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The company has launched a new scholarship to help improve diversity across the industry. Mann says the industry desperately needs more diversity, particularly from women, Pasifika and Māori, so The Advice Hub is offering up to 100 fully paid scholarships – particularly to those displaced by Covid – as a pathway into the financial services industry and to help uplift some of New Zealand's less affluent communities.
Mann says Covid-related job losses and career changes have caused an influx of Kiwi’s seeking personalised financial advice, and New Zealand doesn't have enough people qualified to deal with this influx.
Compounding the Covid issue is the looming Baby Boomer bubble of Kiwis about to leave the workforce and retire.
"The fact is that most financial advisers are middle-aged white men over 55, who will focus on the wealthy," Mann says.
He says advisers who will work with people from all walks of life and income levels are desperately needed and women, Pasifika and Māori financial advisers are rare, "and this needs to change".
"Giving personalised financial advice to local communities needs to come from a new generation of financial advisers that can best communicate, educate and offer researched working strategies to their problems.”
Mann says The Advice Hub has a formal agreement with the Open Polytechnic to fund the course fees of 100 scholarships, enabling recipients to become licenced financial advisers.
The online course takes between three and six months and includes a tutor from the Open Polytechnic and a senior financial adviser mentor from The Advice Hub, followed by full-time employment within New Zealand.
The scholarship will include:
- The entire cost of the New Zealand Certificate in Financial Services (Level 5) qualification.
- Financial Markets Authority registration fee.
- Criminal, insolvency and credit checks.
- The required malpractice and professional indemnity insurance.
- The required Financial Ombudsman service.
- And all the financial adviser tools “needed to be amazing”.
“This new generation of financial advisers will be empowered to help their family, friends and wider community," says Mann.
"The only way we are going to improve outcomes for all New Zealanders is to make personalised financial advice available to more diversified groups, as well as to people on lower incomes and the average-income Kiwis."
Mann says he grew up with no financial stability after he was born to a mother who was only 16-years-old at the time.
Experiencing that lack of financial stability drives him to help others from underprivileged situations.
"There is nothing more rewarding than sitting at a person's kitchen table, hearing their financial worries and then coming back to provide personalised financial advice to protect and benefit that family."
Mann says he is on a mission to change the world by making personalised, high-quality financial advice accessible to all people to ensure that everybody benefits from the kind of financial advice only the wealthy currently enjoy.
For applications, click here.
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Damaging to the rest of the industry's collective reputation thoiugh isn't it?
Back up the statement "The fact is that most financial advisers are middle-aged white men over 55, who will focus on the wealthy," - what is your evidence to support this?
I would content that it is not a fact at all, and this sort of outlandish claim damages the public perception the industry as a whole.
I have interacted with literally thousands of advisers in NZ over the years, and the overwhelming majority of financial advisers in my experience do NOT focus on working with the wealthy, but on middle income Kiwis. Your point is valid that there is a significant proportion of Kiwi's who do not get served well by the industry as they haven't risen to "middle income" - there are literacy issues in vast segments of society, and affordability of accessing or delivering advice - for both the consumer and the adviser - is problematic for those segments. However the majority of financial advisers are actually very small businesses, and while they do deliver a disproportionate amount of pro bono assistance and advice they are not social workers whose objective is to re-shape society at large by delivering their expertise to all who need it. Every hour they deliver of un-charged financial advice and assistance comes at some risk to them personally, and at a cost to them personally...and that is not for the benefit of the "wealthy" in NZ society.
The majority of advisers do not focus on getting the "wealthy". The majority of financial advisers don't even offer wealth management services I'd suggest. The majority focus on delivering great value for money advice to the middle market.
Initiatives such as this would get a truckload more support from the advisory community by and large if they didn't begin by stereotyping and alienating the majority of the advisory world to begin with.
Get real with the market and play fair I say.