The Financial Services Industry Is Broken – Here’s How We Should Fix It

June 23, 2017

Along with being a financial planner here, each member of our team wears a bunch of different hats. Obviously, one of my other hats is a blogger. Another is being responsible for hiring new financial planners, where I have the opportunity to talk with incredibly talented CFP®’s from all over the country who want to work at Financial Finesse.

The reality of the situation is that even with a minimum of 10 years of industry experience and the CFP® designation, along with being wonderful human beings, only around 2% of those who apply for this role end up making it all the way through our hiring process. It’s astounding to me that I actually made it through the process and am working here.

Don’t tell anyone, but I regularly talk to planners who are smarter, harder working, more entertaining and much more photogenic than I am, and quite often they don’t get hired. There are lots of reasons for that, but that’s not the direction I want to take this post. Maybe another day…

What most financial planners do

The reason I talk about this is that the overwhelming majority of planners I talk to are in the business of giving world class advice to high net worth families when they apply to work at Financial Finesse, which is what I did prior to coming here. They are typically measured by the amount of assets or fees they collect and are tired of having to sell in order to also do financial planning.

For me, when I was working on a high net worth planning team, there was always a piece of me that thought, “The people we are working with are going to be just fine for the rest of their lives, even if they develop a bad case of ‘the stupids,’ while the people who most need our help can’t afford it and don’t have access to it. There is something fundamentally wrong with this system!” I interviewed three planners today who said something very similar. And that thought is what is driving them to look at us as a potential final career stop.

Working with the other 99%

Most of the employees I talk to in my role as a financial planner will never become a client in a high net worth planning office. Most would be happy just paying off their debt and having enough income in retirement to live a modest lifestyle. My guess (because I’m too lazy to do the math!) is that over half of the people I meet with are there to discuss either how to get out of serious debt or how to stop living paycheck to paycheck and maybe prepare for retirement or put their kids through college. These are the people who wouldn’t normally have access to decent financial planning guidance. And this isn’t isolated to the people I talk to – my colleagues say the same.

A recent Fed “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households” reported that just under 1/4 of households can’t pay their monthly bills and almost half of households wouldn’t be unable to cover, with cash, an emergency expense of $400 or more. This information doesn’t surprise me, but it does get my hackles up a little bit about how messed up our financial services industry is.

These are the people that need help from our best and brightest planners. These are the people that our current system is leaving behind. These are the people that I wanted to help when I made the decision to work here.

A new branch of the industry

The good news is that these are the people that I’m helping today. Financial Finesse was founded on the belief that all Americans, regardless of income or net worth, deserve access to excellent financial planning guidance. That’s the vision that guides us. And we are actually excited to see more competitors in our space. Employers are catching on that providing a workplace financial wellness benefit is good for employees and it’s good for the bottom line – if you don’t have a financial wellness benefit at work yet, chances are you will. And that’s a good thing. I firmly believe that our industry will revolutionize the way traditional financial services are offered in the future.

I only wish that every employer in the country would work with us so that I could help everyone. Since I can’t clone myself, I try to at least hire others who have that same burning passion to help those who need it the most. Our internal motto and rallying cry (what I like to say is our true mission), is that we are “changing f’ing lives.” And that’s what we’re doing – one person, one family at a time.

What’s in it for you

What does this have to do with your own personal financial situation? Well, if nothing else, know that we feel your pain – getting unbiased answers to your questions is truly a challenge in today’s world. But if you do have access to a financial wellness benefit at work, USE IT. It’s there to help you and it’s not just for people who are in crisis. In fact, the best time to use it is when you’re not, so we can help make sure you’re ready when the next crisis hits.

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Here at Financial Finesse, we believe strongly in the importance of workplace culture and the power of doing well by doing good. This article is the fifth in our week-long series of posts where we highlight a specific part of our company culture that helps to make Financial Finesse one of America’s best places to work. This is just one part of our celebration of recent recognition by Inc., who listed us as one of the Best Workplaces in 2017 and Entrepreneur, who named us to the Small-Sized Companies: The Best Company Cultures in 2017 list.