Last week, Futuro Financial Services executive chairman Dennis Bashford said the sense of community and companionship is something the advice industry “has largely lost over the past 10 years”.
“Today, there is much less face-to-face industry interaction with such things as monthly industry association functions and fund managers’ presentations being replaced with webinars, Go-To meetings and video conferencing – all of which largely denies us the opportunity to mix with and get to know our colleagues on a more personal basis,” Mr Bashford said.
In response, adviser for Treysta Financial Life Management Ray Jaramis refuted Mr Bashford’s claims, telling ifa “the future is bright for the current community of young financial advisers to drive real change”.
“The financial advice industry continues to grow and I encourage all advisers to embrace this as a great opportunity to learn from each other, enabling improvements through technology, peer reviews, education, displaying best-practice and demonstrating enhanced services offerings,” Mr Jaramis said.
Mr Jaramis noted significant differences in behaviour and culture do exist between different adviser groups.
But he added that, much like the national economy is referred to as ‘two-speed’, financial advice is “a two-speed industry”.
“You will find pockets of advisers who are enthusiastic about creating opportunities for collaboration and use each other as a platform to raise the bar for us all,” Mr Jaramis said.
“And then you will read about advisers who are isolating themselves using technology to veil themselves from their peers. We are in a two-speed industry.”
Futuro….bit ironic it should be Pasturo
Over the last 5 years the advice industry has split into two and quite a lot of the time its not aged based. There are those who would like to do things the way they did it in the past and there are those who are trying to find better ways of achieving the same result but in a more efficient manner. The advisers roll in today’s environment is a lot more hands on and is one of the reasons why we don’t have time to sit around at industry functions or presentations. There is still the social element to catching up with other advisers, its just that we do it at different times and for different reasons. Maybe Mr Bashford didn’t get the memo.
Couldn’t agree more Brett – age has little if anything to do with it, rather it is more about having a refreshed perspective on things.
Sorry Brett – not sure why this came through as Anon.
Spot on Ray. There are some Advisers that want to collaborate and change the image of Adviser’s in Australia and those that are set in their ways and don’t embrace change.
Thank you Ron – I have been warmed by the extent of how much IP our peers are willing to share with each other to keep that bar going up! Technology simply allows geography to be moot 🙂