The average age of a financial adviser is 59. Many of those above the average are hoping to hang up their laptops and swap their brogues and ties for sandals, socks and cardigans in the not too distant. 75% of advisers are over 40 and only 8% under 30. And one other stat, of the total, just 16% are female. By contrast, over 50% of doctors are under 40, 60% of those female; with both accountants and solicitors it’s 50/50. So something has to change; and we’re doing our bit. We’re already ‘gender balanced’, and have a new under-30-year-old female trainee adviser joining us in a couple of weeks. As regular readers will know, I’ve long campaigned for socks and sandals to be banned and have never owned a cardigan, so am planning, You-Know-Who willing, to carry on for a while yet. Sorry.
“Britain has lost 435 financial advice firms since 2022”
Headline figures, there were over 200,000 financial advisers at the end of the ’90s, there are around 30,000 now and our numbers are continuing to reduce.