Graduate training schemes are commonplace in professions such as law and accounting, but less so in the financial advice industry.
So for Evelyn Partners the launch of its financial planning graduate programme is an opportunity to bring talent into, and grow the future of, the financial planning business, says Emma Sterland, who is chief financial planning director at the firm.
As a wealth management and professional services group, the firm already has an established graduate programme for its investment management business. “We wanted to replicate that in our financial planning business,” says Sterland.
“We’ve seen the investment management graduate scheme be really successful. It was something that was very strong in the legacy Smith & Williamson part of our business.
“[The investment management graduate scheme] has brought talent into the business. And as years go on, we’ve retained that talent and they’re looking after clients now, [so] why wouldn’t we want to do the same?”
As well as growing its headcount of advisers over time, the financial planning graduate scheme enables an element of succession planning, by hiring younger recruits to work and learn alongside advisers who have a book of clients but may be approaching retirement.
“It’s also a skills transfer,” says Sterland. “Professional exams are one thing and they’re really important, but actually it’s that skills and knowledge, and so learning alongside those more experienced people who’ve spent their entire careers working with clients and their families, that’s invaluable.”
Another route to a career in advice
The financial planning graduate scheme, which will see 10 hires in September embark on a four-year journey at Evelyn Partners, will run alongside the group’s existing ‘assistant financial planner’ route to a career in advice.
“Some of those [assistant financial planners] are graduates, some are not. And we have a very structured programme that takes them through some soft-skill training, but also technical training. So we have got a well trodden path for taking people through.
“But generally those people are already qualified, from a professional qualification perspective. And depending on their experience, whether we’ve hired them internally and they already understand the business and how we do things, and our approach to clients, or whether they’ve been doing the job somewhere else, we take them on an appropriate journey.”
On the other hand, Sterland says that an advantage of hiring graduates is that, in some ways, you have a “blank sheet”.
“They haven’t had a full-time job in the industry, so we get to work with them and train them the Evelyn Partners way; show them the way that we think you should interact with clients and how we do things. So I think sometimes, that’s got benefits over having to retrain somebody who’s maybe learnt it a different way.
