New Fidelity Life scholarships aim to lift financial adviser diversity

Fidelity Life has announced five new scholarships recipients to help aid the growing need to diversify financial advisers in New Zealand communities.

Thursday, November 24th 2022, 1:43PM

The scholarships, worth $5,000 each are part of Fidelity Life’s new financial adviser education and skills programme, Career connect.

Fidelity Life head of solutions and services Trecia Brown says there is a growing need for professional financial advice and career connect was developed to help drive a more vibrant advice industry.

“Studies from regulators and industry associations have shown that New Zealanders who access professional financial advice are consistently better off than those who don’t. In these challenging economic times, we want all New Zealanders to have better access to financial advice.”

With research released in February 2021 by the Financial Services Council (FSC) more than 80% of adviser respondents were male with under 87% identified as European and 73.5% aged more than 50, indicating a clear lack of diversity within the sector.

Brown says “Money matters are personal, so people need to feel comfortable building a long term relationship with an adviser they can relate to.”

“That’s why our scholarships are designed to support greater diversity in our industry, so our scholarship recipients can be supported to serve their communities, provide relevant and accessible advice and help close the under insurance gap in New Zealand,”

While the need for diversification in the industry is rising, there has also been success in support for existing financial advisers.

In 2018, Partner’s Life offered a new support programme to help its advisers through the 2021 financial advice licensing regime.

The initiative, designed as a confidential, modular, digital platform was aimed to also support adviser businesses to document and explain key business practices, processes and policies, helping to put them in a strong position to transition into the new regulatory environment.

In 2019, Partner’s Life also added to their online application initiative- the MUM underwriting system that created an option for clients to pre complete their underwriting disclosures prior to meeting a financial adviser.

Since its launch to early 2022, 22,000 applications have been submitted via the system with 38,000 lives assessed and more than 70% of all new Partner’s Life business is processed through the system.

Tags: Fidelity Life