When Sam Albanese set out to develop a financial services practitioner program at Toronto’s Seneca College last year, he was driven by both professional and personal reasons.

“When you look around at advisors these days, you see bald and grey,” he says. Research from Investment Executive’s 2006 Advisor’s Report Card confirms his observation, pegging the average age of advisors who responded to the survey at 46.7. This “looming labour shortage,” as Albanese calls it, will have dire implications for millions of Canadians, and he is especially concerned about what this means for his own children.

“My son, who is 29, isn’t interested in talking to my advisor, who is in his 60s,” says Albanese. “He wants an advisor his own age because they can relate to one another. But, unless the industry does something to get the next generation of advisors off the ground, young people will not be well served.”

Albanese is doing what he can to ensure his children won’t be short-changed. The inaugural class of the two-semester Seneca program graduated this spring and all 14 graduates have landed jobs in the industry. If you factor out the one grad who was 65 years old, the average age of the group was 28.

On the West Coast, Langley, B.C.-based Trinity Western University boasts a similar success rate. Demand for the 23- and 24-year-old graduates of the school’s four-year bachelor of business administration program is so great that Brian Korb, director of Trinity Western’s financial planning program, has had to turn away firms interested in hiring the 20 recent graduates who had specialized in financial planning.

While industry giants might seem to have an edge in tapping the scarce supply of rookie talent, smaller shops are being just as successful, offering the perks of one-on-one coaching, more hands-on experience and the possibility of one day purchasing an older advisor’s book of business.

“Most of our graduates are going to small planning firms,” says Korb. “That’s because these are the firms that are most involved with us.”

There are ample opportunities for advisors to get involved with Trinity Western’s financial planning students — as part of the school’s advisory committee, teaching a financial planning course, mentoring a student or providing an unpaid co-op placement.

Adam Bornn, who graduated from Trinity Western in 2006, can attest to the benefits of the close ties that exist between his school and the local community. The 24-year-old spent the past year at Wiffen Financial Services Inc. , an independent firm in Langley with nine advisors. The firm’s owner, Jordan Gagner, hired Bornn after teaching him in a financial planning course at Trinity Western.

Bornn sings the praises of his firm. “I chose Wiffen because of the intimate setting and great camaraderie within the firm,” he says.

He is also grateful for the coaching he is receiving from Gagner. “Jordan is very hands-on with new planners and has created footsteps for us to follow in,” Bornn says. “He takes time out of his busy schedule to help his young planners, even though we don’t make the company much money yet.”

While Bornn is pleased with how his career is playing out, he wishes more advisors offered internships to financial planning students: “Students need to get a taste of what financial planning is and what it has to offer.”

Trinity Western has no official co-op placement program in place, although Korb has successfully paired several fourth-year students with advisors looking for part-time help. “I hooked one student up with a local advisor in the fall, and he’s going to be working for the advisor full-time after graduation,” Korb says. “The student is doing work he could only dream about if he were working at a bank or a larger firm.”

Korb calls these arrangements ideal for both the student and the employer, but notes that the earlier a potential employer gets in touch with him, the better: “If a firm doesn’t call me until April and then says it wants to recruit one of my best grads, at that point most of them have already been hired.”

Co-op placements, mandatory in the Seneca program, have also translated into jobs for its graduates. About half the program’s students are returning to the firms they had been working at prior to starting the course, while the other half have secured co-op placements with Albanese’s assistance.

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“I get calls from firms who say they’re glad to take any of my students,” Albanese says, noting demand from firms outweighs current enrolment.

Succession planning is a major driver of the demand for Trinity Western and Seneca grads. “Many of our graduates are going to work for advisors who are in their 50s,” says Korb. “It is easier to hire people out of university, train them and have them meet your clients over the course of a few years before they buy you out of the business.”

Korb sold his own book in 2002 to a junior associate he hired for that reason. “The transition was seamless; no clients left when I did.”

He says offering a starting salary sweetens the pot. “Working on 100% commission from Day 1 is a scary thing,” he says. “Starting junior associates off on a salary and then gradually weaning them off it is a more ideal situation.”

But programs such as those at Seneca and Trinity Western will not fill the void left by boomer advisors leaving the business. “The 20 graduates from our program are a drop in the bucket compared with what the industry needs,” says Korb.

Albanese wants the industry to raise its profile among the younger generation, but notes the industry remains a tough sell among young people: “They assume this is strictly a sales job, and they think, ‘I didn’t go to school for four years just to get a sales job’.”

And many young people are not aware of the profession. Albanese maintains that marketing the financial services industry as an exciting and fulfilling career is the best long-term approach to the impending advisor shortage. “We promote our products but don’t do anything to promote the industry as a career,” he says. “You can have the best products, but what good are they with no one to sell them?” IE



The Financial Planning Standards Council’s Web site (www.cfp-ca.org) has a list of university and college financial planning programs.