Adviser aims to tap into a sport that's growing in popularity
As a dedicated soccer fan and an up-and-coming mortgage broker, Nouran Moustafa (pictured) wants to corner a market that she believes has plenty of potential – advising the rising stars of women’s football.
Moustafa believes that as the profile of the women’s game grows, so too will the opportunity to provide tailored advice to its most successful players – and she intends to take a piece of the action, keen to develop it as her market specialism. She says it’s an opportunity, too, for lenders to score, with bespoke products which suit the particular challenges facing professional female players.
The beautiful game has long been a source of fascination for Moustafa - both on the pitch, when she played herself, and now as a spectator, enjoying watching matches. It’s the only thing that can distract her from mortgages, it seems. “I’m a massive, massive fan of football,” Moustafa told Mortgage Introducer. “It's the only thing that can get me to put aside a mortgage application, forget the swap rates, and everything going on in the market, and just watch it. When I see football, I can't see anything else on Earth. In terms of football - and women’s cricket - on a business level, it’s a huge market, and personally I've got so much passion for it.
Egyptian-born Moustafa played when she was younger. “It's not like I was Lauren Hemp, one of the best professional players,” she said. “In Egypt, it's very hard even for a male footballer to succeed - Mohamed Salah is exceptional.” But the football-loving broker identifies differences between the men’s and women’s sport, which require different approaches to the mortgage and financial planning needed for its big names. “The main problem we have now is that advisers are approaching the market the same as they would approach if for a male player,” Moustafa noted.
“There’s a higher level of injuries in the female game. A male footballer is not going to retire before 35-years-of-age – a woman will be retiring at 30, maybe even 27 or 28, because of the extremely high probability of injury, compared to the men's game. So, as an adviser, you need to understand their unique needs. The priority is to give the right advice. It’s about fitting finance into people's life, not fitting people into finance.”
Read more: Mortgage's next big thing
Are lenders missing a trick?
Moustafa would like to see partnerships between advisers and lenders to better support the female stars of the sport. She praises Barclays’ involvement in women’s football, but believes it’s missing a trick. “It’s amazing that Barclays has sponsored the Women’s Super League,” Moustafa said, “but why doesn’t it create some products that would be suitable to help financially plan for the future of these players, and provide a more stable future for them? If you advise a male footballer, you will say to him, ‘Yes, let's build up a property portfolio, to help you generate income for retirement’, but did anyone take into account the massive pay gap between male and female players? The women's game is growing hugely in England – we have seen the Women’s Football Association opening new pitches and The King present MBEs to female icons of the game, and people are trying to encourage young girls to play, but we need to have products in the market that would suit their lifestyle and the life cycle of female players. This will encourage more women to follow their passion and feel financially secure.”
Based on her career to date, Moustafa seems destined for success advising women sports stars.
Having arrived in London from Cairo, at 17 - and still only 23 - she’s already trained and qualified in specialties such as equity release and commercial finance, and focuses on the mortgage and protection needs of her mostly high net worth clients. As if her job as a broker isn’t busy enough, she is also part way into her master’s degree in financial engineering. This is no small achievement for someone who struggled to find the right words to order a pizza when she first got to England, keen to establish herself in a democratic country where someone could thrive on the basis of their ability and hard work. “The best thing about the UK is that if you put enough effort in, you will see a reward,” she said. “It doesn't matter where you're from, and this is where I want to build my career.”
