Founder shares how her business has evolved and her confidence has grown
Michelle Ford’s career has taken a journey from health to wealth – starting out as a dental nurse and, for nearly 25 years, heading up her own financial advice business. At the heart of both those roles, of course, is dealing with people – the focus that keeps Ford (pictured with her dog Tink) engaged with financial services, including mortgages, to this day.“I do enjoy talking to people and I enjoy the satisfaction of helping somebody,” Ford told Mortgage Introducer. “We've still got clients who we have had from the beginning.”
Ford founded her Surrey-based, directly authorised business, JML (Financial) Associates in 2001, as a young mother, taking her baby daughter’s Jessica’s initials as the inspiration for its name. “I set up the business because after I gave birth to her I wanted to return to work,” Ford explained. “The business I working for then wouldn't let me go back part time. So I thought, ‘Well, blow you, I'll set up my own business - let me do it for myself.’ But 11 years ago I split the business in two. So JML is a mortgage and protection broker and I have a wealth management business, which is part of St. James's Place.”
Its range of services includes providing advice on mortgages, equity release, life and income protection. Ford has come a long way since leaving school and becoming a dental nurse for three years. She switched to financial services at the age of 19 after shrewdly working out that if she wanted to move out of home and get her own place, she would need to work in a bank to enjoy a better rate of mortgage. Ford actually joined a building society and eventually moved to an estate agency chain, where she worked as an inhouse mortgage broker.
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A strong work ethic
Underpinning her career has been a strong work ethic instilled in her by her father, who would remind her that he had come from a relatively modest background and had set up his own business. “So indirectly, I've done exactly the same,” Ford said. “My father instilled in me that you've got to go out there to do it for yourself. No one else is going to do it for you. As I got older, I saw how he had gone from nothing to doing very well, and I realised, ‘Okay, to do that, you've got to work hard.’ So I went from having a paper round at 13, to working at Waitrose after school and going straight to work at 16. When I was working in an estate agency, I used to enjoy earning commission and earning more money, and that drove me to carry on.”
When she established JML, former colleagues who had gone on to set up their own estate agencies, referred clients to her, and the business grew through recommendation. It now has a team of five, including her broker husband Dan, taking on staff to help embed new, streamlined processes, and is supporting its personnel to undertake broker training.
Ford acknowledges that as the business has evolved, she has changed too. “It's been really quite difficult actually being a woman in this industry because it's very much been a man's world,” she said. “I think there are a lot of women who are now in the industry, who weren't when I first started. I hate to say it, but we've probably kept our heads down and just cracked on. I think the older I have got, the more I've become confident as a person. It's only now that we've stuck our heads up and said, ‘Yeah, look at us, we're here and we've been here for almost 25 years.’ We're solid, and we have had clients all of this time, offering them service and customer experience from the start.”
Greater numbers of meetings at JML have taken place via online meetings since the pandemic, enabling it to complete a higher volume of mortgages. “That’s definitely helped us since COVID,” Ford shared. “This year's generally been very busy. There's been a lot of activity - a lot of people coming off five-year fixed rates. I'm definitely not going anywhere for sure - as long as I need to work, I will be doing this.”
