As advisers move further away from the product and towards helping their clients achieve a great life, certified financial planner and the founder of the Savings Squad Podcast and My Money Buddy, Adele Martin, believes life coaching and advice could shortly become one.
“I think that life coaching and advice will intertwine into one,” Ms Martin said on a recent episode of the ifa podcast.
“Money and life coaching, I feel that they are very intertwined, and I think that will continue to be a theme, maybe not for next year, but in coming years.”
Rather than looking at this as another hurdle, Ms Martin suggested advisers approach it as an opportunity.
“I’ve done some life coaching training just because I’m interested in it and it’s skills that you can use, definitely with clients and I’ve used [it] a lot of times, but also just in life in general,” she said.
Looking back over the past year, which has presented many with challenges both personal and professional, Ms Martin emphasised the important role advisers have played.
“I think we are very lucky as advisors,” Ms Martin said.
“I think we’ve got a special role to play as advisers and I think we’ve got to see that in the pandemic where we got to take away people’s financial stress.”
To hear more from Ms Martin tune in here.
Life coaching is nothing new, it has been there more than twenty years ago. From compliance perspective, I can’t see how life coaching and advice can become one. I have tried and joined the meeting with the life coaches years ago. They are kind of touching on religion, belief and way of thinking. These cannot be regulated like advice. I tested on some clients and some of them have weird feelings.
I think there is some weight to this. But “life coaching” will need another level of learning and accreditation if it is going to have appropriate respect from the public. And the industry will see another exit of anti education advisers advisers who think their “20 years in the industry” as qualifying them as life coaches.
A nice plug for the podcast, a good one to listen to!
However, I’d love to see how ASIC views life coaching in an SOA and being able to quantify this in terms of best interests / safe harbor and if clients are unable to reach their goals, does that mean you become liable?
I’m becoming a life coach specialising in finance post 1/1/2024. Everything is general advice and no need for an SOA. Works a treat and achieves what ASIC wants because the advice process is simplified.
Good question. I’ve found you don’t get bonus points for talking about a persons values, life goals and purposes in a SoA. As an Adviser i would say from a compliance & SOA perspective having an understanding of a persons behavioral biases and understanding of why someone made decisions and what’s important to them is worthless. I’ve just gone back to talking about “saving tax/ more Centrelink” in a SOA. Fantastic Goal for a compliance person reading the SOA but terrible for a client.
Easy – you don’t do an SOA – compliance issue solved. Next question.