About the Role

Mark
What attracted me to Nationwide was the culture and the environment where there’s a real opportunity to be successful.

Sara
I’ve been a senior financial consultant for ten years, and during that time I took a bit of time out to have my child and now I’m back to work and here again as a senior financial consultant.

Chia
I started back in 2006 on a trainee management programme. I went up through the ranks from working on the counter to doing the banking advisor role, customer service manager role. I restarted there as a branch manager, was successful in that role, and in the last 12 months I’ve been doing a senior financial consulting role.

So what attracted me to the senior financial consultant role was that I wanted to be customer-facing again, conducting interviews because in the branch manager role I stepped away from that after the banking advisor. So I wanted to get back into that. Also the rewards financially were very good if you were successful in that role.

Mark
I found the on boarding experience seamless right from the very first meetings I had through the assessment process to actually joining the company and getting onto the training programmes etc. For me it worked really really well and there were no hitches at all.

Sara
Our products are some of the top performing products on the marketplace and the fact that we are able to offer them to our customers means it puts us above of our competitors immediately.

Mark
The rewards and recognition were something that I looked at in quite a lot of detail before I joined. It was very interesting that one recruitment consultant said to me at the time when I was potentially looking the rewards and recognition aren’t really great at Nationwide, they’re not designed for people who want to perform and be remunerated accordingly. That’s complete nonsense. The society rewards you for producing not only volume but also quality.

Chia
So a day in the life of an FSC, for me typically the branches start at 8:30, the branches I’m based in. So I’m normally at the branches at 8 o’clock, or ten past 8. At twenty past 8 we would normally do a huddle, to talk about what we did the previous day, what we’re going to be looking to do that day with the whole team involved in that. Just after the branch opens I normally sit down with each individual, just have a bit of a chat, make sure we keep the relationship going. And then at 9 o’clock we formally sit down, if I don’t have any customers, with the banking advisor and the managers to look at the diaries, give some feedback on previous customers, look at what’s going to happen that day. Typically we’ll see between 3 to maybe 6 customers a day, based on that we’ll then book them back in for a presentation and to finish off the second part of the sales process. And that night normally we’ll do anything from 2 to maybe 4 case write-ups to get in preparation for the presentations.

Sara
At our branch we continually aiming to improve the level of service that we give to our customers. On a regular basis we ring our existing customers to make sure they’re benefiting from the products and services that we offer.

Mark
In order to offer my customers a world class service, I make every effort at the outset of our meetings to make sure that I have a full understanding of their financial position as it is now, where they’d like to go with it in the future. So build up a picture of their dreams and their hopes and their aspirations, and then what I can do to actually help them to realize their goals.

Sara
Working with the business to build the future is really being prepared to change. We’ve got so many changes going on at Nationwide at the moment, and it’s addressing those changes in the most positive way.

Chia
Success for me is in two parts really. The first one is looking after the customers, helping them achieve their goals and aspirations but doing a full review, looking at their circumstances and giving them the right advice for their goals. The second part, by doing that I think, is looking to be the top financial advisor at Nationwide.

Mark
Customers want to come and see us at Nationwide because we have a fantastic reputation on the high street in terms of our quality, in terms of our proposition. Clients have been with us for many years and always found us to be a trusted place for their money.