The more I talk to people in and around the wealth management industry, the more I am convinced we are witnessing the beginning of a new era in advice. What a time to be alive.
We have arrived at a crease in time when people in the business are being forced to start thinking ahead one, two and five years, and they’re making plans for what type of adviser they want to be and what type of business they want to be in – those who are sticking around, that is.
There are those who will be packing it in, and sometimes it feels like this group is making most of the noise.
Then there will be a forgotten other group, who will be removing themselves from the front line, but will continue to work in some kind of advisory or consulting role to the advice business they’ve built or one they want to continue to grow.
Those I have spoken to who are sticking around already talk about a post-2024 world where they envision success never imagined by those who have trodden the advice territory before them. This potential for success, they imagine, will be underpinned by a new layer of trust, earned thanks to a resetting of minimum education standards and a handling of conflicts of interest in a way that’s more befitting a profession in the eyes of individuals seeking advice relating to their hard-earned savings.
To get there, business models will need to change. What’s possible or plausible post-2024 is still being defined – a process that is moving at breakneck speed when you consider these types of movements have historically happened over generations, instead of being fast-tracked over five or six years, as is the case here.
At Professional Planner, we’re tracking the movements and machinations of advisers, how they’re shaping their advice strategies and what structures they’re setting up to enable them to express their advice offerings in a post-2024 world.
To understand how the industry is evolving we are partnering with research firm CoreData on project code named “Yucatan” to draw out of existing and emerging industry participants what the future of advice will look like. The quantitative component of this project has been completed and we are slowly releasing the early-stage findings as well as feeding this knowledge into or coverage and events curation. The qualitative component of this study is ongoing and involves a series of focus groups. Watch this space for further and deeper insights.
Day by day, morsel by morsel, we are tracking these movements and trends in Professional Planner Online (sign up to receive our daily email if you haven’t already), but we’re also taking the time to step back and look at the bigger picture as it takes shape. Stay tuned for a fresh looking and more functional Professional Planner website which is scheduled to be completed by the end of November.
The way I see it, the more new purpose-built bodies such as the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) begin to exert their legislated influence, and the more the selfinterests responsible for eroding previously principled actions such as the Future of Financial Advice reforms appear to fall away, the more beautiful the bigger picture is becoming.
Bring on the future of advice.
