‘The war for talent’: Attracting the next generation of advisers

As practice owners continue to battle against the slow bleed of advisers from the profession and the rising demand for advice, Rising Tide Financial Services managing director Matt Hale told ifa that operating 100 per cent online could be the key to attracting future talent to his firm.

“I think in the war for talent that I can already see starting to happen, flexibility has got to be one of those battlegrounds. And I think that a business like ours has, in some regards, a competitive advantage,” Hale said.

The practice started down the path to operating digitally, he said, following feedback from both clients and staff that they didn’t want to undertake travel for meetings, “So there was a pretty clear answer there”.

He explained that working from home as a parent to young children also allows him to be more present as a father and gives him the flexibility to fit in tasks around his work schedule, and as more people start to work from home, the flexibility offered by technology will become more important to his clients and staff.

“You’ve got to be really clear on what’s important to you. It’s important to us to have that flexibility, but it’s not important to everyone, so just make decisions for your advisers and for your clients that your clients and your advisers and your team will value,” Hale said.

Work-life balance and simpler compliance

Speaking on the benefits of operating digitally, Hale said the flexibility afforded by this operating model allows staff greater work-life balance, which in turn boosts the firm’s offering as an employer for prospective staff.

“We used to spend a lot of time out on the road, and the purpose of our business is to give people their ‘yes’ moments and I don’t think anyone’s yes moment is spending more time in traffic. It helped our team have more time with their family, friends and activities they like to do,” he said.

Operating digitally also offers some compliance advantages, which Hale said offers him great peace of mind as an advice business owner.

“All of our meetings are recorded, so there’s actually no ambiguity around what was discussed. Compared to a file note that is done 72 hours down the track, which I’m sure a lot of businesses still do, a recording has got a lot more weight from a compliance point for being able to protect ourselves and the clients if ever required,” he said.

“There’s a little bit of a sleep at night test there that goes, ‘Look, if our process is there and we do the right things, we give good advice, we’ve got those recordings to fall back on if we need to’.

“But equally, it does also help with being able to distribute the work to the right people. And I firmly believe that moving forward, we’ll be able to use more digital tools to improve that. That’s my hope anyway.”

The downside to operating digitally

While he does see a great many benefits, Hale also recognised that there are some drawbacks, as it can be more difficult to learn and build trust without face-to-face interaction, which poses issues for new clients and staff alike.

“I think there’s a good chunk of the community that still builds trust in a physical way. That’s from a client-adviser relationship, but then you’ve also got, from a cultural team member point of view, I’m sure that there’s things that we’re missing out on that you’ve got to put extra focus on,” he said.

“I think the trade-off for younger, less-experienced people is that you don’t get to see how other people do things on a minute-to-minute, day-to-day basis. Things might get put up in lights, good or bad, but it’s actually those day-to-day things that you can learn through viewing.”

He added: “We can’t think that everyone worked face-to-face for hundreds of years and that there wasn’t benefit in that”.

Despite these negative aspects of operating digitally, Hale said that, for his business, it is the right thing for his staff, clients and himself.

“For us in financial services, the fact that there are things like DocuSign, there are more digital tools, but also just the acceptance that things are legit even if they’re digital now,” he said.

“That’s what we see changing right through to the expectation that it’s frowned upon if it’s not digital.”

Overall, when considering whether the future of the advice profession could see more, if not all, practices operating wholly online, Hale said: “Why not?”