Financial Adviser Jobs - Leading Financial Adviser Jobs

Financial Adviser Jobs

Financial Adviser Jobs

A financial adviser job involves advising clients on financial planning products from a specific product provider, or a specific selection of product providers, which predominantly involve regulated products such as pensions and investments.

Since the Financial Services Act of 1986, all financial adviser jobs advising on anything with an investment content are regulated by the FSA (Financial Services Authority) and financial adviser jobs have required applicants to be both FPC qualified (Financial Planning Certificate) or equivalent, and ideally signed off with “competent adviser status”.

Competent adviser status or CF22, enables a financial adviser to sell regulated products with minimum supervision from their sales manager.

A person with a financial adviser job must give advice that is in the best interest of their clients. To ensure this happens all financial advisors are both professionally qualified and must follow the guidelines of their internal compliance procedures. Internal compliance varies between organisations and each firm is liable if the FSA finds that their internal compliance falls short of the law.

A financial adviser can be based in a number of different environments including a Bank (Banking Financial Adviser) or a Building Society (Building Society Financial Adviser), or may actually work with the product provider they represent and be a home based financial adviser.

There are lots of jobs in financial services, which revolve around the financial planning of investments, pensions and life cover. The range of financial adviser jobs, which exist to help a financial adviser give financial advice to their clients are varied and quite niche in their nature.

Firstly, a financial services sales manager may be placed within any number of environments, each with their own challenges and opportunities. Most financial services jobs as a sales manager cover Banking, Life Office and IFA practices, although they can be found in accountancy and solicitor practices, estate agencies, general insurance brokerages and a number of other environments.

A financial services job in sales management involves looking after both the compliance and the sales performance for a team of financial planners. Occasionally organisations split sales and compliance into distinct roles, whilst others integrate both functions together.

An individual with a financial services job as a Sales Manager will hold or work towards competent supervisor status, which is also known as CF9. A holder of competent supervisor status effectively monitors the compliance and KPIs (key performance indicators) of the team, enabling them to sign off their team of people who hold financial adviser jobs.

The majority of financial adviser jobs involving sales management will require candidates to monitor the sales performance of their team, together with motivating and training its financial planning consultants and putting in place targets and performance plans.

The number of financial advisors supervised by a Sales Manager is termed his span of control and the span of control allowed by an organisation's compliance structure varies between firms.

A financial adviser job on the corporate side involves advising businesses on the benefits package they offer to their employees. The services employee benefits consultants offer their clients ranges from Group Pensions work through to Executive Pensions for senior management and all areas of Group Life.

Business clients are often interested in a financial adviser and their employee benefits advice as it is a method of adding significant value to the remuneration package of their employees and engenders employee loyalty. Usually, because of the large number of policies, it is possible for a business to get a reduced rate or bulk discount when compared to what the cost of individual policies would be.

Corporate financial adviser jobs are different from other client facing roles in financial planning, as it is essentially a “business to business” sale and the role often involves presenting to a company's Board of Directors.

There are a number of roles within the field of Compliance in financial planning. Compliance jobs range from senior management through to file checking roles.

Compliance is essentially the function, which ensures that the regulated financial advisors are following current legislation.

Training and Competence Supervisors check the advice and the competence of the financial advisors within a sales force, or a region of the sales force. More senior compliance professionals would actually construct and develop the compliance procedures for an organisation, or continually monitor and adapt the company's compliance structure to fit with current legislation.

Financial adviser jobs carry very different salary packages depending on the requirements of the role. Often a financial adviser job will carry a basic salary together with full corporate benefits and the adviser will have the opportunity to earn a bonus depending on how hard he works and the level of success he has in meeting the various key performance indicators.

Of all financial services jobs the role of an adviser is one of the most rewarding. When speaking to financial advisors currently in the industry we find that they tend to say they love the job many different reasons. Usually the enjoyment of meeting and seeing people ranks right at the top alongside the feeling of fulfillment when a financial adviser has really helped a client out and genuinely assisted them in getting where they want to be.