Indeed, unless you had a relative who was ‘in the business’ it would be really odd to speak to a young child and find they had aspirations to dispense mortgage advice when they became a grown up.
That said, perhaps if we had better financial education in schools from an early age, we might see more people deciding a career within financial advice would be one worth pursuing. It’s safe to say that while there has been improvement in terms of getting new blood into the industry, we’re not exactly up there with the big accountancy firms, or the public service, in terms of our recruitment expertise.
One of the big issues for advisory firms looking to expand and bring on board more advisers is not just around the initial recruitment but how they might tap into those parts of the market where advisers exist but not in a multi-tie capacity. After the MMR a large number of lenders jettisoned such staff and there has clearly been a move from this type of in-house advice to independent, whole of market operations, but you have to wonder whether we, as an industry, are truly showing the opportunities available and, very importantly, the training and CPD path for ‘new’ recruits.
There’s also the pathway for those within single-tie entities who might have ambitions to run their own practice – for some it may seem like several leaps forward and somewhat daunting to be sat there as an in-house adviser for a lender and yet wanting to work for yourself or begin the journey towards owning your own firm and having staff and advisers working for you.
Now, of course, for those that have been there and done it, in terms of setting up our businesses, we can probably say that while it was (and remains) hard work, it has not been insurmountable. All the perceived hoops to jump through and obstacles to overcome were frustrating and challenging at the time, but not too debilitating in hindsight. While there will have been sleepless nights and hard choices along the way, we did all get there.
However, if there was a clearer pathway and (at the same time) considerable support and resource to be able to do this, we suspect more lender/bank/corporate staff would like to do it themselves and set off on that journey. Certainly from our experience as a network, we know there are many advisers who, a) want to become self-employed, b) want to have their own firm, c) would like to be part of a network, and d) may eventually want to stick on this path or perhaps become DAs.
That, to us, seems perfectly reasonable and one of our more recent aims was to be better at providing this type of opportunity to new recruits. So, for instance, we can offer individuals an initial home within our own advisory firm, where they trade as self-employed advisers with all the support you would anticipate. However, running alongside this, we are also working with the individuals to help them set up their AR firm, to secure their FCA authorisation, to brand their business, set up their website, and everything else that needs doing when you’re establishing a firm.
This has tended to work very well for those advisers who are not just coming from the banks and building societies, but those who have been employed at the larger corporate advice firms who are looking to establish their own businesses. Providing this outlet means they can own their own client bank, spend the intervening months developing their service offering with an umbrella over their head, before they (and the FCA) are ready to go on their own. Plus, of course, at this point they keep that network umbrella over them and they are comfortable working within the set-up and used to the processes and requirements.
The point is that, for those with an entrepreneurial zeal or those who simply want to be their own boss, the opportunities exist to move towards that path not in daunting leaps but in smaller steps. This will get advisers to the point where they want to be and put control firmly back in their hands.
We might not all have dreamt of being advisers as kids but now that we’re in the profession, it’s important to make sure we’re working at the top of our game and getting the most out of that work. If you do want to go it alone, the time could be right and it could be now.
