Striver has given itself the lofty goal of adding 5000 new entrants into the financial advice profession over the next 10 years.
Ahead of the advice recruiter’s Brimstone event in Sydney on Monday, Striver founder Alisdair Barr tells Professional Planner this can be done using multiple avenues, namely university students and support staff in all areas of the financial services industry.
Striver launched the inaugural Brimstone event in Sydney last September, and has since expanded it with dates in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane earlier this year.
Additionally, they have recently launched Striver Career Pathways, a program to create pathways for students and other qualified candidates to join the financial advice profession.
Barr says the program allows organisations who have staff that are “working in and around financial planners” to opt-in through a structured career pathway to become advisers if they choose.
“What this does is now allows us to bring into the profession not just university students, as we’ve historically done, but support staff,” Barr says.
This new mission to introduce 5000 entrants to the advice profession is intended to combat the shortage of new advisers as the number of Australians seeking advice is expected to increase.
“The plan is to work with other financial services institutions through insurance, super, investments, industry, funds [and] technology,” Barr says.
“Each of those organisations come in and work with their staff, build career development pathways for their staff and then we connect them with the profession.”
Since the conclusion of the Hayne royal commission, the advice industry lost over 12,000 advisers with the profession currently home to 15,516 advisers according to research from Wealth Data.
The researcher found the most new entrants that have joined the profession in a year was 403 which in 2023, with only a few hundred joining in 2021 and 2022.
But a lack of central planning and advocacy has left advice off the radar for potential candidates to join the industry.
Research from CoreData and Vanguard earlier this year found almost 14,000 new advisers would be needed to fill the advice gap, outlining the dire need for the industry to take action to recruit qualified talent.
The pipeline of support staff to financial adviser has become more common as advice businesses struggle to hire new advisers.
Barr argues creating structure through the Career Pathways Program software is essential if Striver wants to succeed in placing 5000 new financial advisers into the profession over the next 10 years.
“Having structure and having all the participants and the beneficiaries of the advice profession contributing to growing the pool through a mechanism and a piece of software that actually maps that out, delivers it, connects it and neighbours it is the key,” Barr says.
The program software provides continued support for future advisers throughout their career development. Whether the participant is a student or have started their career, either in financial services or another industry, the program tracks their development on the way to becoming an adviser.
Barr describes Striver as “the beneficiaries of the advice profession”. Advice businesses are increasingly in need of more advisers and the Striver Career Pathways program aims to somewhat fill the gap.
“All of the [organisations] partner with Striver because they’re invested in the future of the profession and they want to build a sustainable future,” Barr says.
