Industry's renaissance may start with kids

A new suite of tools is being offered to New Zealand teachers to help them improve their students’ financial literacy – and one adviser says it’s the most positive move he’s seen in his 40 years in the financial sector.

Thursday, April 24th 2014, 6:00AM 1 Comment

by Susan Edmunds

The Financial Capability Progressions toolkit was launched this month to all schools.

Retirement Commissioner Diane Maxwell said: “Financial literacy is an essential life skill and embedding it in the school curriculum makes absolute sense. We want young people to leave school equipped to make good decisions about money from an early age.”

Wellington adviser John Killick, of FSB4 Financial, said it was the best thing for the industry he had seen.

“That’s where it has to start.”

He said it would give the industry a boost as a younger people came through with a better understanding of how economics, finance and politics were linked and what it meant.

He said younger clients were already more willing to engage with financial advisers than older generations. “Generation Y are not afraid of talking to us.”

They were also savvy consumers, he said, who knew how to get information online and would quickly know if an adviser was being honest with them.

But Killick said it was perhaps time that the Financial Markets Authority was more overt in its support of independent advisers. “I think we’ve had long enough to say we’re not all cowboys and perhaps if they explained what advisers do a bit more, it would be helpful.”

He said the biggest hurdle for the future of the advice sector was the public's perception.

“At the end of the day the perception of the marketplace is that it’s not yet a profession, it’s still regarded as an industry. That’s not going to happen overnight and it will have to come from the performance of people in the marketplace, the adviser force and their qualifications and contribution to people, and how they’re viewed by society.”

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