Authenticity at work
Cappellaro said she knew she was “different” growing up, as she was more interested in having boys as friends over girls. She met her “first love” – a girl – at 16. Being raised Jehovah’s Witness, Cappellaro tried to speak to her mum about this but was told to leave the family home. Her dad intervened and she stayed, but she eventually moved out “not long after”.
Cappellaro later fell pregnant aged 19, adding: “Everyone was happy because that was the normal thing to do in the mid-80s”. By the time she was 24, she was married, working in financial services and a mother of two.
This was her life until she was 36 when she met a gay woman at work, and she left her husband and children. She said it was a hard decision as she lost everything, but it was ultimately the best because “I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t done that”.
She then left her job due to being bullied, and joined Countrywide which was “absolutely amazing” and accepted her.
Cappellaro then joined Barclays, where she “stayed in the closet” because she had a “pretty bad experience in banking beforehand”.
She got married in 2009 but did not tell all of her colleagues, saying “I was work Lesley and at home Lesley, and that doesn’t really make for a great person… if we can’t bring our whole selves to work then how can we be authentic? How can we help our team to develop and drive?”
Since meeting her wife, Cappellaro has gained more confidence in her sexuality but still has to be mindful of where they go on holiday, holding hands in public and being asked about a husband at work events, which she said made her feel like she has to “come out almost every day”.
A welcoming profession
Cappellaro said firms could work with charities and introduce role models to educate and provide a safe place, saying this would “help bring the younger people into our industry”.
She added: “We want to encourage all different people from all walks of life into financial services. That isn’t just a gay woman or a gay man, how many transgender [people] do we have in financial services? How many people of colour do we have working in financial services?
“It’s looking at how do we create that space that allows people from anywhere to think ‘this is a great industry that’s open and will work with everybody’?”.
Persevering through challenges
Gutzmore said she “fell into financial services”, first as an in-branch cashier, working her way to become a personal banker and onto branch management before gaining additional qualifications.
She later gained her mortgage qualifications and joined another company.
Gutzmore said it was then she faced microaggressions where people assumed that as a young, black single mum, she “wouldn’t be able to understand the language” and was told “customers may not want to see me”. This along with the work-life balance caused her to leave the role.
She ultimately re-entered the mortgage profession and was told to begin by engaging with her local community.
Gaining community trust
“Living in east London, that sounds all wonderful. You’re ready to go then you come out into the real world and having a money conversation with my friends, family or neighbours was a taboo… I was finding it very hard,” Gutzmore said.
Most of Gutzmore’s clients were gained through referrals and she noticed “none of them looked like me”.
This made her wonder why people in her community did not speak about finances and had a lack of trust.
Gutzmore attended networking events but every time she mentioned she was a financial or mortgage adviser, “people would literally… take a step back or move away, so that made me start to look at the statistics or mindset around money.”
It was then that she started her advice service the Financial Hug, as this made people open up.
“Everybody wants a hug, but when it comes to money, they’re scared, apprehensive, trust issues. Just the word ‘hug’ made people warm to me and come closer,” Gutzmore said.
Her client bank was still 75 per cent white men even though she went to events for women, so she created afternoon tea sessions, feeling this was more effective as she found women were more conversational.
Gutzmore’s peers told her she was wasting her time with people who would never be able to buy a house and was “discouraged”, however, she found that when she went “uptown”, some of these clients did not want advice from a black woman either.
She said: “It was a catch-22 but I persevered because at each event, clients get to spend two to three hours with me in a room, they get to know my personality, they get to hear my expertise, my skills. I give it my all in that room so from there people are confident to come forward and talk to me about their money, their situation.”
While her clients are not always ready to buy a house, Gutzmore has seen people go from being on benefits to becoming homeowners and, sometimes, even landlords.
“For me, the reward was always the change in life and how it was impacting on people over and above the money that was coming in,” she added.
Listening and counselling
Gutzmore completed counselling qualifications, saying when someone seeks financial advice “money is never about money… there’s always other emotional things going on in the background”.
She bolstered her skillset with money mentoring training.
Cappellaro said her counselling training stopped her from being “meek and mild” as she learned she was unable to help others if she did not love herself first.
Gutzmore said she used her counselling skills every day and primarily took them on because of her work in mortgages.
“There’s people who process applications and there’s people who advise their clients. If you’re fact finding and you’re trying to pull out those soft facts… if you’re doing that correctly you’re going to evoke emotions, you’re going to send that person into deep thought. And with questioning you need to know how to deal with that.”
She said it was also useful for signposting and dealing with the emotional burden of helping clients.
Cappellaro agreed that counselling gave a her competitive advantage, adding: “It allows you to listen and listen really carefully, and listen to the underlying comments or even body language that people use.”
Listen to the podcast [31:24] hosted by Bharat Sagar, ambassador at large of AE3 Media featuring guests Aleka Gutzmore, mortgage adviser at Moneysprite and Lesley Cappellaro, intermediary regional manager at Barclays.
