Qualifications alone might not be enough for advisers pivoting to financial planning

Financial Advice New Zealand (FANZ) says with cost of living pressures, tighter competition, and rising client expectations reshaping how advice is delivered, deeper advice can turn clients relationships into sustainable revenue.

According to recent industry shifts the market is pushing advisers to evolve from “loan arrangers” into comprehensive wealth and planning partners.

“Research consistently shows that clients overwhelmingly value the greater financial confidence and decision-making support that comes with working with a financial adviser.”
Hawkes Bay-based Dobson says as trail income is slashed and AI takes over many aspects of the sector a swivel to becoming a fully-fledged financial adviser is about expanding scope from debt to “holistic” wealth.

It is a step many advisers are considering.

However, he says the existing financial planning qualifications might not be enough.

It will be quite difficult for transactional advisers to pivot because the baseline financial qualification from a planning perspective is a “holistic” approach, he says.

“While mortgage advisers don’t need to give specific advice around investment portfolios or investment advisers specialised advice around property, they should be equipped with experience, knowledge and qualifications to be able to answer general investment and budgeting questions.

“They need to be able to have a general conversation with a client and be able to point that person in the right direction to get that advice, whether that's internally within their own firm, or if they can't provide that service externally to a different financial adviser.”

How do advisers pivot? Dobson says there is not really  an educational pathway. “There are financial planning qualifications and we have had advisers within the firm complete those. While they have said they were good a lot of what they learned doesn’t apply in the real world. And a lot of tools used during the course have been rendered almost obsolete with AI.”

He believes many mortgage only advisers will try to upskill and it will possibly be easier doing it themselves using AI.

Finsol has created its own resource, setting up an AI-driven knowledge hub for financial planners and advisers so they can upskill.  

“We certainly haven't left it to, external education. We've built those resources ourselves to upskill the team.

“If an adviser wants to keep being an adviser, and they're transactional, then they're definitely going to have to start broadening out their services and getting better equipped to handle those general financial conversations.”