How to Become A Financial Advisor

There is so much uncertainty in the world today. As we are seemingly entering the backend of a worldwide pandemic we still have to face the after-effects of what adjustments were made to cope. Now we are faced with war in Ukraine that has inevitably changed the landscape of our country financially, for example, the pricing of gas. With that being said, money management has become extremely important and the need for financial advisors has risen greatly.

A financial advisor is not a job that can be taken lightly as you are literally in charge of helping people with their means of survival a.k.a. money. As we all know, nobody likes when anyone is playing around with their money, thus it is a huge responsibility you take on if you wish to become a financial advisor. Moving through this article, you will learn about all the skills and knowledge necessary for you to step into this career. Hopefully, in the end, you will be able to make a fully informed decision on if it is for you or not. 

Knowledge Is Key

The absolute key to this job is knowledge. You can never think that you have made it to the point where you do not have to do any more research or learn. The world is changing rapidly and if you cannot keep up with the times you will essentially be useless in the world of finance today. A lot of people tend to settle with the information they received in their undergraduate or graduate programs as the highest peak of education and they fail as a long-term advisor. Your reputation will speak for you before you even step into rooms to meet clients thus you want to let it be a good representation of who you really are. 

Persona

A career in financial advising is client-based and with that comes so much to keep track of. You will need to be as organized as you possibly can be to be as efficient of an advisor as possible. However, luckily there is an app called Persona that can make your troubles go away. Persona provides its users with an easy-to-use experience while offering so many top-notch features. They have hassle-free scheduling and booking for your clients to make use of so that they can see your availability without having to physically speak with you. Clients will also be able to pay you through a site generated from the app and Persona keeps track of how much is owed along with the number of sessions left. Beyond that, there are opportunities for tax breaks and the ability to set up your own online store from within it. 

As a financial advisor, we urge you to get ahead in your field by downloading this app and making your job and life more organized and easier. 

Education Background Needed

First and foremost, you will need to complete a bachelor’s degree, though it does not necessarily have to be in economics or finance, it definitely adds credibility if it is. After graduating, you can go on to pursue higher education in those two specific fields or you can jump into the workforce. Usually, you will not be ready to get a full-time position so you will end up doing an internship more than likely. We recommend that you find an internship that will be willing to sponsor your training and licenses needed so that you can practice as a financial advisor. Obviously, it is not a necessity because you can do it on your own but who doesn’t like to be catered to. The licenses needed are Series 7, Series 63, Series 65, and Series 6. Once you have garnered those licenses you can use the knowledge gained from your internship or entry-level position and legally begin practicing as a financial advisor. However, as you should know, none of these tasks can happen overnight, what is described above is years of work.

Skills Needed

As with most jobs, you need a combination of technical skills and soft skills. The technical skills encompass all of the knowledge you have collected on the road to becoming a financial advisor. Soft skills make your technical skills better because it gives you the ability to interact effectively with your clients which makes for quality work. Some of the skills you will need to have are as followed:

• Customer Service: This skill allows you to have good, professional person-to-person interactions with your clients and allows for you to gain more clients based on your ability to leave good impressions.
• Business Development: You will need to create performance objectives and track figures thus you will have to be skilled in this.
• Research: A deep dive into your client’s financial history is necessary if you are going to be an advisor because without that information there is essentially no way to do your job properly. 
• Interpersonal Communication: This is very important because every client is different and you must be able to adjust to communicate with all clients. Thus why you must also be good at active listening, and nonverbal and verbal communication in order to be a good interpersonal communicator.
• Detail Oriented: The job requires you to be very accurate so you need to be able to pay close attention.
• Risk Assessment: Anticipating challenges clients may run into is a key part of the job and will be the difference between making a good decision and a bad one.

Understanding Day-To-Day Activities

Before you pursue a job, we think it is a good idea if you have a well-informed perception of what you would be doing on a daily basis. At its most basic description, “Financial advisors spend their days “meeting with prospective clients, implementing solutions with new clients, and reviewing plans with existing clients.” However, every day is different when pertaining to the clients because they all have different needs. Hence, you may spend chunks of your day handling matters and issues that are opposite of each other. Especially these days, when you can have meetings scheduled in person or virtually and then have to work on prior obligations to other clients as well. People will contact you asking about many different areas of finance and it is very important to have knowledge of all of it. A client may come to you seeking assistance with budgeting or building a college fund, or retirement.  

Also when you are not physically taking meetings or working on a client’s specific case you’ll be prepping for another meeting or marketing yourself to prospective clients. As well as continuing to increase your education and proficiency in financial services and maintain up-to-date licensing

Questions You Need To Ask Yourself

Now knowing the facts that you have read through this article so far, it is important that you ask yourself certain questions to really gauge if you are the right person to become a financial advisor. Some questions to ask are as followed:

• Are you passionate about helping people financially?
• Do you want a customer-facing role that requires working and communicating with a variety of people?
• Are you comfortable networking and reaching out to strangers?
• Does the idea of actively promoting your services to others excite you?
• Do you enjoy working with numbers or have an interest in investments and financial planning?
• Are you comfortable making decisions for yourself and others?

It goes without saying that if you have an overwhelming amount of “No” answers to those questions then you are not looking into a career that will fit you. Conversely, if you have an overall “Yes” response to the questions then you are on a path that can be fruitful for you.

Salary Earnings

As much as we all want certain jobs because they satisfy our interests, another big part of why we want jobs or careers is because of the stable income from them. In terms of financial advisement, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2020 the median salary was $89,330 per year. Though this is already a beyond decent amount of money to make yearly, the amount does vary depending on a few factors. Those factors are your experience, the region in which you work, your types of clients, the types of products you sell, and the type of financial advice you provide. 

Overall, you are looking at making a decent living in this career if you are properly skilled and are surrounding yourself in environments to grow and take on bigger (richer) clients. The work you put into this will result in the income you see.