Strong demand for senior advisers still drives the recruitment market, but client services candidates are highly sought after despite outsourcing becoming an emerging alternative.
Recent data from Adviser Ratings found the ratio of support staff in practices was continuing to shrink due to increased usage of outsourcing and offshoring, better technology and increasing productivity.
However, Fuse Recruitment’s Madeleine Martin tells Professional Planner that people with one to two years of financial planning administrative experience, or broader financial services, are still “quite in high demand at the moment”.
“They are a little bit easier to find than the senior candidates, but it still takes time,” Martin says.
Echoing that sentiment, Vivere Group CEO Chris Gordon says that businesses are adding more client support roles such as associate advisers and client service managers while the adviser vacancies continued to be impacted by ongoing mergers and acquisitions activity.
“Where we all see a slight increase is the at the associate adviser level, where businesses are willing to offer their professional year and groom people into financial advice,” he says.
Despite a limited supply of senior advisers and significant candidate shortages across most roles, the financial planning recruitment market has remained “fairly consistent” over the last six months.
“The market certainly has not eased up, so we are not seeing more candidates available than what we had six months ago. Our clients are still hiring probably fairly consistently to what they were doing six months ago,” Gordon says.
“If anything, maybe the candidate availability is slightly lower than what it was six months ago, but not significantly.”
Salary expectations
Salary expectations across the industry have remained broadly flat over the last few months, according to Gordon.
“For the junior financial adviser or a professional year financial adviser – it ranges around $100,000 and $110,000 plus super,” Gordon says.
“A financial adviser that is fully qualified, that maybe has two to four years of experience, that would be $110,000 to $130,000 plus super. Then a financial adviser with maybe four to five years plus [experience] – that could be anywhere between $120,000 to $180,000 plus super.”
However, the private wealth sector is an exception, where expectations have been considerably higher.
“That is where we see large increases because if an adviser may have a book of clients for 10 years and those clients follow then the salary is much higher,” Gordon says.
“We are working with advisers at the moment – more on the private wealth side – and their salary range is anywhere from $160,000 to $220,000 plus super.”
Data from Recruit 2 Advice’s ‘Remuneration Update’ shows the average package for senior advisers has increased year-on-year to around $170,000 to $180,000, up from the previous $155,000 to $165,000 range.
“What I’ve seen in the last 18 months to three years is a shift from that point to around $170,000 to $180,000,” Recruit 2 Advice principal Dugald Braithwaite says, adding there have been signs of upward pressure on salary expectations from advisers.
“I’ve seen it in the first six months of this year so I think it will moderate for the rest of the year so I think that mark – around $170,000 to $190,000 for senior advisers – that will sort of hold for the next six to 18 months.”
Finding new benefits
For senior advisers, non-salary benefits play an equally important role in whether they would consider another opportunity, Martin says.
“We have to do a lot of work to attract them [experienced advisers] and get them to think about a role in another business,” Martin says. “Because they are relatively well taken care of and fairly happy in [their existing] roles.”
One key draw is a pathway to equity or ownership in the business – an offering that appeals to advisers who want to move beyond “working for somebody else’s organisation”.
“We have seen a lot more opportunities open up with a pathway to equity in the business,” Martin says.
“Not necessarily really long-term plans but maybe ownership within two to three years which is fairly attractive to advisers who feel like they are stuck.”
