Moore, who provides consulting services to advisers buying and selling client books through his company Mike Moore Marketing, told Good Returns that modern advisers have better qualifications than their predecessors but struggle to relate to clients.

Because of this, he said new advisers are having to buy their way into business rather than building their own client books by getting out and meeting people.  Regulations also play a part, he said.

“If you’d asked advisers twenty years ago how they’d grown their client base you wouldn’t have had any who had grown it through acquisition. Now you’ve got regulations almost forcing them into that scenario.

“I take a general view that financial advisers 20 years ago were more personality based.  The younger advisers have much better qualifications and give impressive presentations but they have very low people skills – they’re quite geeky.”

Moore said there are “many more buyers than sellers” for advisory businesses at the moment and many buyers have to be “held by the hand” during the process.
“You don’t want them telling the clients, ‘just letting you know I’ve bought you and I’m coming to see you on Tuesday.’”

The requirements for becoming an adviser have changed markedly in recent years, Moore said.

“It’s getting harder to get in – the bar used to be your ability and determination to get in front of customers.  Now the bar is first you must be knowledgeable and get a qualification, and then you find out if you’ve got any people skills.

“There are going to be so few advisers with people skills that people are going to have to pay a lot of money to see them.”

Moore said he once asked a friend what the key thing was to being a good financial adviser; “asking for the money” was the response. 

“There’s a huge difference between the personality-based people and the process people.  The process people think they’re going to give them the money anyway because of logic.  Well, if people were logical they’d buy a Skoda not a Ferrari.”