Can you save yourself by reinventing yourself as an independent financial advisor?
As jobs evaporate and opportunities for instant reemployment dwindle, there is hope.
Maybe you could become an independent financial advisor offering investment advice directly to retail clients.
The IFA industry is in the grips of the revolutionary effects of the Retail Distribution Review, which says both that the fee structure in the sector must change and that individuals offering investment advice to the public must be more highly qualified.
The RDR's qualification stipulations make it more difficult to switch careers into retail investment advice instantaneously. The FSA has published a long list of the qualifications that will prove acceptable, both before and after the new regime takes full effect from January 2013. They include: the Certified International Wealth Manager qualification, the Certified International Wealth Manager, the CFA Level 1 plus the IMC Level 4, and the Independent Investment Advice Diploma (where a candidate has passed three modules, including the securities module).
Despite the need to get qualified, IFA insiders insist that a switch from the City of London into retail financial services advice can still happen relatively quickly. "We expect to train people within six months," says Adrian Batchelor, Academy Director at St. James's Place.
Having done comparatively well this year as wealthy individuals seek financial services advice to avoid tax increases, St. James's Place is re-launching its academy in January and plans three annual intakes of 15-20 people, whom it will train to work as self-employed wealth management advisors.
Batchelor says former bankers are one of the groups the academy is targeting: "People from the City will have a lot of [potential client] contacts among individuals they already know, and they will have the right characteristics and attributes."
However, IFA recruiters are a little less congenial when asked about the prospect of ex-traders, fixed income salespeople or M&A bankers getting jobs as IFAs. "It's a naïve and patronizing view to assume that just because you've worked in banking, you can become an IFA," says one. "It's a bit like assuming you can go off and become a teacher. This is a difficult thing to do and to get into. It's certainly not a safety net for anyone who's lost their job in the City."
The same negative IFA recruiter suggests that former investment bankers might be able reinvent themselves as self-employed advisors at St James's Place and elsewhere, but says this is no panacea for the loss of a lucrative job.
"Yes, you can become self-employed," he says. "But it's hard work. The deal is that you turn up with your little black book of contacts and that you flog products to the people inside it. If you don't do that, you won't eat. It's not the same as getting an IFA role with a 50k basic, which is much harder."
