Tips for financial advisor wannabes

A career in financial advisory services appears to be a hot move these days. I used to be a bit unenthusiastic about this because of how lopsided income distribution is in this country. Read: there’s too many poor people for every Lance Gokongwei or Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala.

I even asked a couple of bank staff who have to comply with HSBC’s quota for wealth management services, if it’s hard to find people who have at least P3.6 million ($80,000) to play with. “You would be surprised,” they said, looking at each other quite conspiratorially, I thought. Hmm.

In various interviews, industry leaders are saying while the Philippines still has to play a catch-up game with China, Taiwan or South Korea, banks are definitely growing their wealth management services in the Philippines.

HSBC’s Martin Cook is the guy that caused 25% to 26% growth in the bank’s personal financial services portfolio in the last few years. He is retiring, and this portfolio will now be handled by Suresh Nanoo.

In a briefing, Nicholas Winsor, head of HSBC’s personal financial services in the Asia-Pacific said the bank is always on the lookout for smart and driven financial advisors.

“It’s definitely a good career,” he said. I quoted him in this article I wrote for INQUIRER.net, where he said most of HSBC’s financial advisors are well-trained and well-paid, from all walks of life, often from the best universities and often wealthy in their own right.

Citibank’s Citigold was the first bank to offer this service in the Philippines. In this fast-paced world, being the first is not really a guarantee that you are better than your competitor. But this claim from Judith Go, wealth management director for Citigold, if true, is of some interest.

“When the unit investment trust fund market experienced some volatility, we were the least hit among all industry players, as our Citigold clients were prepared for such an eventuality and knew that the market correction will not affect their long-term gains,” Go said.

There are also horror stories, of course. Stories of unmet expectations, poor customer service, and advice that caused losses on the part of investors. That’s true for wealth management services, and that’s true for all other kinds of services. What’s important for financial planner wannabes, says Mark Yu, president of the CFA Society in the Philippines, is integrity.

“In the CFA program, if you don’t pass ethics, you fail right away,” he said.

MoneySense’s latest article featured on Inquirer.net lists some tips for financial planner wannabes. Get a certification, the article says.

For me, the most important part is integrity and ethics, followed by knowledge of the whole gamut of personal financial services, experience, an ability to work with different kinds of people, an intimate understanding of the psychology behind money and continuous education. After all, while this industry is full of number-crunching, its really not the figures per so that is important but how to influence the mind behind those figures.

Yu believes the financial advisory services is still in its infancy here in the Philippines, but he feels it will grow. “Right now, there’s only about 10% being invested in managed funds. Whereas in other countries, its about half. We have about P2 to P3 trillion in time deposits. You need a greater portion of that to shift towards these funds before you really get more of the financial advisors as a profession coming in,” Yu said.

So, how would you like to be a pioneer?

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