Meet the wealth manager who is using the stock market to inspire Gen Z

"I’ve always found businesses, and the personalities behind them, very curious.”

Although her parents didn’t work in the financial sector – her father was a worsted spinner and her mother was a teacher before she married –they were keen to make sure she was financially literate.

Almost 40 years later, Coutts still has shares with the same companies, although not the original shares. “It’s a fascinating area and I’ve always loved the stock market once I understood it,” she says.

Coutts, 59, was promoted to head of wealth management firm JM Finn’s York office earlier this year and is passionate about passing on this enthusiasm to younger generations.

"When you’re talking to grandchildren, young adults who inherit money, you ask what phone they have in their pocket and they say Apple or Samsung and you tell them they can buy shares in that company and take them on this journey.

"I want to embed the excitement I first had when I first owned shares in them.”

Coutts, who has two daughters, age 24 and 25, she says she has always instilled the value of money in them.

"It doesn’t matter how much money anybody has,” she says. “That money at some point has been worked very hard for and you have to respect that.”

JM Finn’s York office has 12 staff of which nine are investment managers. Between them they look after over £700m on behalf of over 1,300 clients.

The firm moved its most northerly branch office to the new Hudson Quarter in York earlier this year following 20 years in Leeds.

Coutts, who describes herself as ambitious, optimistic and nurturing, is keen to use her new role to raise JM Finn’s profile in the region as well as help young people develop their careers.

"I really love young people and seeing them develop,” she says.

She adds: “I think my greatest achievement is that my two Gen Z daughters see gender equality. Why wouldn’t women have an equal place? Whereas I’m older and it never has been thus.”

Her ambitions for the York office hold no bounds and, having joined the company in 2011 and been a member of the firm’s Asset Allocation and Stock Selection committees, she is well-placed to lead the team.

JM Finn, headquartered in London, has four regional offices in York, Bristol, Bury St Edmunds and Winchester. The company has funds under management and administration of £10.4bn on behalf of over 18,500 clients.

"It’s exciting to be able to feed into the management’s agenda,” she says. “You suddenly have a seat at the table and that’s quite rewarding. It’s another chapter and I want this office to be a flagship.”

She adds: “I don’t want to limit myself but there’s no reason why, within the next five years, the office can’t be two or three times the size it is now.”

Coutts, one of the firm’s best-performing investment managers in the company, is already a regular voice for the company as a dawn commentator on BBC Radio 4 & 5 for their Wake up to Money and Today programmes as well as on Sky News’ Ian King Live. However, she warns that live broadcasting is not for the faint-hearted.

"One morning, during lockdown, the cat came in with a live mouse through the catflap when I was live on the radio and it ran under the kitchen island,” she says. “My voice definitely went up a couple of octaves. The presenter was asking me what my favourite Roald Dahl book was and my mind just went blank.”

JM Finn works with multigenerational families to invest their wealth in long term investments.

Coutts says: "What we find with taxation and planning is that people want to give away their wealth when they get to a certain age but do you want your 18-year-old son to go partying with his friends on a yacht in Ibiza? Probably not. So we build a relationship with that young adult and take them through the process,” says Coutts.

"Very early on they understand the value of money and how to work with it in a responsible way. Grandparents really value that so the relationship continues through the generations.”

Inflation and rising interest rates are the main challenges for clients at the moment but Coutts says the most important word when it comes to investing is time. “We’ve had two years of huge instability and in a sense these are events that can’t be managed and they will affect financial markets,” she says.

"The geopolitics flying around the world are probably at the top of the minds of investors. But if you invest for the long term and if you just buy really good companies and hold them you don’t really need to do much else.”

She adds: “Experience tells me that these difficult times pass but it has been protracted. We’re two years in now. Even the great financial crisis was pretty short and sweet but this one is quite long and painful.”

Coutts, who grew up in Ilkley, began a career in banking, including a stint in the Leeds branch of Hambros Bank , now part of Societe Generale, after completing her A-levels. She moved into stockbroking after having her first daughter.

​​​​​Away from the office, she is a keen beekeeper at her home near Malton. “I love it because it’s so different from what I do during the day,” she says. “I put my bee kit on and go to the colony, which is just like a magical world, and each year you get this wonderful natural honey. I find that really exciting.”