What Next-Gen Planners Want Now
March 8, 2013 by Ann Marsh
Remote planning may be on the rise, but not everyone is enamored of the idea. A recent Schwab survey of planning students atTexas Tech found that the lure of client relationship management and working in-person with clients remains high, with nearly half of students citing the latter as a priority.
Schwab surveyed 102 students and held a roundtable last week with three of them to discuss some of the topics they feel are most important to the future of the profession.
“I don’t think that technology can replace the face-to-face contact. It’s an accompaniment,”Alesha Isaacs, one of the survey respondents and a senior in financial planning, said during the discussion.
“I think that body language [and] emotion tell a lot about a person,” added masters studentApril Peterson.
“The Internet acts as a barrier,” junior Fount Freeman said. “A lot of people are very impersonal over the Internet.”
FOCUS ON CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS
More than two-thirds of respondents said they are interested in client relationship management more than other planning roles, such as investment management, according to Schwab.
That emphasis surprised the survey administrators from Schwab, who said they anticipated more students would cite remote planning as a stronger priority.
“That’s one of the things I thought we knew,”Bernie Clark, Schwab’s head of advisor services, confessed to the students during the discussion. “But maybe you are headed in another direction.”
A related result: Only 40% of students said they needed a “strong ability” to understand financial markets, investment strategies and complex data. A larger group (56%) of respondents said they only needed “some ability” to understand markets and investing.
COMPENSATION SURPRISE
There was another surprise regarding compensation: Only 5% of the students surveyed rated financial remuneration as their top priority. And 64% cited work-life balance among their top three priorities — a value strongly shared by all three students in the discussion.
“Our generation really wants [to work] 40 hours a week, not 65 hours a week,” Freeman said. “It’s not that we are lazy or anything; we just want to enjoy our lives and be healthy. We are definitely willing to accept less of a pay scale [in return].”
“I think,” Isaacs said, “that being a well-rounded individual with healthy activities outside of your job helps you connect better with your clients. … I think having the time to go experience these things is important.”
Clark added, “I think I’m hearing … an undercurrent of control, of choosing your destiny.”
OTHER FINDINGS: PLANNER PRIORITIES
Other survey findings include the following:
The survey authors also noted that the results showed the students are “individualists” and “averse to corporate norms.”
