How we got to where we are now...

2013 is when Bloomfield Financial was officially founded, by me John Bloomfield, as I write this in 2024 it seems like only a minute ago.

I never planned a career in financial services. After leaving university in 2001 and starting down a career path that definitely wasn’t for me, I applied for a job in a small local building society for no other reason than my friend worked in a bank and they were ‘sociable hours’ so I thought it would be a good place to be while I worked out what I really wanted to do with my life. 

I was only there for a year, in that time I qualified as a Mortgage Adviser because it came with a payrise… my 9-5 job quickly became studying weekends and evenings for a qualification. Looking back I am so grateful for my time at the Mercantile. It was an antiquated place with staff that had worked their for decades for the most part. Because of that antiquated way of doing things and the experience of the staff, I was taught and saw things about the mechanics of how mortgages. underwriting and indeed the entire Building Society functioned. I don’t think there is anywhere left that someone working in a branch advising on Mortgages and life insurance would get access to that depth of knowledge.

By the end of my first year I was headhunted by a High Street Bank and like 95% of 22 year olds I went of the 45% payrise. I wasn’t there long, I don’t know what it’s like now but in the early 2000’s high street banking was all about ‘selling’ and I hated it – I just wanted to use the knowledge I had accrued to help people, and I was too naïve to realise that the bank’s priority was always going to be to ‘sell’ it’s products.

So in 2003 I found myself working in a medium sized Independent Financial Advice practice as a Mortgage Adviser and after I took a few more exams as an Independent Financial Adviser. It was a great experience and working with a range of advisers from varying backgrounds I was able to see there was no ‘standard’ client or ‘standard’ way to do things but even then I found it quite odd that everything was still product focused. Although we could deal with any provider and make sure you got the best ‘pension’ or ‘ISA’ there wasn’t a huge demand for more high level advice that focused on how much you should be putting in to the ISA or Pension or whatever, and how that affected the rest of your finances in turn. I was always trying to find a way to focus on people not products.

In 2008 I moved to work with one of the most honourable people I’ve ever known, he’d always worked alone and as I had the intention of going out on my own one day it seemed like a great place to stay for a year or so. I was with Paul for 5 years all in, essentially leaving to set up Bloomfield Financial in 2013, having learnt an awful lot about life and people.

So in 2013 I threw away the suits and Bloomfield Financial was formed with the intention to always put people ahead of ‘products’, showing people how to enjoy their money while keeping financial security rather than just hoarding it for that rainy day.

In 2016 as things got busier Dee (my wife) left her career in Banking also disillusioned with the culture came to join me to help with the admin. Soon after she became our Mortgage adviser, to relieve me of the role and we started using specialist paraplanners to provide the admin assistance. Recently as I felt it would ultimately lead to better service for clients and faster turnaround we brought in Kay to provide admin support, without any background in financial services we hoped Kay would be able to come on board without any ‘old industry ideas’ about how to do things and be able to work our way, as I write this Kay has only been here six months and I’m not sure how we managed without her.