The Future of Financial Advice Must be More Diverse

I’ve sat in those rooms, and you have too. You know the ones, where some war-weary veteran of the good old days of financial services talks about how they used to walk uphill both ways in a blizzard to every client meeting.

How the account application was as small as a postcard. How they didn’t even have calculators and surmised rates of return on the back of a napkin.

We are all told that a return to such days would be a good thing for clients and advisors alike and that all of this technology “stuff” is simply ruining a business that at its core is about helping people save for their future, not do calculus.

But those are not the only rooms.

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Sometimes a cliché is best captured in a picture. On my colleague's phone was a black Bentley, chrome logo glistening in the sun. The car belonged to one of his most successful clients, but it wasn't the presumptive price tag that was jarring. The custom license plate read, “NVSTWME,” surrounded by a frame stating, “My other car is a yacht.”

Photographic evidence of people's worst assumptions about financial advisers: extreme affluence, simplistic value proposition, garnished with a touch of hubris. Truth is, the majority of people in financial services do not carry themselves with…

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