We have to shed meaningful light on our own capacity to improve lives says Cara Robinson, Training & Competence Supervisor at Truly Independent, and leave no doubt that we can make a positive difference.
One of the more attention-grabbing media narratives as 2025 staggered to a close was the revelation that Britain is officially in the midst of a brain drain. In the 12 months leading up to June, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), nearly 700,000 people left the UK.
Naturally, all sorts of conclusions can be drawn from this remarkable figure. At least on the face of things, most of the inferences might seem negative. When all is said and done, though, what could this trend really mean for the advice community?
Historically, those who moved overseas were more often than not a long way into their financial journeys. In many instances they had amassed enough wealth to retire abroad. But that doesn’t appear to be the case today.
The ONS’s data shows more than 45% of the British nationals who abandoned these shores during the sample period were aged 25 to 34. Perhaps even more strikingly, over half were aged 16 to 24.
So we’re not exactly talking about a wave of departing pensioners. We might not even be talking about a full-blown brain drain either, given that many of these folks have barely had a chance to demonstrate they represent the nation’s brightest talent.
What we may have instead is simply a situation in which the prevailing economic, political and financial backdrop has left pretty much everybody well and truly fed up. Stretching across all sorts of demographics, substantial swathes of the population have had enough.
We might be forgiven for thinking this doesn’t sound like an especially upbeat scenario. After all, it could be tough to make a living from financial advice if there’s eventually no-one left to advise.
Yet we could just as easily put a much more optimistic spin on the affair. We could tell ourselves, for example, that financial advice is precisely what these and other disenchanted souls now need more than ever before.
This possibility gives rise to a key question: as an industry, how might we satisfy a significantly increased appetite for our services? In my opinion, it’s vital that we strive to reflect the sheer diversity of an augmented client base.
The best way to do that is to have a comparably diverse array of offerings. The appeal of one-size-fits-all models is strictly limited in an environment in which clients’ needs and preferences vary considerably, so we need a suitably broad range of propositions, with charging to match.
But wait – we may be getting just slightly ahead of ourselves here. Particularly in the era of targeted support, we ought to give thought to how we convince all these new clients to put their trust in us in the first place.
Appropriate offerings and attractive fees are only part of the answer. Fundamentally, the initial hurdle is likely to revolve around messaging.
Unfortunately, although they might have every reason to feel dismayed by successive governments and the overall lie of the land, many individuals still possess only a flimsy grasp of money matters. They either fail or refuse to recognise the enormous value of saving and planning for the years and decades to come.
As a result, they’re more likely to spend than to invest. They favour a short-term view over a long-term outlook. Rather than steadily accumulating assets, they rapidly amass liabilities.
Some have long since convinced themselves that building a secure financial future is impossible or futile. What can we say to them in order to make them see sense and, crucially, to make them appreciate we can help?
I believe a good starting point would be to avoid blinding them with science. There’s often scant merit in coming out with all guns blazing and rattling on about the wonders of portfolio performance, the intricacies of fund selection, the role of benchmarks or the marvels of an effective risk-reward balance.
Granted, these are eminently worthy topics. They’re also issues we’re obliged to discuss. But they’re far from the be-all and end-all.
We might usefully devote a lot more energy to explaining to would-be clients the supreme importance of knowing where they want to go and how they hope to get there. We need to make clear that successful financial journeys are usually defined by incremental steps, milestone goals and little victories, as opposed to uninformed decisions, outrageous fortune and overnight transformations.
In tandem, we have to shed meaningful light on our own capacity to improve lives. We have to ensure we’re seen – justifiably – not only as affordable but as approachable and, ideally, indispensable. Ultimately, we have to leave no doubt that we can make a positive difference.
Of course, some advice professionals do all this already. Many more think they do. Going forward, as more and more people confront the ever-mounting uncertainties of our age, this sort of flexibility and openness has to become the rule rather than the exception.
Main image: jan-kahanek-g3O5ZtRk2E4-unsplash
