Turning to support staff for future advisers

To help entice admin and support staff to become advisers, BFG Financial Group has developed a system where it’s junior staff can progress to financial adviser with the support of the firm.

In the current shrinking talent pool of financial advisers to hire from, BFG almost exclusively trains its advisers from within, starting them in support or admin roles.

“We actually prefer them coming here raw,” BFG founder and managing director Suzanne Haddan tells Professional Planner.

Students and young people can work while they study and, at the same time, “get great insight into the actual practical day-to-day of being in a financial advice firm”.

“It helps them accelerate a bit more because they’re getting experience from the bottom up to know how things are done.”

BFG’s pipeline from support staff to financial adviser has been the foundation of the firm’s hires with the five management team members having all come through that system.

“One of the other shareholders and directors started working 24 years ago in an administrative role,” Haddan says.

The fully qualified advisers who have already come through BFG’s process “say you can’t be what you can’t see” and being able to experience the job firsthand means they see exactly what they’re getting into.

BFG’s commitment to serving younger clients has required the hire of younger advisers. Due to a lack of new advisers in the talent pool, the firm has found a solution to bypass this problem by training young people up from administrative roles.

Haddan says the firm is prepared to invest time and money to bring young people through the process from working in administrative roles to becoming financial advisers.

However, she acknowledges that not everyone will want to progress all the way to financial adviser or stay with BFG if they do become full advisers.

“We absolutely accept that if you get to a certain level and we can’t progress you, you go with our blessing.”

But outside of BFG, Pursue Wealth financial adviser Julia Armstrong is another example of somebody who began in an administrative role and is now a full financial adviser.

Armstrong has been in the industry for 10 years, starting in a support staff role as a client services officer at 4oward before university.

 “If you’re going from client services implementation and moving on to a professional year, that’s the best way to learn from the ground up,” Armstrong says.

“If you’re coming straight from university into a professional year associate role, it’s really hard to have that holistic understanding of financial advice, because you don’t have the inner workings behind your belt.”

Haddan provided an example of an employee who spent a couple of years at the firm having previously not wanted to do financial advice. The employee moved states but continued along the path to become a financial adviser following her time at BFG.

This process of hiring advisers works both ways as the future advisers provide “valuable support” to the firm and get to experience the journey with the backing of the firm.

Older advisers approaching the end of their career can help support staff through the process to becoming fully qualified advisers.

“Bringing them through that journey so that they’re helping you and a bit of a transition I think would be good,” Haddan says.

The firm places value on every employee, from support staff to financial advisory assistant to fully qualified financial adviser.

An interesting example of an adviser starting in an administrative role is Haddan’s own son, Michael Baldry, who was one of the early ones to go through the provisional adviser process.

“From the very beginning, I told him how interesting accounting and financial advice was,” Haddan says.

“It wasn’t until he was here in administration and reception working part time when he was doing his undergraduate degree, Bachelor of Commerce, that he actually saw how interesting it was and how you add value to people.”