Don’t target athletes for the glamour, says former footballer

High profile sports clients can bring a lucrative income and wanted attention to an advice business, but going after high value contracts for the sake of it could be a bad idea, says Jamie Proctor.

Proctor, a self-employed adviser at Xentum, where he specialises in sports clients, said he’s seen a lot of advice businesses starting to focus on athletes, particularly high earning footballers.

And while he welcomes this in principle, being a former professional footballer himself, he is concerned some may be lured by the potentially lucrative contracts or the publicity that comes with sports, and not be fully aware of the specialist work it entails.

“It is never as glamorous as it seems from the outside,” he said. “There is a lot of work that goes into it in terms of building the relationships with these guys.

“They are a different type of client . . . you have to spend time to understand the way their career arcs and the way that these guys’ and girls’, because obviously the women’s game is huge and is growing every single day, their life is completely backwards to the majority of people.”

Catching them early on

Professional athletes tend to have their lives set up earlier on, including getting married and having kids.

Their careers may be high income for a while but they tend to be short and drop offs can be sudden. This makes the financial planning for these clients very different, said Proctor.

He believes in the power of engaging with athletes early on but warns this can mean low or no income for the adviser at the start. “I think as soon as they turn 18 and they’re put on a professional contract, they should be sat with somebody to advise them,” he said.

There is a lack of trust and respect, I believe, from athletes, and particularly footballers, around financial advisers

For many this means they don’t yet have the big income that would normally justify financial advice, and they may not have an idea of where their life is going.

But for Proctor it’s all about building habits, being consistent and being disciplined.

“A lot of the younger players that I work with, we don’t sit there and start investing and start doing all that from early on, it’s more about let’s look at saving, let’s look at your income and your expenditure,” he said.

“You need to be aware that you’re going to do a lot of free work initially,” he added. “In sport, certainly with the younger generation, they simply don’t have that amount of money sat there from an early age.”

Often it’s also about connecting with their support network — another peculiarity of professional sporting life (that advisers can benefit from).

“The ecosystem of a player is huge, whether it’s the agent, the club, their accountants, lawyers, anybody around that player who may have an influence, if we can get the right messaging across to them, that always builds the relationship further,” said Proctor.

“The earlier we can sit with these guys, the better for us, and also the better for them.”

Issue of trust

Getting sports people engaged can be a tough ask, said Proctor. They can either be disinterested in financial planning, especially if young, or worse distrustful of advisers.

“There is a lack of trust and respect, I believe, from athletes, and particularly footballers, around financial advisers,” he said.

I saw it every single day, where people would make mistakes

He believes some this harks back to the past, with stories of bad investments and high charges still lingering around.

But some is to do with the age of the athletes and the steep progression of their careers.

Thinking about retirement or what might come after their career ends doesn’t come easy, as he knows first hand having squandered his early earnings without a plan for life after football.

“It’s really difficult to get engagement from these guys until later on, when they’ve realised that what we’re actually trying to preach to them was making sense,” he said.

“The biggest challenge I would suggest for anybody trying to get into the this industry and this type of client is the access. And then when you do have the access, the engagement from the player.”

Creating better engagement is the driver behind many of Proctor’s ambitions, not least because without it there’s a risk the players fall prey to those with bad intentions.

“That’s why I’m invested in the industry, and I’m so passionate about getting my name out there and trying to change the narrative. And I encourage everybody else to do that in terms of, let’s get our name out there, and let’s try and encourage and show the value that we add,” he said.

He added: “I saw it every single day, where people would make mistakes. There’d be things going around the changing room, investment schemes and property schemes and crypto and all this sort of stuff, which people would just be jumping on, and you sort of sat there, and it’s still going on to this day.”

carmen.reichman@ft.com