colleagues during the outset of her career in the 1980s and has often been the only woman when walking into a room, she has made a habit of turning bad situations into a positive. Her company was set up in 2009 at the


height of the banking crisis – “people told me not to set up a business because there was a recession going on, but my response was that I decided not to participate in the recession” – and turnover has grown by


about 20% per year on average, with funds under management now standing at £400m. And while the Covid-19 pandemic initially


sent shockwaves, cutting the value of those funds by about 25% between February and March 2020, the Future Life team rallied to find opportunities for clients in undervalued funds. A caring approach was also taken to


investor relationships – Jillian would call several vulnerable clients every lunchtime to check on how they were doing during the first lockdown and the company sent mince pies from a local bakery at Christmas – resulting in a flurry of referrals for new customers. “The one thing that was absolutely


essential during the pandemic was to think outside the box,” says Jillian. “It’s about taking something bad and converting it into good.” Such has been the mantra adopted in


her role as a beacon for women just starting out in the industry. She’s been only too happy to watch team members including technical operations director Samantha Williams, operations director Keeley Woodcock and independent financial planner Emma Baumback – recently recognised by an industry publication as one of the top 35 “next generation” – grow as people in their time at the firm. With a word of caution, Jillian adds: “The


reality is that in anything, you need someone who’s prepared to break that glass ceiling and go through it for others to follow, and I’m proud to have done that. “But while I’m keen to support women in


business, the greatest returns I’ve ever had are when I’ve stepped out of the gender- specific environment and competed with others as an equal – so we have to be careful not to silo ourselves.”


‘Irrespective of gender, I take people who are looking for a career, and am prepared to invest in people who


are prepared to invest in themselves so they receive the


opportunities they deserve’


ENTERPRISING WOMEN


GLYNIS WRIGHT MBE


At the age of 40, Glynis Wright MBE took what she believed would be the biggest risk of her life. Yet her decision to leave the safety net of a council


economic development officer job to return to university and study law was just the first of a series of “meteoric leaps”. Despite being fast-tracked to partner within three


years of qualifying as a solicitor, it wasn’t long before Glynis sacrificed comfort once more to set up her own Leicester-based family law firm. In December last year, after growing Glynis Wright


& Co to a £1.1m turnover business with 19 staff, another fork in the road presented itself as she sold her shares to top 200 law firm Nelsons, which she joined as partner to head up its Leicester family law department. “If someone had told me at 40 what was going to


happen then I’d never have believed them in a million years,” says Glynis, whose son Ben was 13 when she started her law degree.


‘My dad taught me you can reinvent yourself to do whatever you want to be’


“Both law and business have changed me so much. When I left local government, I thought it was the scariest thing I’d ever do with my life to give up a career, make myself unemployed and borrow a load of money so I could retrain without any certainty of having a training contract as a lawyer – when I had a mortgage to pay and a child. “As it turned out, it was simply the first of a number


of meteoric leaps I was going to make.” Her late decision to go into business mirrored the


path of her late father Charles, a former policeman who set up a business in his 60s to train Abu Dhabi police in the ways of British forensic science. He loaned Glynis the £10,000 that would allow her


to set up a business in 2011. This was paid back within the first year and, by 2017, Glynis Wright & Co had achieved £1m revenue, winning Law Firm of the Year at the national Law Society Excellence Awards in 2018. “My dad taught me you can reinvent yourself to do


whatever you want to be,” says Glynis, who served as the 2019/20 president of the Leicestershire Law Society and received her MBE in December 2020 for her work in promoting female entrepreneurship. Despite being as passionate about business as law,


Glynis isn’t sad about selling her shares to Nelsons, which has absorbed all her team and now boasts one of the region’s largest family law teams. “It’s brilliant because every business owner needs


an exit strategy and I can still benefit from a career as a partner in a brilliant regional law firm,” she adds.


66 business network March 2021


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