Planners avoid job market gloom

While the employment market in other sectors, including parts of financial services, is looking decidedly grim in the face of a slowing world economy and the after effects of September 11, the prospects for advisers appears comparatively up beat.

Tanya Edwards, a senior consultant with specialist financial services recruitment agency Robert Walters, says the planning industry has been largely sheltered from the doom and gloom pervading other job markets.

“In financial planning, which is predominantly a sales focused role, there hasn’t been many people being made redundant,” Edwards says.

“It is an area where, if other areas are slowing off or holding back, there still seems to be an emphasis on making sure there are enough planning staff around so that when a boom comes they are ready and raring to go.”

However, Edwards says the solid market for planners is not only about expectations about the future demand for wealth management advice, but also about the very heightened demand for advice right now, particularly from those who have not been so lucky in the job market themselves.

It is a claim that is backed up by a number of major dealer groups.

In recent months, groups like Chifley Financial Services and RetireInvest have had a boost to their business from a range of organisations looking to build a financial advice service into the redundancy package they offer employees.

“Redundancies are good news for some financial planning groups,” Chifley financial planning general manager Peter Dawson says.

“Redundancy, as a part of our business, has picked up by 20 per cent in the past few months, and we expect this to increase another 10 per cent in the next three months.”

Of course, no one is expecting the spate of redundancies making their way across corporate Australia to sustain the employment prospects of financial planners over the long-term. But at a time when many other job markets are struggling, it does appear to have given planners an unexpected boost.

“Unlike other areas that can be influenced very much by what is happening in the market, planners have it good,” Edwards says.

“When times are good they get clients with big bonuses and when times are bad they get clients with big redundancy packages and retrenchment bonuses.”