The key to a successful PY is active engagement, says adviser

When the banks exited advice in the wake of the financial services royal commission, there were few in the advice profession who were sad to see them go.

Where the absence has been felt, however, is in the steady pipeline of advisers coming through the institutional system to kick off their careers.

Scott Farmer, founder of Bravium Financial Planning, is one of those advisers who got his start at a bank.

Speaking with ifa, Farmer said that the Bravium approach to shepherding new entrants through their professional year (PY) is, in many ways, geared around ensuring the next generation doesn’t repeat the early careers of bank-trained advisers.

“The training that we’re doing is vastly different to what happened through the banks,” he told ifa.

“The banks were so compliance focused, and all the training was really about compliance. Yes, they gave you an outline of how to run a meeting and those sorts of basic things, but most of it was really compliance related.

“That certainly has to be some degree of focus, it’s absolutely important, but it’s not really the value of training the next generation of advisers. It’s got to be about how you deliver financial planning in a better way than what I experienced when I was a young adviser.”

Farmer said the whole approach for his firm is around what they can do to “genuinely add value” for clients.

“There’s self interest in that, because if we can deliver enormous amounts of value to the clients, that’s good for us as a business, they’re going to refer their friends and tell them, ‘These guys are awesome, go and see them. They’re fantastic’,” he said.

“For us, when we’re working with these professional year students, and even just the associates, it’s really helping them understand how to have interventional conversations with clients, because that’s where a lot of the deep value lies that you miss if you’re just selling or thinking about the best strategies and what the best products are for this client.

“If you’re not dealing with the deeper issues, you’ll never get the outcomes for the clients that you need. And that’s actually really hard to teach people.”

He added that while process is important and can’t be overlooked, advisers can’t get “too tied up in the process”.

“You’ve actually got to be really present with the client and what they’re telling you because you’ve got to connect the dots with the client and then ask the right questions to start delving a lot deeper into stuff that the client is not just going to voluntarily tell you,” Farmer explained.

This idea informs a lot about the way Bravium trains PY advisers, with a large focus on getting them involved in client meetings right from the jump – and not just sit around taking notes.

“They’ve got to get actively engaged,” Farmer said.

“We build that engagement over time until they get to a point where they’re doing most of it and me or the senior person may just be jumping in with a few questions here or there.

“In our experience, it’s at least a year before they start getting reasonably proficient at it, and it’s probably three or four before I would say they are really good at it.”

Attracting talent

According to Farmer, the way that advice firms can attract young advisers is closely aligned to the overall value proposition in the same way it is for clients.

“You’ve got to have something really valuable that the client wants to engage with you on and you’ve got to be good at articulating what that value is,” he said.

“For your staff, what they’re getting is closely aligned to what you’re giving to your clients. It’s about finding a team that are all trying to row in the same direction. We all want a similar outcome in terms of our careers and usually that’s going to be driven around making real change in the lives of clients.

“When you can show potential new staff what you do as a business and how you’re actually delivering value and the way you think about that. If that aligns with that person’s values, then they’re going to be keen to work with you and want to come on board. And that, of course, correlates into how you keep them.”

While he is strongly in favour of bringing advisers into the profession through this method, Farmer conceded that it can be difficult for advice firms to onboard a large number of young advisers at a time.

Bravium, for instance, has brought two advisers through their professional year so far with another having started recently. Looking at it from an industry-wide perspective, those numbers are not going to be enough to fill the gap of experienced advisers exiting.

With a new class of advisers set to be introduced on the back of the Quality of Advice Review that could possibly reopen the pathway from institutions to holistic professional advice, Famer said that there are areas that could bring value.

“I think there is still a role to play if you had larger organisations and institutions delivering some of that initial framework and skills for advisers coming into the industry or working up from the start,” he said.

“One of the hard parts for younger associates is if they’ve had no experience in a client meeting whatsoever.

“There’s a learning curve for them to begin with before you even start getting to the interventional conversations and being present with clients and asking the right questions, they’ve actually got to get comfortable just running a meeting. That’s pretty nerve racking.”