Financial planning remains a “candidate-short” market and the next six months at least will see fierce competition between firms to hire the best staff, according to a leading recruitment agency.
Nick Murphy, regional director for recruitment firm Hays, says financial planning businesses need to “start thinking outside the box” when looking for staff and not necessarily rely on the obvious sources of the past.
“Until recently, it hasn’t been a huge issue, because firms have not been hiring a lot,” Murphy says.
“If they came across a good candidate they could take them on. But with FoFA and the way the market was last year, firms have been willing to hold on.”
While proposed changes to the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) rules provide certainty to many firms and allow business owners to turn their attention once again to growth and development, Murphy says competition means there is less incentive for potential job candidates to go out and voluntarily develop relevant skills and expertise.
“I would not say we’ve seen a massive upturn in people going out and upskilling themselves in terms of financial planning”, he says.
Financial planning firms may therefore have to take on relatively inexperienced or unskilled staff and invest in training and development.
“They will need to look for people that have good sales skills, and an aptitude for financial services or finance,” he says.
“People coming out of banks may be OK; or people who develop up though a financial planning firm more vertically, like paraplanners. That’s why the next six months will be interesting.”
Murphy says financial planning businesses will need to develop compelling employment propositions, and think beyond the straight financial aspects.
“It’s not just offering the biggest base salary, but offering the potential for incentive schemes to be lucrative,” he says.
“Each practice is structured a little bit differently and each owner or partner may be prepared to give away a little bit more than others: the ability for work-life balance; rostered days off; flexible working hours.
Meanwhile, financial planing firm Synchron has heralded “the return of a free financial advice market” as a result of the government-proposed FoFA changes relating to grandfathering. In a statement, Synchron managing director Don Trapnell said the firm was once again “on the adviser recruitment trail”.
“With the incoming government’s amendments to FoFA, Synchron can now get back to the business of helping advisers to move away from restrictive institutionally owned licensees and in the process give consumers a real option when it comes to financial advice,” Trapnell said.
