I asked a (past-retirement-age) colleague this week what made him want to, still enthusiastically, carry on doing what he and we do after so many years. He told me the story of a client for whom, in his early days as an adviser, he’d arranged life insurance. After paying just one month’s premium she had sadly died, but the policy he’d arranged paid off the mortgage and set up her then-young family for life. I had a similar tale from some years ago. And I remembered another client whom, just last year, I’d left punching the air when I told him that, yes, he could afford to retire and leave the job he’d hated for years. Without becoming too sanctimonious (although it’s not something, as regular readers will confirm, with which I usually have a problem), what we do is 90% about the people and not the 10% of other stuff on which we spend way more than 60% of our time. Worth remembering.
“Worry for profession as young adviser numbers plummet”
There are around 31,000 advisers currently authorised by the FCA to give advice. Of these only around 6% are under 30 and 84% of all advisers are male. There are 209,000 solicitors, 7,000 young ones enter the profession each year and 52% of all solicitors are now female.
