Noel Maye, chief executive of the FPSB, described financial advice as the world’s youngest profession and said that brought its own challenges.

He said the Asia Pacific region had a faster rate of growth than the international average – in this corner of the world, adviser numbers are increasing by about 9%.

Those who still pictured a financial adviser as a middle-aged, possibly self-employed, man who’d been in the long time would need to change their perception, he said.

Most of the growth is in Asian countries.  In China, one of the fastest growing markets in the world, the majority of new financial advisers are women aged 25 to 34, who are college educated and work in large companies.

Maye said the challenge for the diverse population of financial advisers across the world was to embed an intrinsic sense of being part of a profession.

Some companies would have to switch their approach away from explicit sales targets, he said.  “We need to create an environment where people are trained to be ethical and put clients first, rather than dropping them into an environment where they’ll compromise that stance. We need to tell firms to take a longer-term view.”

Joanna Taylor, of recruitment firm Randstad, said the biggest problem in the Australasian financial adviser recruitment sector was finding enough quality people to fill demand.
She said increased recruitment activity from banks and other larger corporates with bigger wallets made it hard for people who were operating in the independent sector.

Women were being snapped up by big firms that were specifically targeting them, she said.