Sole Financial Advisers Doing it Tough
Challenges facing Sole Financial Advisers
- Licensee Costs Increasing
- Administration Burdens Rising
- Capacity Constraints
The greatest supply side demand we experienced at R2A in 2022 were enquiries from sole Financial Advisers on taking the next step to grow their business. The challenge for this group is capacity constraint and how to continue growing and taking on new business with resources limited by their own time.
Often once they contact us at R2A they have a backlog of new clients, and no time to provide service and on-board them.
The primary request is typically how to source a support person, with questions around skills, experience, salary, and location, and importantly, can they have face to face time with the support person?
The answers are often no to the face to face time, salaries higher than expected, whilst specialists skills / direct experience with client types is limited. These combined with the current shortage of quality admin support/paraplanners in the market often leads to a broader conversation around their business.
These options include joining an institutional business with their clients, merging with a nearby practice with existing resources in place, or attaching themselves to a local accounting practice who can provide administration support.
All options come with challenges plus the prospect of loosing some control of their client book (business), and potentially the lifestyle they set out achieve by becoming self employed.
Often the cost benefit analysis of joining a larger firm and giving away a large percentage of revenue is indigestible and finding local skilled support difficult.
No easy answer. We expect these conversations to continue in 2023 and beyond.
At the time we put our pens down at R2A in December 2022, we had no fewer than 8 vacant support roles in CSM/Admin/Para across the country with firms large and small.
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Remuneration & Recruitment Review 2023