A new generation of young advisers and fresh entrants can create a strong value proposition for advice practices who want to capitalise on the intergenerational wealth transfer.
Integro Private Wealth managing partner Justin Gilmour says that young advisers have a role to play in ensuring that the next generation of clients – or their clients’ children – are equipped to make good financial decisions as they begin to receive large sums of money and ultimately manage a whole-of-family wealth.
“That is a really powerful value proposition for clients – that they are improving their kids’ financial literacy,” Gilmour tells Professional Planner.
He says that Integro, which provides assistance with succession planning and generational wealth transfer to many clients in the agriculture sector across Western Australia, encourages both its advisers and clients to bring a younger generation on board.
Jameson Johnston, a senior associate at Integro, began only three years earlier and joined the company during his third year of university as an undergraduate.
Johnston worked all his way through to senior associate and sees the upcoming wealth transfer as one of the areas to progress his career.
“[The long-term gain] of helping the ‘kids’ with their immediate financial literacy is to prepare them for the stewardship of wealth long term that they might inherit,” Johnston says.
“That is a great opportunity set for advisers coming after and something I look forward to being part of.”
Johnston stresses that tertiary education prepares graduates to stay on top of technical aspects of the advice process, however, the true challenge lies in learning to articulate these outcomes to clients.
“It is easy for us [young advisers] to be across all the strategies because we [were] coming up in the era of advice that is very technically focused but what I had to learn is what keeps the client up at night, what they really want to hear, what makes them tick because that is how they relate best to the advice,” he adds.
“You should expect to get good advice wherever you go but it is layering it down with the relationships and how you build those is what I am working on.”
Young recruits
Perth-based Integro partners with Curtin University, which offers a course in financial planning, and uses this partnership as one of the avenues to bring in young talents by running events for students interested in this area of finance, which Johnston describes as “all-encompassing”.
“I think the benefit of [this partnership] is that you are also attracting those candidates that are actively pursuing their career ahead of finishing their degree – they are generally more motivated, they are invested, they came to learn and they haven’t picked up the bad habits,” Gilmour says.
However, he stresses that, apart from the candidates’ technical abilities, he also evaluates candidates’ personal skills, their emotional intelligence side and how likely they would be to connect with clients.
“That is a really good starting point for us to get to know them and for them to get to know us,” Gilmour says.
“We have had a tremendous amount of success with it – we know it takes a lot of time and you are investing a lot in them, but it does pay dividends longer term if you invest the time, but you have to invest your time and have a good structure.”
The number of new entrants picked up in recent years following the quiet periods 2019 and 2020.
In the first six months of 2025, the industry welcomed around 224 new advisers, compared to 181 in the same period the year before, according to Wealth Data.
Director Colin Williams says 2024 was “a good year”, with most new entrants coming on in the second half of the year, which saw 212 and 120 new arrivals in the third and fourth quarters, respectively.
“I suspect we will see a similar result in 2025,” Williams says, noting that the second half of the year is likely to see a similar surge in numbers.
