"The people who come through the academy range from a 74-year-old retired person who wants to know about managing their own money, to people who have overseas qualifications but want to work here, as well as people who have been in the industry in admin roles and now want to get qualified.”
Hince says Quilter has a “mixture of graduates and career changers” among their intake, with a particular focus on “athletes and former military personnel who need to do something different now".
He adds: "Being a financial adviser is not seen as an obvious career choice for many, and what we are finding is that the people who come to the academy are not people who did an obviousdegree for a financial services job.”
He says the average age of an adviser in the school is 31.
Marietta Connery is people director at Schroders Personal Wealth, which has around 20 trainees at any one time.
She says that the programme at the SPW academy is divided into two. Those advisers who pass the exams then spend “the next part of the programme being supported by our development team and mentored by senior advisers to work towards becoming competent advisers. They will be supported by SPW to continue their professional development and progress towards chartered financial planner status”. They then join the SPW business.
Remote learning
A major challenge for all academy providers has been the advent of lockdowns and the need to move classes to remote learning, which has created fresh challenges for both staff and students.
As a former teacher, Lowes' Fox is experienced in face-to-face teaching, but the experience of working remotely is a new one. She says teaching the information as contained in the textbooks is fine to do remotely, but that the “soft skills” aspect of the course is better taught in a classroom.
Both Fox and Grieves passed the exams while combining learning with working full-time, and say that if they had been able to learn in the structured way via an academy it would have been beneficial, as they could have focused exclusively on their studies, which they completed before setting up the academy.
Connery says SPW has been able to adapt the way the courses are run during the pandemic and has always used a mixture of classroom learning and students learning in their own time.
She says: “At the start of the pandemic we reviewed our academy, which in ‘normal’ times contains a mix of self-study and classroom-based activity. During this period we were able to adapt from classroom-based learning to online learning without having to miss a day of the academy.”
