20 Years, 20 Voices: Tracey Payne

20 Years, 20 Voices celebrates the people, charities, donors and partners who have helped shape Sussex Community Foundation over the past two decades.

Tracey Payne is Managing Director of Herbert Scott, an independent financial planning firm based in Lewes and one of Sussex Community Foundation's long-standing professional adviser partners. She shares why conversations about charitable giving are becoming an increasingly important part of financial planning, and how working with the Foundation helps clients give locally with confidence.

Looking beyond wealth

For Tracey, financial planning is about much more than investments and pensions. It’s about helping people use their wealth to live the life they want and leave the legacy they choose.

"We genuinely want our clients to enjoy their money," she says. "We ask them why they've saved it, or why they've inherited it. What would make them happy? Some people want to do fantastic holidays, some want to pass it down to family, and for others, charitable giving becomes a really rewarding conversation."

Rather than treating philanthropy as a separate discussion, Herbert Scott sees it as part of holistic financial planning.

"We wouldn't dream of talking to clients without discussing pensions, investments or tax planning," Tracey explains. "So why wouldn't we also mention charitable giving?"

Helping clients give with confidence

Those conversations don't happen immediately. Instead, they develop once advisers understand a client's goals, values and long-term plans.

"It's usually when we've completed their onboarding process and come up with a strategy," says Tracey. "By then, we've learned what their goals and objectives are and whether charitable giving is something they want to explore."

For many clients, particularly those considering inheritance planning, giving offers the opportunity to decide where their wealth can make a difference.

"People often tell us they don't want to save every penny of tax, because the country needs it," she says. "But once they realise they can choose where some of that money goes instead, it opens up a really positive conversation about the causes they care about."

Why local giving matters

While clients support a wide range of causes, Tracey believes many are keen to make a difference close to home.

"I think people do want to see the benefit of giving in their own communities," she says.

For Herbert Scott, partnering with Sussex Community Foundation makes those conversations easier.

"It takes away at lot of the legwork," she explains. " The Foundation knows the local charity landscape, carries out all the due diligence and introduces clients to organisations they would probably never have discovered on their own. They’re also part of the UKCF network of 47 Community Foundation, which gives me even more confidence.”

That means advisers can confidently connect clients with trusted opportunities to support local communities.

Responding to changing financial planning

Tracey has also seen charitable giving become increasingly relevant as changes to inheritance tax rules bring more families into estate planning conversations.

“Some of our clients like feeling in control of where their money is going and this leads easily into conversations about charitable giving. For some clients, it's about leaving a legacy. For others, it's about making a difference during their lifetime and seeing the impact while they're still here."

A trusted partner for advisers

For Tracey, the Foundation has become a natural extension of the service Herbert Scott offers its clients.

"It's an additional service that helps us achieve what clients want," she says. "This is what Sussex Community Foundation does every day. Why should our clients know about every local charity when they don't need to? That's your expertise."

She also believes the partnership reflects positively on advisers.

"It shows we're putting our clients first, not simply focusing on the wealth we're managing," she says. "If I was talking to another adviser, I'd ask why they wouldn't work with Sussex Community Foundation. I can only see a positive response to it."

Find out more

Are you a professional advisor with a client who wants to give back to their community? Find the most efficient and effective route to achieving your client’s philanthropic goals with help from Sussex Community Foundation.

The gender dynamics of wealth transfer and philanthropy

Michael Lawrence, Managing Director at Global Wealthmap Ltd, discusses women’s increasingly important role in charitable giving.

We often hear about the inter-generational wealth transfer, where the baby boomer generation are going to be shifting trillions of pounds of wealth to the next generation. However, before this we will witness a significant transfer of wealth from men to women.

It is well established that women tend to outlive men, and whilst on average this may only be by a couple of years, in certain couples this could be a five- or ten-year period, partly due to the husband being on average a few years older as well. Add to this the increasing divorce rate in couples in their sixties.

This will have a number of ramifications for society, and especially so for professional services. At a recent event where I met with the FCA it was mentioned that upwards of 70% of women change their financial adviser when they become widows.

Helping manage their wealth

In our experience, women who inherit wealth will typically leave a traditional wealth manager for a planning led proposition, valuing in-depth conversations about goals, family priorities, passing wealth on to the next generation and charitable goals. If a firm has traditionally put too much emphasis on investment performance, graphs and asset allocation, and less on the qualitative side of the relationship, this can be a real issue.

We know that financial security and long-term financial stability are two big drivers for women inheriting money, and this may in turn lead to a desire to have a more cautious overall outlook. This is a generalisation of course, but we do see higher savings rates for women rather than men in our wider practice.

There is an increasing need for professional service and private client practices to take onboard demographic changes, because it is not just at the inheritance stage women become the main decision-makers. It is now increasingly common to see that the main income earner in the household is female. This follows on from a very long-term trend of academic outperformance of girls at school, young women at university and as a result women in the workplace. Some studies suggest that 60% of all wealth in the UK will be in the hands of women by 2030.

There are still big areas of inequality that need to be addressed, but increasingly we see couples coming to us where it is the woman who earns more and generates more wealth, and as a result takes a bigger interest in how money is managed for the longer-term.

This is in turn creates a number of opportunities in private client work. Of course, all types of advisers can be equally effective in advising all types of clients. But it is essential to focus on goals and objectives, and work through genuine lifestyle financial planning processes. This involves talking far more about the person and far less about the money.

Whilst the gender dynamics of wealth transfer introduces a number of new considerations, the old truths still remain. Clients value trusted advisers and you do that through being genuinely client centric, through transparency and great communication skills.

A positive effect of women making the financial decisions of a household, or where a widow suddenly becomes responsible for their finances, is a desire to talk about the importance of the wider family and the wider society. This introduces a great opportunity for private client advisers to address charitable and philanthropic goals as an active conversation rather than an afterthought.

A valuable opportunity for our society

We are in an exciting phase of change for our society, with increasing financial participation and autonomy for women we have a genuine chance of achieving a more equal society for everyone.

Michael Lawrence APFS
Chartered Financial Planner
Managing Director

Interested in finding out more on this topic? You can read a related article here.