Catherine Morgan is ready for change. For too long, women have not had a voice in the world of financial advice, and been unable to confidently seek financial guidance. She puts this down to “the industry still being saturated by 55 year old men in suits,” adding, “there’s nothing wrong with 55 year old men in suits, but it’s just not attuned to how women want to be talking about their finances.”

She maintains that women cannot freely discuss their financial problems in such a male-dominated environment. “Quite often for women it gets very emotional. I’ve had two coaching sessions this week and both women were crying their eyes out within about five minutes of talking about money. They’ve got these past experiences that they haven’t forgiven themselves for, and they haven’t talked about it because it’s still such a taboo subject.”

Money is such a taboo subject among women that, according to one survey, 68% would prefer to talk about their weight than their financial situation. In fact, women would rather speak about health concerns, parenting issues or problems at work with their friends before bringing up the financial elephant in the room.

Even Catherine’s sister is reluctant to discuss her finances with her. “She will disclose her savings but she won’t disclose her income,” Catherine notes. “Why don’t we say ‘I earn 50 grand a year’ or ‘I earn 100 grand a year’? We’re still seen to have this huge issue with talking about money which is definitely a problem. It causes a lot of financial stress in relationships, but it would be easier if more people talked about it.”

One of the ways that Catherine wants to remove this stigma around women talking about money is — unsurprisingly — by talking with women about money. When coaching women about their finances, she beings by asking them about their earliest experiences with money, which gives her a sense of someone’s behaviours and habits.

Catherine’s answer to this question also explains how she ended up in her own personal financial troubles. “My parents divorced when I was little and my dad had loads of money and my mum had none,” she explains. “As I grew up I had loads of issues — I was bullied at school, I had eating disorders through my teens — so because I was very emotional and felt like crap, I’d shop and buy loads of clothes thinking ‘that’ll make me look skinny.’”

Shopping as a means of escape was the result of Catherine not allowing her brain to switch from an emotional to a rational decision. It wasn’t until her 20s that she began to unravel her money story and say to herself: “If I’m emotional with money — no matter whether I’m sad or happy — I need to put some things in place to stop me from doing that.”

Catherine’s biggest vice was going on spending sprees of up to £500 on Amazon, so she took action to prevent this emotional spending from potentially bankrupting her in the future. She deleted her credit card details from her account, filtered all the marketing emails into a separate folder, and if she wanted to buy something she would put it in her basket for 48 hours and only buy it if she still needed it after her self-imposed two-day waiting period had elapsed.

Identifying the root cause of these financial problems, as Catherine was able to do, is the most effective way of changing future behaviour.

“Some people who have debt issues get financial support, but what they don’t get support on is changing their behaviours.”

“What happens is they’ll see a mortgage adviser and consolidate some debt, pay everything off and think ‘I’m back to square one again, I’ll move forward.’ But they don’t get the support on how to do that, and because they don’t shift their pay gears the same thing happens again.”

Catherine has a solution for people struggling to escape their bad financial habits: fintech. In particular, she has identified cashflow modelling software as a crucial tool.

“It can change lives because you can show people what their different scenarios look like, which enables them to make an informed decision about their financial future,” says Catherine. “You can’t do that unless you’re able to plan, and that’s where as an industry we have a lot of technology to show them financial advice isn’t just about flogging a product and taking commission, or being paid to sell your product.”

Technology in the 21st century is weaving its way into every aspect of modern life, and far from being fearful of it, Catherine recognises that financial advisers must move with and adapt to this unstoppable force. “Anyone not embracing the digital age won’t be in business in 10 years. Yes, there has been a huge emergence of robo advice, but it’s not going to take away the need for human financial financial advice — certainly not for our generation.”

Her Money Panel Facebook page is one of many examples of her willingness to incorporate fintech into her work, but even that was met with some resistance — from her own family. “I had a conversation with my brother this week when he asked why my Facebook group was called ‘financial support and guidance for women’. I said ‘because it’s support for women’ and he said ‘well, if a man did that they’d get shot’. No they wouldn’t; it’s just that that’s my audience, and the discussions we have are female-related.’”

Catherine’s mission is to reach a generation of women who would never have previously come forward to seek financial advice, by doing away with jargon and making the advice as accessible and comprehensive as possible through use of technology. With her revolutionary approach to her customers, many could learn from this exciting new wave of financial advice for a previously marginalised clientele.