“All roads do not lead to Rome.”
Being a Financial Adviser is not the be all and end all, in fact there are different routes in the Financial Advisory Business. What you eventually take depends on what you want out of life, your talent and passion.
Are you someone who really enjoys the challenge of “climbing the corporate ladder”? Are you someone who wants to be the person in charge, make your own decisions? Do you feel you have leadership qualities inside you? These questions need to be answered before you can really decide whether you are better suited to the Financial Adviser Career, as a Practitioner or Financial Services Manager or go along the Corporate path.
As a Practitioner, you’ll serve clients over their lifetime’s financial needs, which evolve as they grow in their careers, net worth and family situation. You have to keep up-to-date with current affairs, changing regulations, evolving products and even the competition. A good practitioner also works on building loyal lifetime clientele, which means that you must continuously value-add to the relationship. As clients grow more sophisticated, you also have to grow in competency in providing financial advice like investments and estate planning.
In the business aspect, a financial services practitioner has to systematize his business in the areas of marketing, administration/operations and most important of all customer relationship management. Your job will be to build pipelines for new business, so you have a consistent flow of referrals and leads.
With more clients, you can expect more admin work, which eats into your eyeball to eyeball time with your clients. Without a proper system of managing admin like form filling, and operational issues like Investment Portfolio adjustments, your customer care will suffer.
Clients like to be treated well, so implementing different ways of keeping in contact with them, rewarding them and enrolling them as your advocates makes the difference between a great and mediocre financial adviser.
With a well organized business system and the right clientele, you’ll be enjoying a great quality of life as a Financial Advisory Practitioner in no time.
Required: Enjoys being put into a sales and customer service role, able to think and act as a small business owner, have a passion for people and financial topics
Managers earn a portion on the profitability of advisers they recruit, called over-riding. However, in my opinion, the Management path is an over-sold concept by many financial advisory companies. While it certainly makes sense financially when you think of it as leveraging, it is only profitable if you can grow a large and loyal team of financial advisers, or a smaller group of highly profitable individual advisers.
Time notwithstanding, to grow large and/or profitable, the agency or group has better have a good system of (1) Training, (2) Marketing Activities and (3) strong Culture.
In the first few years, it can be really tough to balance personal sales, client servicing, recruitment coaching and management. Managers with little years of experience, who embark on the management career too early without a stable client base, run the risk of losing steam before his/her group gain critical mass.
In the later years, recruited advisers may leave for competitors with a better deal, due change in their career or family aspirations or even retirement. Good managers should always plan for succession and redundancies within the group structure, and constantly look for new markets and opportunities to steer the group towards.
If you have the skills and passion for coaching and mentoring young people, you’ll do very well and enjoy life as a Financial Services Manager.
Required: Enjoys being put into a coach and mentor role, able to think and act as a leader, have a passion for people and excel in strategic roles
Finally the Corporate path applies to (1) financial advisers working in a banking environment and (2) financial advisers that eventually get into corporate roles in the same industry. A corporate move can be a push into senior executive positions like Vice President or head of departments, or even overseas assignments Many senior positions in banks are often ex-Private bankers.
It can also work out for those who find themselves not suitable for front-line financial advisory, but can add value as an employee in middle office or supervisory/training roles.
Required: Enjoys working in a corporate environment, ambition to climb the corporate ladder, able to think and act as a leader or a good team member
Next: Begin a process of self-discovery by reading:
0 until now
Add your Comment!