Financial Well-being ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions provide valuable insight

Background

UHY Manchester is part of one of the UK’s leading national groups of Chartered Accountants, providing partner-led accountancy services to a wide range of owner-managed, local, national and international businesses. As one of the largest accountancy firms in Manchester, UHY prides itself on its diverse skill base, which enables it to offer a broad range of audit, accounting and business advisory services. In addition to these services, clients also benefit from access to specialist technical advice.

Challenge

As part of its consultancy offering to clients, UHY Manchester provides financial planning services and advice by in-house and seamlessly integrated experts from award-winning Pareto Financial Planning.

Always looking to provide its own employees with additional knowledge and provide value-added information, UHY Manchester recognised that understanding sound financial planning would also be a great benefit to offer its own workforce.

UHY Manchester approached Pareto to explore the idea of running financial well-being ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions to ensure that any of its employees who had any questions or needed insight into how to plan and prepare their financial health, could do so in a regular and informal setting.

Solution

Pareto’s UHY Manchester office-based advisors developed a series of sessions covering multiple topics including: Budgeting, Saving, Pensions, Borrowing, Protection, Investment, and Retirement Planning. The sessions have been designed to be thought provoking and attendees are encouraged to ask questions, either as part of a group or privately, if required. The ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions were initially planned to be held quarterly, but due to the interest, the frequency is being reviewed.

Outcomes

Just under 50% of the 100 plus Manchester based UHY staff have so far attended Pareto’s ‘Lunch and Learn’ financial well-being sessions, and the feedback has been incredibly positive. Due to the informal nature of the sessions, Pareto is able to delve deeper into specific topics where the interest is the highest.

“It’s great seeing younger members of UHY Manchester’s team asking questions about saving and pensions. The idea that we are adding value is really exciting.” said Lauren McHenry, IFA, Pareto Financial Planning.

David Kendrick, Chief Executive Officer at UHY Manchester said, “Pareto is a long term partner of UHY, and offers our clients seamless independent financial advice. We understand the importance of preparing for financial health, so it made complete sense to offer our employees the benefit of Pareto’s knowledge, so they can make informed decisions about their own financial well-being.”

Stuart Carswell, Director, Pareto Financial Planning, said “Helping employees with financial well-being insight is both proactive and sound business practice. We are delighted to be offering this programme and look forward to seeing how it progresses over the coming year.”