Financial Advisor

Financial Advisor Career Overview: 

Financial advisor (FA) and financial consultant (FC) are contemporary titles for stockbroker, broker, account executive or registered representative. A variant spelling, financial adviser, also is used sometimes. Traditionally, the job has involved buying and selling securities (such as stocks and bonds) on behalf of clients. The change in titles is supposed to reflect the fact that, rather than being focused primarily on facilitating transactions, Financial advisors really should be investment advisers and financial planners who take a holistic view of their clients' financial needs and goals. Other variations in title, such as wealth management advisor, also are used, sometimes to denote a financial advisor who has additional training, certifications and/or experience.

Some financial advisors specialize in serving individual or retail clients and others concentrate on business or institutional clients. Some securities firms prefer that financial advisors specialize in this fashion, others leave it up to the individual advisors to choose whatever mix of clients they prefer. Business clients who require specialized advice and services (such as in working capital management or business loans) may prefer financial advisors with detailed knowledge in these areas.

Education: A bachelor's degree is expected for a financial advisor. Coursework in finance, accounting and/or economics is helpful, though not required. Strong quantitative and analytic skills are vital. An MBA can give you a leg up in the hiring process, depending on the firm, but compensation (see below) is tied strictly to performance, not to academic credentials.

Certification: Becoming a financial advisor requires passing the Series 7 exam offered by FINRA and meeting continuing education requirements. Major Wall Street firms used to run extensive training programs to prepare recent college graduates for careers as financial advisors, but many of these have been dismantled in a spate of cost cutting during the past several years. As a result, getting started in this field is becoming more difficult. Firms are increasingly raiding each other for experienced financial advisors, while shunning the investment necessary to train new ones. When they do train new ones, they tend to limit the entrants to experienced financial industry professionals looking for a career change. You must be sponsored by a FINRA member firm (that is, your employer) to sit for the Series 7 exam. In some firms, for certain more senior financial advisor positions, and in some states, one or more additional credentials may be required.

Duties and Responsibilities: Financial advisors counsel clients on investment opportunities, consonant with the latter's needs, goals and tolerance for risk. The job requires keeping abreast of the financial markets, constantly monitoring the specific investments in clients' portfolios, and being on top of new investment strategies and investment vehicles. Financial advisors must be confident about decision-making under uncertainty and under extreme time pressure, have excellent people and communication skills, and know how to deal with failure and with dissatisfied clients. Success is highly dependent on sales ability, both in the acquisition of new clients and in the pitching of investment ideas to existing clients. Serving clients, compliance and practice management are closely-intertwined issues for financial advisors.

Financial advisors can greatly enhance their productivity and their ability to serve a large book of business if they are supported by one or more sales assistants. However, in many financial services firms, financial advisors must fund the pay of their sales assistants, in whole or in part, out of their own compensation (see below).

Typical Schedule: The time commitment can be heavy (60-80 hours per week or more), both for those starting out in the field and for established financial advisors committed to delivering excellent service and to growing their business.

What's to Like: Financial advisors have a high degree of professional autonomy, more akin to being an independent entrepreneur than a corporate employee. There is a close correlation between performance and reward, with virtually unlimited earnings potential. Do your job well, and you make a discernible, positive impact on your clients' lives.

What's Not to Like: The pressures on a financial advisor to process a constant avalanche of information, to make quick decisions under uncertainty that, if wrong, can be costly to clients, to sell constantly and to justify yourself daily can be overwhelming for some people.

Compensation Range: Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median annual compensation was about $68,200 as of May 2009, with the top 10% earning over $166,400. Financial advisor compensation typically is commission-based. That is, a financial advisor gets a share of the revenue generated for the firm by his/her clients. Other metrics, such as the total value of client financial assets on deposit with the financial advisor's firm, may also factor into compensation. Top financial advisors can earn well over $1,000,000.