The Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) wants professionals from diverse industries to consider careers in financial advice, launching the “Better Off” awareness campaign to attract career changers.
The new initiative, the FAAA said, aims to appeal to people seeking new career paths by “highlighting how they could be better off pursuing a career in financial advice”.
According to the association, the campaign will primarily focus on social media to reach potential career changers, informing the target audience about the training requirements to become a financial adviser and how they can transition careers.
“We believe many people are at a point in their careers where they want to make a real difference, and the financial advice profession offers that opportunity,” FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood said.
“Professional financial advice changes lives for the better, by helping Australians to build a more secure future, enjoy a higher quality of life and experience less financial stress.
“This campaign encourages people from all walks of life to consider financial advice as an attractive career – one that offers the opportunity to build lasting client relationships and have a positive impact on people’s financial futures, while enjoying career growth, autonomy and strong demand for their services.”
She added that the campaign is designed to help address the shortage of advisers and ensure there is a pipeline of talent into the sector that can meet the demand for financial advice among Australians.
“By attracting career changers, we’re bringing to the profession people who already have life experience as well as professional skills gained in other areas. Many existing financial advisers are career changers and know the benefits that those extra skills and experience can bring to their practice,” Abood said.
“With an even higher number of Australians expected to enter retirement in coming years, demand for financial advisers continues to grow, as does an already significant demand/supply imbalance in financial advice. This campaign seeks to not only help reduce the adviser shortage but also create a more diverse, skilled workforce.
“We’re hoping our campaign will encourage a broad range of Australians to consider changing their career to one that changes lives for the better.”
Kicking off the campaign at the start of the year is the ideal way to target career changes, according to Zeina Khodr, managing director of Paper + Spark, which is the creative agency for the campaign.
“Through a digital campaign across Meta, LinkedIn, Google and Nine Display, we’re reaching a targeted audience while providing valuable content that guides career changers on their path to becoming licensed financial advisers – opening the door to a fulfilling new career in the wealth management industry,” Khodr said.
The new push is in line with the FAAA’s strategic plan, which it unveiled in November last year.
The second pillar of the plan centres on growing the profession, with FAAA chair David Sharpe noting that with the number of advisers continuing to fall, it “becomes more difficult to service the growing advice demands of Australians”.
“We are working on promoting entry and career pathways to new and returning financial advisers, including promoting the profession as a career-change option and to make Australia an attractive option for skilled migration,” he said.
“We are already working to build the pipeline for financial advice in education and the professional year.”
Abood had also signalled mid-year that an advertising campaign to specifically promote financial planning as a great career was in the works and would target both students and potential career changers.
“We want to really get more people considering this career, get more students coming through these degrees, get the front of that pipeline up again,” she said.
“We haven’t been in market, I think forever, talking about why you should consider financial planning as a career. We’ve often relied on the children of existing planners, clients and so on, but we believe the time has come to really be more overt and that campaign will run in next financial year.”
Why would anyone in their right mind become a financial adviser in the current regulatory environment. As soon as a person signes to be an AR they are likely bankrupt due to the CSLR. The CSLR is a deliberate action to annihilate professional financial advisers. It’s horrendous persecution. A person would have to be a masochist to join the financial advice profession.
Yet another unprincipled FAAA take.
This is the same association that fought tooth and nail against an experience pathway for existing advisers—people with decades of real-world advice experience. They wanted those experienced professionals out of the industry simply because they didn’t have the “right” degree from their university friends. When they lost that fight, they pushed to have the experience pathway expire, further limiting the number of advisers who could take advantage of it. They lost that battle too.
Now, faced with the adviser shortage they helped create, their solutions are all over the place. First, they want to import Indian advisers as a quick fix. And now, they’re targeting “career changers” in a campaign that reeks of desperation.
This is an association that has overseen the wholesale destruction of the very constituency they were paid to defend and advocate for. Every time they intervene, they find the most unprincipled part of an argument and cling to it. Subsidies for the flawed PY framework, an “approved” degree-based chokehold on entry, and now a random grab bag of external recruits to fill the gaps—this isn’t leadership. It’s chaos.
I’d much rather the FAAA say nothing. With associations like these, who needs enemies?
FAAA have really missed the mark with this announcement with so many other issues of far more concern to their members at the moment. I suspect they are just looking to build their membership base and will roll out a new “Qualified Adviser” category with haste if that cohort ever commences…
Career changer here. Can’t find anyone reputable to take me on for a professional year even after having done the grad dip and 5 years of client-facing work experience in investments.
“5 years of client-facing work experience in investments” without being a trained and licensed adviser?
“Can’t find anyone reputable” implying you think there are many unreputable advice licensees?
Hmmm. Couple of red flags right there for any potential PY sponsor.
As someone who changed career’s over a decade ago I found exactly the same situation (ie) most of those looking to employ someone new to the industry were places you didn’t want to work. I’m fairly certain it would have gotten worse in the period since I changed given the whole profession has shrunk and realistically gotten worse.
What am I reading ?
Anyone with a functioning brain would NEVER enter this industry the way it is.
I would warn them against it very strongly.
I have too many of my peers suffering from depression because of the way this industry has been destroyed.
Why would you want to foist that onto anyone ?
You are correct
In 100% agreeance.
FAAA shouldn’t be wasting members’ money trying to attract new entrants into such a badly regulated profession. FAAA should be 100% focused on gettting the bad regulation fixed. Once that happens new entrants will happily join the profession, without any need for coercion or deception.
But they can’t get the system improved, they have tried and failed
The FAAA really had lost touch with reality! Their heads up their proverbials ….
You would be better off joining the public service. You don’t do any work, guaranteed job for life, guaranteed pay rises, little stress, then when your own investments fail, you lobby for a compensation scheme to be set up and get to make a retrospective claim for the money you lost. You can’t lose!
Maybe the FAAA should focus at making life better for those looking to leave the industry.
How can anyone in their right mind advise someone to enter this industry? Your income isn’t guaranteed, your expenses are going through the roof, we are the whipping people of the politicians.
Lets actually fix the industry first before promising the world and delivering nothing but stress to these new entrants.
FAAA needs to be more visible in the mainstream media, rebut a few of the outrageous statements that are made about the industry. Get the general public on side, then force change for the better through this public support and pressure just like the MFAA did , then look at new entrants.
Not the other way around,
What a great profession to join. Work extremely hard, do the right thing by your clients, deal with an absurd level of regulation and then be forced to fund compensation to clients who lost money through the likes of Dixons/Evans Partners etc. No one should join the profession until CSLR is abolished and the regulation fixed.
Another waste of money.
Focus on the core issues – CSLR and the uneven playing field
Fail Law or Accounting? Welcome to financial advising, where ASIC, AFCA, and political lords and ladies are waiting to dish out your punishment.
I wouldn’t recommend financial planning to anyone. The leaders, the associations, the legalities behind make it the worst profession in Australia.
IFA – stop hindering free speech. Post it.
To be fair, IFA has posted at least 99% of my comments, most of which are lambasting the various organisations. I know, I know—you didn’t ask for my opinion, but, this one’s for the other readers.