Raquel Iantorno is graduating this month from York University with a bachelor of commerce degree in finance. A member of the dean’s honour roll, she also earned a dean’s award for research excellence. She is precisely the kind of undergrad that Canada’s financial advice industry needs to attract. Sure enough, she joined TD this past February as a part-time customer experience associate.
Iantorno’s report on her award-winning research study was published this month with the support of her project supervisor Daniel Richards, an associate professor at York’s school of administrative studies.
Factors of Employability for Graduates Progressing Through a Career in Financial Planning in Canada comes at a time when too few business and finance graduates give serious consideration to employment in our industry. Plenty of them want to work in financial services. Why more of them don’t target the financial advice business is as important a question as it is complex.
It’s important to recognize a fundamental point first. Not all firms want to attract young, unproven talent. No judgment here — it is entirely up to executives to develop and execute on what they believe is the best growth strategy for their firm and the clients they aim to serve.
A second, related challenge — recruitment strategies are highly proprietary. So much so that we can’t rely on firms to collaborate on an industry-wide effort to attract more young people to the business.
Craig Meeds, head, wealth advice Canada for BMO Private Wealth told me in an interview this week that our industry’s war for talent is among the most competitive. “So, anything that I say that potentially tips anybody off on what our plan is — our strategy — that’s dangerous,” he said.
Firms are fighting so hard to attract high-performing talent from one another, and retain those they do onboard, that they can hardly be expected to let their guards down and focus on the industry’s long-term need to recruit young talent.
The third, and perhaps most obvious problem, is that so few young Canadians want to be a financial advisor. There’s a lot at play here. The Gen-Z cohort has grown up in an economy that celebrates do-it-yourself disintermediation as a kind of founding principle. If your early, formative experiences with commerce are app-based, then the idea that there’s a solid living to be made selling someone else’s products is at the very least counterintuitive.
The potential for AI-driven financial planning solutions makes the value proposition even worse.
Add to all of that how difficult it is for industry newcomers to succeed, as our Roland Inacay reported on Advisor.ca this week. “It’s an industry-wide challenge,” he wrote. “Firms want growth, but few can afford to carry underperforming advisors.”
There is a role here for industry associations to play, one they’re fully aware of. But if attracting young talent isn’t a priority for enough firms, and the industry isn’t attractive to enough young people, what can they do?
Iantorno and Richards are calling on firms to “make entry-level positions more accessible to students by offering part-time positions that allow them to gain experience while studying.” That’s not a bad thought, at least for those firms that prioritize attracting young talent.
One of the reasons 20-somethings tend not to appreciate the value of financial advice is because their own financial lives are uncomplicated. Surely giving more of them an opportunity to help people with their money — and to experience how gratifying that can be — is a step in the right direction.