Martha Lawton is a keynote speaker at the IFW Conference taking place at the Bristol Hotel on 23rd May 2023.
Buy your IFW Conference ticket with the special IFW member discount here.
Non-member tickets are available here.
Book your spot at the social & networking evening on 22nd May.
Martha is a financial educator and coach who has been helping people understand and use money better for over 15 years. She has facilitated hundreds of workshops on day-to-day money management as well as running awareness raising campaigns and other financial wellbeing projects. Her work has given her a deep insight into people’s emotional and psychological responses to money, which she discusses on her podcast Squanderlust. She was diagnosed with ADHD in January 2021.
At the IFW Conference, Martha will deliver her talk:
Supporting Clients in Times of Vulnerability.
Your key learning points will be:
- Explain why a person could be vulnerable in the context of financial services and not in other situations and vice versa.
- Explain why it is important to focus on customer outcomes, rather than on types of vulnerable customers
- Identify at least four key areas to explore with a customer in vulnerable circumstances in order to understand the support they need
I asked Martha to explain her approach to sharing her passion for interactive learning, and what you can look forward to in her sessions at the IFW Conference.
We can’t wait to welcome you back to the IFW Conference. What are you looking forward to most?
I always meet such great people at the IFW Conference. I’m looking forward to the friendly atmosphere and interesting perspectives of the speakers and other attendees.
What can delegates expect from your keynote talk?
Less from me and more from you. I’m an energetic, fun speaker but I also love designing interactive learning, so I’ll be getting you working together to improve your questioning skills for when a client discloses a potential vulnerability.
My aim is that attendees leave feeling more confident to have conversations about vulnerability that make a meaningful difference for their clients without feeling awkward.
How did understanding vulnerable and neuro-diverse clients become an important part of your career?
I spent ten years in the charity sector supporting people with various types of vulnerabilities to access financial services and advice services as well as delivering financial education and guidance to people in these groups.
Learning how many competent, capable people faced barriers to managing their finances because of the way services and products were structured changed my whole perspective on the topic of personal finance and our society in general.
My own ADHD diagnosis in 2021 added another layer to this as it re-contextualised my own relationship with money.
How would you summarise your passions, both in and out of work?
In work I love giving people “ah-ha!” moments. Whether I’m coaching, training or speaking, I live for the moment when insight hits and something just clicks for my clients.
Out of work I love cooking spicy foods, karaoke, going to shows and exhibitions around London, and fixing up our (previously long-neglected) garden.
What’s your happiest memory?
It’s extremely corny, but my wedding day. My husband is an amazing person and getting to get married to him felt incredible. Plus our main goal when planning our wedding was to host a truly excellent party with the people we love and we absolutely succeeded at that.
What’s your understanding of financial wellbeing and why it matters?
To me financial wellbeing is about managing your money in such a way that it supports your wider wellbeing. It’s not just about growing the numbers, it’s about what your money enables in your life.
What do you wish you’d been told about finance when you were 15?
That being “good with money” doesn’t require you to follow all the mergers and acquisitions news and understand the implications of, for example, a change in aluminium prices in Bahrain. There are other ways to invest than buying individual shares, which means it’s so much more accessible than it appeared from the messaging I got growing up.
Who or what is your favourite wellbeing guru, podcast or book?
I love Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset”. It was life-changing to shift away from the belief that I had certain fixed natural talents and that any skill I couldn’t immediately master was just not for me. So many mental habits or beliefs that had limited me or made me feel bad about myself were linked to a fixed mindset and reframing them that has been very powerful.
What are you doing to advance your own financial wellbeing?
I love Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. It was life-changing to shift away from the belief that I had certain fixed natural talents and that any skill I couldn’t immediately master was just not for me. So many mental habits or beliefs that had limited me or made me feel bad about myself were linked to a fixed mindset and reframing them that has been very powerful.
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