CISI to launch recruitment support initiatives in 2022

Sally Plant, head of financial planning at CISI, told FTAdviser that the Institute wanted to make “2022 a year to apply some planning theories to ourselves". 

She said the CISI needed to "identify and implement a strategy to meet our own aspirations of what we want to deliver to our members; and understand how we build on our history to ensure we grow as the home of financial planning, not just for our CFPs, but also for our wider planning community.”

Plant said she wants to “pause, assess, evaluate and then innovate” for the future, and plans to launch initiatives to support members in their recruitment efforts, given the barriers to growth facing the profession and the succession planning process.  

Let's come together as a profession and promote ourselves.Plant

“LinkedIn is littered with firms trying to find good paraplanners, and, as a professional body, we want to help you find them,” she said.

 “A Jobsonline tool will be available initially to our accredited firms, to give exclusive and direct access to schools and university students who have completed CISI examinations alongside their degree or A-levels. 

“These young adults have studied and sat exams outside their core subjects; many will have also been on bootcamps, employability days and work experience.”

She said the CISI’s inaugural joint conference with NextGen Planners will also raise the profile of financial planning for many young individuals.

“For Generation Z, planning should be a really desirable profession,” she said. “Flexible, work life balance, remuneration, opportunity for exposure in big corporates or smaller boutique firms, ongoing learning that includes mental wellbeing courses, climate change and fintech. This all resounds with them.”

Plant said the CISI’s job was to start communicating that, not just to smaller cohorts but in droves.  

“Businesses have exceptional growth plans and are at client capacity. Let's come together as a profession and promote ourselves.”

More widely, Plant said financial services professionals have found 2021 to be about crafting the "new norm of hybrid".

She said changing arrangements has become acceptable, as has complementing social contact with social media and apps. 

Plant listed the new-world advice arrangements as: “Hybrid office working, hybrid client meeting offer; digitalising client processes; and designing face-to-face events that can move quickly and efficiently online."

And, for the CISI itself, she said 2021 had been a year of "innovation, exploration and excitement".

Plant explained that, throughout the year, CISI launched the MyCISI global member App, started masterclasses, created specific programs for its accredited firms and produced project action groups to address important issues such as professional indemnity insurance.

“2021 has reinforced the importance of goals based financial planning, understanding the clients’ total needs not just one aspect in isolation,” she said. 

“Regulation is supporting this move, clients want this needs-based advice, in some cases allowing the client to focus and think for the first time about their actual goals and explore their own life planning."

sonia.rach@ft.com

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