Look around the industry today and identify those advisers who you most respect and aspire to emulate. These top performers often have the following characteristics:
- A high sense of professionalism and ethics.
- Not afraid of hard work — a ‘can do’ attitude.
- A willingness to embrace new ideas, transform their business and move with the times.
- Somewhere in their past, they received training – be it formal education or life/work based experience training that shaped the way they think and act.
- An acceptance that the world in which we live is constantly changing and as a result we need to change the way we do business in order to meet the new regulatory environment and the changed expectations of our clients.
These top performers are embracing the regulatory changes positively and are already committing themselves to the journey of upskilling. For these advisers, education (Level 5 National Certificate in Financial Services) is more about increasing their business revenue and providing a better service and solution to their clients — rather than merely doing the minimum to obtain the regulatory ‘tick’.
Time for constructive debate and new ideas
Many of the top advisers are searching out the most professional of the private training entities that are providing the National Certificate in Financial Services and enrolling for the classroom courses, rather than taking the cheaper route of distance learning. These professionals want to use the course as an opportunity to engage in constructive debate with their peers, learn new ideas, understand how to incorporate the new regulations into their consulting process and by doing so, generate additional revenue.
However, for many advisers, old habits die hard. This group of advisers just wants to get the regulatory ‘tick’. They are approaching the Level 5 National Certificate from a negative perspective and will make their education choice based upon cost and speed rather than quality and the end result for their business.
Dangers of a poorly trained adviser
A poorly trained adviser in the new regulatory environment can be a liability to themselves, their employers and their peers. Let’s explore some of the dangers of a poorly trained adviser:
- Client expectations have increased. They expect more from their professional financial adviser and they will be educated about how to complain about poor advice. Continuing to do the same as before when the world has moved on, is a recipe for disaster in the financial services industry.
- The regulatory environment will require advisers to give advice in writing, keep file notes, collect client data and have a documented audit trail. A top quality electronic reporting system will be essential, if advisers wish to meet the regulations and still be efficient. For those advisers who are not operating a quality database and reporting system, and have not figured out how to automate their business, then the new regulatory environment is likely to be a challenge. Some of the Level 5 National Certificate courses integrate technology into the training – thereby providing an opportunity for course attendees to learn how to utilise technology solutions in the new regulatory environment.
- Protocols have changed and the needs of clients change as they progress through the stages of life. Failure to adequately upskill may mean the adviser fails in the most basic of the regulatory requirements:
- Know your product
- Know your client
- Is the product fit and appropriate for the needs of the client?
Advisers will most likely be negligent if they cannot prove the above for all of their clients. A good education provider will address these issues and more in their Level 5 training and recommend systems and processes to enable advisers to achieve these requirements.
- One of the key motivators for many people to undertake formal academic qualifications is to make more money. It is not the qualification itself that makes the money. It is the new behaviours and attitudes that the person then adopts that actually generate the increased money. For those of us in the financial services industry, it is the added income we make in our business from adopting new techniques and behaviours that should be the deciding factor about which education pathway we choose.
When deciding on your education provider and pathway (classroom course or distance learning), think less about the cost of doing the course in 2010 and more about how much value will you receive from which provider and pathway, and how much will that translate into additional revenue in the future.
David Greenslade
BA, MBA, Dip Mgt, Bus Studies (PFP), AFNZIM
Managing Director
Strategi Limited
