Financial planners will not be able to hide from modern technology if they want to continue reaching a younger audience, says Sally Plant, head of financial planning at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.
She said advisers were doing lots of things to try and make their services more amenable and accessible to the younger generation.
This included building a plan and letting the investors implement it themselves, or offering them the option to pay for fees by monthly direct debit.
"So within their service proposition there is quite a lot going on," says Plant.
But when it comes to communicating with the next generation "we can't hide from technology", she adds.
"Many planers are now very comfortable with podcasts and delivering themselves on that kind of platform, so probably the next stage is to embrace the sort of TikTok world, and potentially as we see more young planners coming in they might go for a sort of more modern and forward-thinking communication method.
"TikTok is undeniably the way young people communicate and pick up information, so I think we definitely can't hide from these mechanisms if we want to continue to get financial planning out there."
Financial planners have for years looked for ways to educate the public via pro bono in-person seminars, podcasts or even free books to download.
"We are just changing the way we communicate. It's the same idea, the same [use of] their expert knowledge to enable other people to benefit from it, not their traditional client," says Plant.
A failure to move on to modern platforms of communication will risk failing to reach these new investors and future clients altogether.
To hear more about how advisers can work with TikTok, the CISI's work with NextGen Planners, as well as what to look out for when working with social media, click on the link above.
carmen.reichman@ft.com
