Bridging the cultural gap in financial advice

Having arrived in Australia to study nearly 20 years ago from Venezuela with nothing but a backpack, Marin Wealth managing director Pedro Marin said part of his success in building a thriving advice firm in Brisbane has come from leveraging his cultural background.

“Up to 30 per cent of our clientele is Spanish speakers, and we’re the only firm in Australia that can provide that service,” Marin told ifa.

Filling this niche has allowed his business to thrive, having practically no competitors in the entire country – and cultural understanding is core aspect of this.

“Understanding that we are or were one of them [is important],” Marin said, “I cleaned houses, I worked with kids, I was a bartender. All of them went through that system, so they clearly know that you’re one of them.”

Knowing appropriate social norms, which in the case of Spanish-speaking clients includes things such as high levels of touch and the need for detail, are other factors that make certain advisers stand out to multicultural clientele.

But perhaps most important is understanding cultural attitudes around wealth. For your average Anglo-Australian, wealth is a personal matter. Their average interaction with an adviser will likely be finding ways to maximise wealth for retirement and finding ways to leave some of this wealth to the next generation.

For Marin’s Spanish-speaking clientele, for example, this is not the case.

“Spanish speakers are more about the group. [Family] wealth is almost all combined. Basically, you live off your parents until you can live off your children,” he said.

This means the advice many are coming to him for surrounds bringing parents from overseas, getting into their first home or, if residents, how to get their superannuation working earlier in life for them.

However, the Marins of the financial advice sector are few and far between, and few firms are equipped to work with multicultural clients, he said.

“The average adviser today is a 54-year-old male and Anglo-Australian” Marin said.

“Finding someone that speaks a specific language or is fully bilingual, it’s really hard. We’re already struggling to find talent that speak English.”

This lack of multicultural awareness means that many from migrant backgrounds who might benefit from advice are missing out.

That does not mean firms have to go into consultations with culturally diverse clients blind though, with Marin saying research and technology will be your best friends.

“Understand the levels of differences around each culture. Are they from a lower or high context culture? Even colours mean different things in different cultures,” he said.

Marin highlighted that technology can be helpful in this regard, using things such as AI to not only educate yourself, but ease communication:

“Even ChatGPT [can be used] to your own advantage. [We have trained ours] to sound like they’re actually Venezuelan!”

As more people continue to arrive overseas to Australia, and many that are here are generating enough wealth to warrant seeking an adviser, pivoting into the multicultural market could be invaluable to a firm. However, as highlighted by Marin, plenty of work needs to be done to prepare the advice profession for this fact.