Erin Rigault works as an IFA at national financial advice firm Continuum. She is passionate about encouraging young people to consider careers as Financial Planners and wants more advisers to work with schools to help find new recruits to the profession and educate young people about money skills. In this guest column for Financial Planning Today she addresses the crisis in finding new advisers.
Current strategies to attract more people into the financial advice profession are not working, in my view, and I believe the problem starts at school.
Last year just 171 financial advisers in the UK were under the age of 25, despite it being possible to qualify as a regulated financial adviser at just 18.
Simply put, too few new advisers are entering the profession, and many of those who do join are doing so as a second career.
This gap between demand and supply has been widely known for several years, with many large wealth management firms opening academies. However, the gap continues to grow. Current strategies do not appear to be working quickly enough.
The problem starts at school. Financial education is not built into the curriculum as it should be. Having children at school myself, seeing the archaic school curriculum, and talking to other mothers and business owners, I see the problem first hand.
Not only does this mean that children are not learning essential financial management skills they will need in life, it may also leave many who might consider joining the profession lacking in confidence and knowledge about making financial advice their career.
It is not just about encouraging more younger people to take Financial Planning-type exams, it is also about finding those with the appropriate aptitude and personal qualities. Qualifications alone are not enough.
Confidence and social skills are just as important in our profession as qualifications. Clients place a high degree of importance on the relationship they develop with their adviser, so the sector needs to attract those younger individuals with the ability and desire to communicate face to face.
Without doing more to attract the right young people into the profession, the foundations could drop away as there will simply not be enough qualified independent financial advisers to meet demand.
It could be tempting for advisers to sit back and see this as someone else’s problem, to be solved by the regulator and large advice firms. But this is a challenge for us all if we want someone to be there to support our clients and their future generations when the time comes for us to step back.
Even the smallest of advice firms should consider doing their bit. Local schools, universities and societies of young people are usually more than happy for advisers to come and tell their students what it is like working in financial advice and help break the damaging stereotypes that often pervade the public’s perception of what it is we do.
I wish I were able to talk to more schools myself and I hope to do more in future.
Today’s young workers are more interested than ever in building their own businesses. This is great news for our profession as there are many roles within Financial Planning that are well suited to self-employment and building one's own empire. We should act now and engage with these youngsters to attract these entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
The future of our profession is genuinely at stake.
Erin Rigault is an Independent Financial Adviser at national financial advice firm Continuum. She is based in Oxfordshire.