Having more adviser academies offering long term employed roles would be a ‘game changer’ for getting new talent into the industry, according to Rob Atherton, chartered financial planner.
Speaking to FT Adviser, Atherton discussed the ways more young advisers could be brought into the profession but emphasised “there was no exact science” to recruiting new talent.
Atherton often posts polls on LinkedIn to gauge what his network thinks when it comes to addressing the advice gap and encouraging younger talent to choose the profession.
In one of the polls, Atherton asked, 'how do we help 50,000 to 100,000 people successfully train and flourish as financial advisers?'
Some 66 per cent of respondents said there was a need for long term employed roles.
Atherton said: “I have had young people reach out to me asking where to find academies that offer employed roles and I have tried to help them but I only know one academy that does it.
"Most other academies entail the adviser to be self-employed and build their own business.
“But if I’m a young person who has just come out of university with debt, life is pretty tough and they don’t want to be self-employed. So a game changer would be more companies creating mass market employed adviser academies.”
Atherton said he has heard instances of people self-studying toward their diploma but then giving up because of the lack of employed roles on offer.
He said: “I do try to help people and tell them to put highly bespoke applications together to local firms and eventually some do find a role, but it is incredibly hard work.
"And it is different to other professions like law and accountancy where you see roles advertised in small, medium and large companies across the country, all the time.”
Atherton felt there needed to be a lot of work done at academy level to be more hands on and supportive with trainees.
He said: “An academy is probably going to put out a glossy brochure and tell everybody it's fun to be an adviser. Yet when people are in the academies, their heads go down, they lose confidence.
“There needs to be a more hands on and nurturing approach rather than just being volume based. But again these are self employed academies so the people on them are going to be sweating, trying to work out where the income is coming from.”
He believed a longer term approach was needed by academies adding “it takes one to two years to launch an adviser, not three to six months.”
Atherton also thought the first out of the big advice firms to offer employed trainee adviser roles will be “inundated”.
“What this will allow the large firms to do is to take on people who simply will not come into our profession, because they don't want the risk of being self employed or setting up their own business.
“To be fair, there are a lot of practices within those companies out there that will offer employed roles but to get to them you've got to dig them out or be introduced by the recruiters of those companies,” he added.
Improved visibility
Atherton believed there needed to be better visibility to show exactly what it is a financial adviser does and the impact advice can have on a client’s life.
He thought having financial planning discussed at schools as a specialism will get more younger people interested.
He said: “Financial planning isn't on the syllabus at schools, and when we get to choose specialisms, we can choose french, maths, history. So, if we could actually get financial planning on the syllabus, then all of a sudden it becomes visible to 11 to 18-year-olds who would potentially then think about it.
“Among my peers, some became doctors, some became lawyers, some became accountants, nobody thought about financial planning at school and I just fell into it as a second career.”
Atherton felt that to increase visibility, the profession needed to actively show the public what it means to be a financial planner.
“Clients thank their advisers because they know the value the advice has provided them. So why are advisers not in the same category as doctors and nurses because we change people's lives for the good as well,” he added.
Atherton said the advice industry was also a fragmented one and in order to get more younger people entering the profession there needed to be a collaborative approach across the entire sector.
He said: “You always see IFAs having debates with non-IFAs and there are always advisers bickering with each other on social media about topics. We need to come together for the greater good to promote our profession but it needs to be a top down approach at the moment it is just bottom up.”
Impact of having fewer advisers
Atherton feared if more advisers didn’t start to enter the industry there would be fewer good outcomes.
He said: “There's going to be more people stressed, worried about money which is going to cause more physical and mental health issues. That is what's going to happen to these clients when the 50 per cent of advisers that we think are going to retire, do.
“Clients will suffer, the profession will suffer and AI isn't the answer. All these people who say AI is the answer are not actual advisers.”
Atherton said while AI will empower advisers and put the ‘fun’ back in the role it will not take away their ability to bring a client’s aspirations to life by having face-to-face interactions.
alina.khan@ft.com
