I’m Emma Boardwell, Founder of Emotional Finance
I am a highly experienced psychotherapist, DipFA qualified financial and relational dynamics coach, and Founder of Emotional Finance - a consultancy, training and speaking practice.
I bring a distinctive, and award winning perspective to Financial Services. I serve as resident agony aunt at Money Marketing, writing the widely read monthly column ‘The Advisers Dilemma’ and am on a mission to firmly plant emotional literacy and relational intelligence into the heart of the financial services profession.
I feel privileged to be trusted by firms across the UK and beyond for my proprietary framework, my compassionate and impactful approach to support and training financial professionals, and my empowering and thought provoking talks.
How I got here
My journey into financial services began when I bought a book on personal finance for my teenage son. He never read it, because like many teenagers, he was luckily an expert in everything invented in the history of the world already. But I did. And it changed my life.
That book gave me a sense of clarity and empowerment around personal finance I hadn’t expected. I wanted to understand more - so much more that I went on to independently study for, and gain, a DipFA in financial advice. At that point, I made the leap and decided to career shift.
I was naive. But I was still surprised by what I found.
For all the technical training and expertise I encountered in financial services, there was remarkably little attention paid to the emotional and relational dimensions of advice - to how advisers build relationships with clients that are connected yet boundaried, and that hold real value in and of themselves. What I saw, again and again, were well-intentioned relationships. But not always well-executed ones.
And that, of course, is exactly what psychotherapy is devoted to. In therapy, you can't guarantee outcomes. The relationship is the work. It's approached with rigour, intentionality, and care - because it matters.
And it matters in financial services too. So I founded Emotional Finance. It felt like a no-brainer.
The Emotional Finance Model
A proprietary framework and methodology for building client-adviser relationships with clarity, confidence and competence.
The Emotional Finance Model sits at the heart of everything we do.
It translates key insights, principles and skills from psychotherapy into the world of financial services - offering financial professionals and firms a a fresh lens on the relationships that define their work, and the practical tools to strengthen them.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
