Important themes are emerging in 2016, including that of the perception that financial planning is failing to market itself as a career. Trainee Financial Planner Chris Gladwyn articulated his experience of this subject excellently in the last issue of Financial Planner, saying how more young people would “follow a path into financial planning if it were marketed better to [them]”. The marketing of financial planning to graduates as a career path is very much on our radar. We will be using our relationships with schools, colleges and universities to try to open the minds of teachers, parents and students to the attractiveness of financial planning as a career.
There is no denying that this will be a challenge. In February 2014, we commissioned a YouGov survey which asked teachers, parents and young people aged eight to 15 about their attitudes towards financial services as a career. Only 9% of young people were interested in working in financial services, and over 60% of teachers said they had little or no understanding of financial services as a profession. Less than a quarter of parents had a strong or fair understanding of the financial services industry. Asked their views on what they would associate with a typical day in financial services, 53% of young people thought it would be boring, 50% felt it would be “full of numbers”, and only 24% felt they had any understanding of jobs in financial services.
The conclusion is that poor numeracy skills on the part of both adults and young people in the UK are creating a vicious circle and an inherent fear of numbers. This, in turn, seems to be contributing to a low level prejudice against financial services as a career among young people’s key influencers: teachers and parents. Mindful of these challenges we will continue to try to expose to key stakeholders the merits of the profession as a career for young people.
For dedicated financial planning professionals, having a qualification is merely the entry ticket through the front door of your professional body. The main party is inside, membership, where the focus is on staying up to date with your learning via CPD and behaving with integrity. Regarding this, when I last wrote in December, only 424 financial planning members had taken our IntegrityMatters test, out of a membership of 2,000. Today that number is 790, so still some way to go. Meanwhile, we congratulate all the CISI members and accredited firms who won NMA regional awards in January.
CISI Chief Executive Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI