Advice “will die” if younger generations are not encouraged into the advice profession, Moran Wealth Management founder, Nicola Crosbie, has warned.
Crosbie said while it is important to attract people that are different to the perceived financial services stereotype, it is particularly important to attract younger people.
She added that there is not "masses" of young talent looking to join the profession.
“We need to give a bit of our time back to support people and encourage people to join the profession or else advice will die because we need the numbers coming through,” she explained.
She added this would have the added benefit of allowing easier and more effective communication between advisers and their clients.
“Younger generations are going to need someone that’s going to understand their needs,” Crosbie explained
“It’s very important that you’re advised by somebody that is empathetic and not dictative, there needs to be that mutual respect and relationship there.”
Mentorship
Crosbie also spoke on the importance of acting as a mentor within the profession to encourage more people, saying “the mentor/mentee role is really important”.
However, she pointed out that, at the moment, there is a gender disparity in the makeup of mentors.
Recounting her own experience, she said: “Females seem to attend mentoring more and I give a lot of my time, but we need more males to do more of that cross-gender kind of mentoring because I don’t think there’s enough females to go around.
“We need some males, because there’s more of them, to do a bit of mentoring as well."
Career journey
Describing her journey into the industry, Crosbie originally went to university to study architecture but, after realising she didn’t like the subject and then becoming pregnant, she had to take “a reality check” and consider her future.
She gravitated towards financial services as her Dad had a background in the industry and she had completed some admin work at his firm.
When looking for a new career path, her father suggested she look into financial services due to her familiarity with the industry and so she decided “if I’m going to do it, I want to do it properly and get all my qualifications”.
“It was fairly unusual for somebody young to want to do that role and it was very unusual for a female to be in the adviser role and not the admin role so it brought a lot of challenges.
“To move from doing admin, you had to do everything twice as good to be taken seriously.”
However, Crosbie did not find the industry welcoming, saying “I was made to feel a bit like a failure for doing it.
“There were comments about ‘how could someone take you seriously if they are in their 50s and 60s and looking to retire’ which kind of stuck with me.
