Bluerating | February 2021
The work placement of 30-year-olds is a long-standing issue that concerns almost all professions – notaries, doctors, university professors, artisans, and so on. The world of financial consultancy is no exception – in fact, jobs in the financial field require skills which cannot be learnt at school.
The average age of financial advisors increases every year, along with the age profile of the Italian population. However, the true issue is not the date of birth, but the evolution of the figure of the financial advisor.
Over the past ten years, the value of the average portfolio of a financial advisor has doubled. Likewise, the number of financial advisors with an active mandate has been increasing, albeit less than before.
Wealthy (or Private) clients and entrepreneurs have become the financial advisor’s preferred target. As a result, an entire section of the population has never had the opportunity to get in touch with a financial advisor.
Generally, clients assisted by financial advisors tend to be more satisfied, thus proving that financial consultancy is a successful model that needs to be boosted.
Therefore, networks of financial advisors should take an interest in 30-year-old professionals, who bring different perspectives as well as new and complementary skills.
FINER® Finance Explorer – an annual monitoring involving over 3.000 financial advisors – shows that financial advisors with an average age of 35 differ from their senior colleagues. In fact, their relationship with the bank/network is different in many ways.
First of all, they are, on average, more demanding in terms of product range and level of innovation: they wish for a larger number of products and for products to be renovated periodically.
They tend to have a higher appreciation for extra services and products (protection, credit) as another source of income.
They are more satisfied with and attracted by contests (financial and non-financial) and by front fees rather management fees because the value of their portfolios tends to be lower than that of their senior colleagues.
Moreover, they tend to be more loyal to their bank/network and managers, they take pride in working for their company and feel a strong sense of belonging.
They tend to be more particular about the digitalization of services (both back office and front office services).
On average, they show a higher level of proactivity – they devote one third of their time (33%) to searching new clients, much more than their senior colleagues (16%) who can count on larger portfolios.
57% of them claim to be optimistic about the future – the future of the profession and of the bank/network – as compared to 32% of their senior colleagues.
They are usually big consumers of multimedia contents: they use social media (mainly LinkedIn) twice as much as the average financial advisor, yet they are also hungry for information provided by traditional media (newspapers, newsletters and specialized websites).
35-year-olds have a very interesting profile.
Finally, the value of the portfolio of 67% of 35-year-old financial advisors does not exceed 10 million euros; however, the value of the portfolio of 9% of them exceeds 30 million euros.
Motivated, digital and proactive. In light of the 1.700 billion euros on current account, today entrusting 30-year-old financial advisors with a client portfolio in order to ease their debut has become a duty rather than an option.
Nicola Ronchetti