Just 6% of female paraplanners want to be advisers

Just 6 per cent of female paraplanners said they would like to go on to become a financial adviser, while 17 per cent said they might become an IFA, according to data published by Quilter’s financial planning arm last week (June 1).

In addition, more than five times the number of male paraplanners (41 per cent) said they would like to become a financial adviser, with 21 per cent saying they might like to.

Paraplanning has previously been viewed as a gateway to becoming a financial adviser but this research shows that it is becoming a profession within its own right.Mark Pittaccio, Quilter Financial Planning

This means the vast majority (77 per cent) of female paraplanners do not want to become financial advisers, compared to the minority (38 per cent) of male paraplanners not looking to take up the profession.

Of the 120 paraplanners surveyed, Quilter also looked more closely at those who had been in their roles for three years or less.

Male paraplanners in this category were more likely to consider a career in advice, but female paraplanners were more likely to not want to advise - despite most of them having, or being in the process of obtaining, QCF level 4.

“Paraplanning has previously been viewed as a gateway to becoming a financial adviser but this research shows that it is becoming a profession within its own right,” said Quilter Financial Planning’s business consultant and behavioural economist, Mark Pittaccio.

“However, while this is positive it is odd that there continues to be such a big difference between the aspirations of female and male paraplanners.

It is incredibly important that we breakdown whatever systems are in place that are contributing to these differences in aspirations.Mark Pittaccio, Quilter Financial Planning

“The research shows that even when individuals are attracted into the industry the decision to become an adviser is heavily biased towards males. Surveys of financial adviser communities have shown that misperceptions about the nature of financial planning, particularly amongst women, strongly affect their interest in becoming financial planners.”

Pittaccio said there continues to be a perception that advice requires strong sales skills, so showing women that advice is instead far more about creating long-lasting relationships with clients may help attract them to the advice profession.

“It is incredibly important that we breakdown whatever systems are in place that are contributing to these differences in aspirations and ultimately improve the profession,” he explained.

“One of the points we need to address is the vicious circle where women see fewer visible role models in the profession as they are underrepresented and then are less likely to a pursue a career in the sector. Breaking this cycle will go some way to helping to improve the diversity of the profession.”

A number of challenges have already been highlighted by female paraplanners across the industry as to why so few women enter advice. 

According to a report published by the Personal Finance Society in April which collated experiences from 15 women in the financial planning industry across the UK, the advice industry is still promoting sexist stereotypes and barriers to female career progression.

One woman in the report accused advice firms of hiring administrators in their 50s in order “to mitigate the disruption” of young women leaving their businesses to have children, hence stalling women’s careers.

More recently, Mazars’ paraplanner Sarah Lees spoke at the CISI's Paraplanner Conference last month on her battle with imposter syndrome in the profession.

She said every time she filed a report to compliance, she could not help but think something she’d submitted was inaccurate, or fear that her firm was going to ‘find her out’ and fire her.

In Lees’ opinion, women working in the advice space and battling against imposter syndrome will never truly get rid of it, but can learn to silence it.

ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com