Industry fails to excite young

New graduates overwhelmingly are choosing professions other than insurance and financial planning and that's a big mistake says one industry player

Despite a huge shortage of young advisors in both Canada and the U.S., most college students are avoiding obtaining life insurance certifications or financial planning degrees even though it's been proven that those possessing one are guaranteed a job at graduation.
 
“Virtually [a financial planning degree] is a guarantee – if you study and do a good job, you’re going to get a job,” said TD Ameritrade International president Tom Nally. “Getting a job is tough. We hear about millennials living with their parents until they’re 30, but here you can get a job with a nice income stream and have a rewarding career right out of school.”
 
Just 90 schools in the U.S. provide financial planning degrees with 700 graduating in 2014. Here in Canada the pickings are even slimmer. Life insurance programs are largely outside universities.
 
However, with the rewards both financially and emotionally available so soon into a young person's working career, it's incumbent upon the financial services industry to do better job promoting this opportunity.
 
“We have a shortage of younger advisors coming into the industry,” said Nally during a visit to ThinkAdvisor magazine’s New York office. “We need to raise the visibility because most people don’t know about financial planning as a career.”
 
He knows a thing or two about financial planning so we asked the 30-something advisor about young people considering a career in this industry.
 
“One of my business partners is English. We were told by people over there in this industry that at our age we’d never be doing what we’re doing. You have to earn your way up,” said Jason Perreira, the first-place winner of the 2015 PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Award for the Americas and a finalist for the first annual Wealth Professional Awards. “Frankly, we need to build some sort of system where people are brought along slowly spending time doing paperwork and assisting in face-to-face meetings and managing these relationships with another advisor and then maturing out on their own.”

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