In terms of the business itself, can you name one to three things that you would have liked more help or advice on in the early stages of becoming an adviser?
“So I didn't know what a pension was,” he said. “I definitely didn't know how investment markets really worked.
“The only way I could bridge that gap, and Axa and MetLife are actually very good at this, was encouraging their staff to upskill themselves.
“The two companies I worked for definitely were so for me bridging that gap was through technical exams. I started out going through the CII, the PFS route towards becoming a chartered financial planner.
“Every one of those modules during that journey taught me another part of the technicalities of the role we do and of the sector that we work in.”
Rocha Lima said without that technical knowledge, it would have been a lot harder to get to the point where he could put humans first.
“Knowing what I know, and then knowing what I didn't know and having a professional qualification track to be able to fill that gap is what gave me the confidence to be able to be a client centric financial planner today,” he said.
The peak of his professional career was the certified financial planner qualification which made him understand all of those different modules.
“How can I put them all together to best serve the client? It's not about any product anymore,” he said.
“It's not about matching a need to a product to a need anymore. It's about having a conversation around the client's needs, those technical tools that were in my tool bag, and how the client should be able to have more clarity with regards to their financial life by having that client first approach to financial planning.”
Lastly, what is the one thing you cannot live without?
"Well, I think the one thing any financial planner shouldn't be able to live without is a great team around them," he said.
"Everyone is a beneficiary of that."
"Each person who is fulfilling that role and trying to do it and do it to the best of their ability, but also the client who feels confident in the fact that there is more than one qualified pair of eyes looking holistically at their plan at their investments."
He said a great team is essential more than anything else.
If you own your own advice firm and would like to get involved with the Coffee Corner interview series, contact deputy news editor Sonia Rach via email at sonia.rach@ft.com
