Stay true to yourself and you’ll go far

Louise Swanepoel, Executive Financial Advisor at ABSA

Thirty-two years ago, Louise began her financial planning career in a very unusual space for the era: she joined an all-women branch of Metropolitan Life in Pretoria. Her forward-thinking boss allowed employees with children to bring them to the office.

“I would take my baby to our Friday afternoon meetings,” Louise remembers. “It was normal and acceptable. That kind of formative experience can be very powerful. From then on, I never saw my children as an obstacle to my career, and I have never felt that being a woman has held me back in any way.”

Louise now works at ABSA, with clients from the business and private divisions of the bank, and she prides herself on being professional no matter who she is dealing with, client or colleague. “Men and women both offer something different in this industry; it’s good to collaborate,” she says. “It depends on the person and his or her skillset — and how you treat your client. If you prioritise the interests of your client, regardless of their gender, you’re are on the right track. I always work from the basis of respect, first and foremost.”

In a career spanning more than three decades, Louise has been a top-performing financial planner numerous times, at each of the companies she has worked for. She attributes this to simply loving what she does: “I love people — meeting new people gives me of energy,” she says. “And I love the relationship-building aspect. I have clients from the 1990s who are still with me. You have to be able to interact on a general level, not just on a technical level.”

That being said, she also warns not to neglect the technical side: “Read as much as you can, especially in the current economic climate where everything is changing almost daily. Find out which courses the FPI recommends and upskill yourself in behavioural finance. You need to be able to help your clients make entirely new decisions — decisions that might have been unheard of a decade ago.”

Indeed, coming into financial planning right now is daunting and Louise has sympathy for young women starting out: “I began my career at the dawn of the industry in South Africa,” she says. “We learnt as we went along. The world is very different now. To succeed, you have to be driven; you have to be certain that you can make a go of this. My advice is to find a mentor: someone who will offer you a safe space to ask questions, even the questions that seem simple — like how to start a discussion with a client. Your mentor should be someone who can empower you. To give you an example, I play tennis with a friend who recently decided to become an advisor. She enrolled for a postgraduate diploma in financial planning and each week while we warmed up for our match, we’d discuss her assignments and the problems she had to solve. She learnt from me, and I learnt to look at things differently, too.”

Even though there are challenges, Louise believes that the rewards are worth it. “Being a financial planner is a very good career for a woman,” she says. “There is so much flexibility — you can go to all of your children’s school events; you can manage your diary and plan your day; and you don’t ever have to retire, you can keep working as long as you are fit and proper. Learn more, keep working hard, stay true to yourself and you will go far.”