Mr Balgarnie shares this view, and says firms must take responsibility to address this well-documented concern if they wish to stave off significant ramifications that may be approaching sooner rather than later.
“As an industry we have to develop the advisers that we want and if we don’t commit to bringing a younger and more diversified advisory team into the industry then we will suffer heavily and possibly quite quickly as well,” he says.
Embracing technology
Some may have worries over how younger advisers will be greeted by their older clients, but the reverse is also true: the next generation can provide a more effective way of targeting that other holy grail for advice firms, younger clients.
How consumers receive advice in the not too distant future is a subject of great current debate. The introduction of digital advice solutions has hogged the headlines, but the technology advisers use to build and monitor financial plans is also changing dramatically. As an indication of the speed of transition, at the turn of the decade numerous advice firms still used paper factfinds, even though electronic versions were readily available. This behaviour could arguably be attributed to a proportion of older advisers – especially those close to retirement – being unwilling to change procedures as working life drew to a close.
According to Mark Loosmore, UK executive manager wealth at financial services technology firm IRESS, younger advisers are best positioned to embrace these technological advances.
“They are brought up with technology literally at their fingertips. There’s always a smartphone or tablet in their hands,” he says, explaining that this is the case for both advisers and consumers. “The clients coming into the market are expecting to be communicated with via technology and see technology used in front of them. That’s a real benefit for the advisers who find that quite natural in the first place,” he concludes.
