Financial adviser numbers 'will drop then reset'
That’s the message given to attendees at this year’s FSPB summit in Bangkok.
Speakers pondered what the future for the industry could look like as more FUM shifts to roboadvisers and financial services providers trial artificial intelligence solutions.
Josh Golombick, co-founder of fintech provider Plenty, in Australia, said advisers’ value proposition might have to change.
People would not necessarily be able to charge $3000 a year to talk about a client’s goals, get their insurances in place and check in on their investments a couple of times a year, he said.
“But overall it’s about shifting what they say about the services they deliver, rather than the end of advice,” he told delegates.
He said the issue of what fees could be charged in a world with increasing low-fee options was a difficult one.
“Advisers charge these fees because it’s expensive to deliver the service. It’s difficult for an adviser to deliver the service and bring fees down markedly.”
Rob Stanich, global banking and financial markets offering manager at IBM Watson Financial Services said the future of the advice profession would depend what was meant by “advice”.
“It’s not well defined. We’ve already seen a decline in people that have called themselves financial advisers traditionally as technology democratises access to advice.”
The number of people who were more focused on pushing products than giving true advice should be expected to drop, he said. Some would move out of the market but others might move more into giving moe comprehensive advice.
Stanich said there would be a drop in financial adviser numbers overall in the near term, then a reset as the number of people who were ”true advisers” started to grow. “We’ll see an influx of those into employment.”