An imbalance between the demand for financial advice and the number of professionals available to provide it means burnout is increasingly prevalent among advisers.
Just under 15,400 financial advisers on the ASIC Financial Advisers Register are currently servicing 1.8 million clients, according to data from Adviser Ratings, which translates to an average of 115 clients per adviser. However, many professionals are being asked to do more.
Thirdview Financial Planning owner and adviser Peter Foley recalls that in a recent conversation, one peer said they were being asked to see 200 clients a year.
“If you think about seeing 200 clients a year, it’s a hard thing for someone to remember all 200 of their clients and do a great job of having excellent relationships,” Foley tells Professional Planner.
“As much as there’s this commercial benefit in some ways to having a shortage of advisers…the double-edged sword of that is that everyone is busier.”
The volume of work is one factor, but the fact that financial advice is subjected to strict regulation, licensee standards and asset guidelines means there also little room for error.
The back-office team feels the amplified pressure to get their work right because they don’t have as much professional knowledge, while advisers have the “spectre of regulatory disciplinary actions” hanging over their heads, Foley says.
“There are also scenarios where you can go to AFCA [for a dispute] and win, and still there are instances where the licensee then sends the [advice] firm a $12,000 bill, even after they’ve won with no wrong findings,” Foley says.
“Your pressures are different, but they’re equally intense, both in the front and the back office.”
While there was a time when long hours and overtime seemed like a normal part of doing business, they are now considered psychological hazards at workplace which employers are legally obligated to manage under the Work Health and Safety Act introduced in 2023.
AZ NGA Group general manager of human resources Merilyn Speiser says burnout and under resourcing is an endemic feature of wherever there’s human capital being the main resource.
“If you base your profit on a certain number of people at a certain salary, generating a certain revenue, and it was predicated on them working long hours and maybe even some weekend work from time to time…then you’ve got to change your business model because that’s not acceptable anymore,” Speiser says.
From a legal aspect, businesses that fail to address these risks could be fined or face criminal charges in extreme cases. But from a reputational perspective, an organisation known for overloading its employees with works will have a hard time recruiting new talents, which will only exacerbate the problems.
“The people that are there still have to carry this weight, because you’ve got a reputation in the market that says you don’t take those [psychological] risks seriously,” Speiser says.
“Then there’s the human risk – do you really want to break people?”
The productivity question
Behind the issuing of overworking and burnout is the broader discussion of how to improve employee productivity at advice practices.
Many organisations are turning to technology to help reduce the time its staff must spend on repetitive tasks and increase that spent on higher value work. Verse Wealth head of operations Daniel Donovan says the business has an internal project called “Papercuts” to achieve this exact ambition.
“These include things like manual data entry, chasing documents, and switching between platforms just to complete simple actions,” Donovan says.
“While each one is minor, the time and mental energy they consume adds up. This is combined with utilising AI tools like Microsoft Copilot to record client meetings and follow up.”
The firm uses Zapier to automate workflows, aiming to make task ownership clearer, avoid double handling and reduce “context-switching” – meaning when staff needs to change their focus between different projects, apps or priorities.
“We’ve brought in tools to remove repetitive admin and create more consistent workflows, so decisions aren’t being made from scratch every time,” he says.
Thirdview’s Foley says his business is not currently deploying AI as it is not entirely confident of the technology’s accuracy. But it has a peer review process where each step leading up to the formation of a Statement of Advice is cross-checked.
Client expectations
Compared to internal processes, problems which advice businesses perhaps have less control over are often client related. Foley stresses the importance of setting reasonable expectations from the get-go.
“I actually think the regulatory framework assists in that regard,” he says.
“We’ve got to be clear about our client service agreement, that’s the starting point of the scope of work we’re doing for you and name the services we’re going to provide.”
But when dealing with issues like short turn-around time or special requests, advisers need to just evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.
“If a retiree needs extra money because someone’s got to have dental work or there’s some kind of health issue, then of course, you need to prioritise that,” Foley says.
“But it’s good to have standard benchmarks for the business. For example, we say that we respond to any client correspondence within two business days…if the team understands that, then that’s okay.
“The onboarding process is a good opportunity to set expectations around what’s our typical turnaround for certain types of requests that a particular client is likely to have.”
Building a culture of trust
Burnt out and overworked employees may not always speak up and signs that they are suffering may be less overt than bullying or harassments, which is why employers need to get better at reading the silent red flags.
“With advice businesses, it’s definitely about the mental load, the workload, the stress of potentially the clients, the technical knowledge, and keeping up with that,” AZ NGA’s Speiser says.
Absenteeism is a typical manifestation of psychological risks, but she warns it’s easier for employees to “stay invisible” now due to the prevalence of hybrid and remote working environments.
Burnout commonly shows up as a performance-related issue. “Obviously people have other pressures in their life, so it’s not necessarily automatically going to be a work-related issue,” Speiser says. “But to the extent that it is…then you’ve got to take responsibility for that.”
Foley, who started his professional career in human resources before becoming an adviser, notes even a sudden change of character should put team leaders on high alert.
Does the extrovert suddenly become introverted? Does the laid-back character suddenly complain a lot? Does the relaxed person suddenly become easily irritated? These are questions all worth asking to identify the bigger problems early, he says.
“I have a fortnightly one on one catch up with my team members, but we don’t talk about workflow,” Foley says.
“If all you ever do is talk about workflow, you don’t have that kind of familiarity and trust relationship with your team. Those broad chats that engender a closeness and a trust, and it allows people to open up to you and say, ‘you know what? I’m not okay’.”
