The Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) is launching a new campaign that includes promoting the advice profession as an attractive option for career changers.
Speaking on an FAAA webinar on 29 October, chief executive Sarah Abood and chair David Sharpe unpacked its strategic priorities for the next six years.
One of these priorities is to “substantially grow the number of professional financial advisers”.
To drive this mission, the FAAA will soon be launching a new consumer brand awareness campaign. This will include the promotion of the advice profession as an ideal option for career changers looking to switch jobs.
Abood explained: “We’re not ignoring school students, but we really want to focus on career changers as being the new entrants to the profession who are more likely to be able to be up and running quickly. They also bring great life experience and emotional intelligence and so many qualities to the profession.
“We think that’s a really important source of new [financial] planners for the future.”
The campaign will also promote the value of advice to consumers and the certified financial planner (CFP) designation as the highest standard in financial planning.
Earlier this year, the chief executive called for a greater number of career changers to move into the profession, such as accountants or teachers.
This is the second campaign aimed at career changers in recent months, as Striver and BT launched the Striver Career Pathways Program in September, an online-based learning and development program that addresses the adviser shortage in Australia.
The course is aimed towards career changers, advice support staff looking to upskill, and university graduates. In conjunction with Striver, BT’s mission is to introduce 5,000 new advisers to the profession over the next decade.
Another move the FAAA is enacting to boost adviser numbers is a memorandum of understanding signed with the Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB) in India, which will provide a critical new source of international talent for the Australian market.
“That’s an area where clearly there are a lot of financial planners and students. We also have such a strong community with Indian heritage here in Australia.
“If we are able to free up cross-border opportunities and education for people who might be practising or thinking about studying in India to come to Australia, we think that’s one way we can really help drive the pipeline and those international opportunities are very much part of what we are looking at,” the CEO said.
Speaking with Money Management, Count chief executive Hugh Humphrey similarly recognised career changers as an important source of future advisers.
He said: “As a profession we need to be trying to create programs that bring in career changers from other industries so that financial planning can win out over the competition of other professions. Teachers make great financial planners.
“We could also look at other jurisdictions where there are concentrations of CFPs. Could we work across the profession to create a pathway for international migration to bolster numbers of financial planners?”
Also speaking on the FAAA webinar, Sharpe said that boosting the cohort of Australian advisers remains critical as falling numbers is an “existential threat” to the industry.
“The declining numbers of our profession, if I can be blunt, is an existential threat to financial planning. That’s more of a medium- to long-term issue. We know it may not be affecting our members right now, but if you’ve got a business and you need staff in two or three years’ time, it’s absolutely going to be impacting you,” he remarked.
It’s astonishing to see the FAAA now pushing for more advisers by courting “career changers” and international recruits, given their previous efforts to stifle career stability within Australia. The association actively campaigned against the experience pathway—supposedly to “appease members”—and when that strategy floundered, they lobbied for a sunset clause to ensure it would “expire.”
Having failed on both fronts, they’re now attempting to solve the very problem they helped create by filling vacancies with “teachers” and professionals from overseas, like India. This is the predictable outcome when an organisation lacks core principles; they chase the latest demand, catering to whatever or whoever is making the most noise. It’s disappointing to see the FAAA, once again, prioritising short-term solutions over sustainable support for Australian advisers.