Financial Adviser Development Program


Pathway 3: Existing Financial Advisers

Existing Financial Advisers unhappy with their current situation and offering, looking to improve and expand their personal and client opportunities.

If you are already an Adviser and enjoy being an Adviser and helping people but are unhappy with either your remuneration or your overall direction and job satisfaction but are prepared to put in the effort to make the transition, then this Pathway may be for you.

What is a Financial Adviser?

Well, we imagine you already know the answer to this question, but just so we are all on the same page.

We think that professional financial advice is one of the most valuable services in people’s lives. It is a must for anyone serious about improving their chance of achieving financial independence.

A Financial Adviser (Financial Planner) is a professional who brings together a wide array of skills, experience and disciplines to develop and execute a financial strategy to help clients achieve their goals and objectives on their journey towards financial independence. Which is generally a point in life when you are no longer dependent on work, government or family for your income. It is a point where you are generally debt free and have sufficient investments and income to look after yourself.

Why Choose Financial
Planning as a Career

Whatever your reasons were for joining the profession, here are several reasons that we think make it a great career.

Financial Planning is a high growth industry with several structural winds in its sails such as demography, population growth and compulsory superannuation.

Financial Planning is a highly personal profession where clients are looking to establish high quality, intimate and personal relationships with people that they can trust. It’s a career that cannot be commoditized and ultimately replaced by a computer. There will always be a need for good financial advisers.

In an era of narrow specialisation, Financial Planning remains a broad, multi-disciplined profession, where an adviser is expected to be across a wide spectrum of interconnected subjects. In fact, it is the only profession where you are expected to have a panoramic view of the financial system so as to advise investors on how best they can invest, plan and navigate through it.

At its heart, Financial Planning is about helping people generally with their important financial decisions and specifically about helping them achieve and move towards financial independence. Helping people achieve improved financial wellbeing is a social good that everyone benefits from.

The profession is built on a foundation of strong, trust based client relationships that span long periods of time. Unlike other professions that can be more transactional in nature, Financial Planning often leads to deep and long term personal relationships with clients.

In an age where information and knowledge date quickly, Financial Planners get better with time. Obviously, there is technical knowledge that you need to keep up to date with, but the real world experience with a broad range of clients, products, companies and markets mean that Financial Planners have a very long shelf life and develop skills and knowledge that only become more valuable with time.

Financial Planning generally and Planners specifically can be a financially rewarding career with above average incomes relative to years of experience. It is not uncommon for advisers to earn packages of $150,000 – $250,000 within the first 5 years of their careers. Obviously much depends on the employment opportunity and employer.

Why choose Spring?

Most financial planners and firms work within a bank licensed and owned structure. There are many good advisers that work in these environments but ultimately, they are restricted in the strategies and products they can recommend to their clients. The emphasis and bias is always towards bank product. This can be at odds with clients’ needs and preferences. Spring is not owned or licensed by a big bank.

Spring has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong with other offices mooted. You would be joining a large, national organisation servicing a very broad cross section of Australians.

Spring became a public company in 2015 when it listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Listing provides capital raising, growth and acquisition opportunities not available to smaller private organisations. Listing also creates a higher level of regulatory and financial oversight that make the group a stronger organisation.

Spring is a growing organisation. Its proposition and offering is meeting a natural market demand for good financial and investment advice. This growth is attracting new, young and fresh talent into the business. Spring values motivated, intelligent and hardworking individuals seeking to build lasting careers in finance.

Spring invests heavily in development and training, from funding relevant studies to regular weekly training on a broad range of planning subjects. This environment of accelerated learning is abnormal in the profession and most firms do not have the resources to invest so heavily in new staff.

The consequence of all this learning is that career development is fast tracked and at Spring our advisers are very soon delivering and implementing complex plans and strategy, with an extensive support team behind them, that in other organisations they may not get the opportunity to do for years.

Spring provides a broad range of different career progression opportunities. Spring embraces youth and the fresh ideas that come with that and works hard to develop our staff and assist with their career progression. Most of the senior roles in the organisation have been filled by staff that first joined the group via our Graduate Programme.

In a financial world of increasing complexity there is too much to know and too many regulatory and legislative changes happening too often for one person to master. A client’s financial well-being is too important to be left to a “jack of all trades, master of none”.

Our advice model is built on the team ethos that none of us is as good as all of us; where a client is served by a highly-qualified principal adviser but without the pretence that the adviser alone knows everything.

Instead our advisers not only bring their own skills and experience to the table but they marshal a group of professionals to work on clients’ plans and strategies. That team includes veteran advisers, chartered accountants, superannuation experts, property and share-market specialists and lending experts. And they, in turn, are supported by our team of graduates who bring fresh ideas and the latest thinking from their recent tertiary study in finance, economics, business, accounting and law to the table.

Who is Spring looking for?

We are looking for like-minded career orientated individuals who share our passion for personal success whilst helping others achieve their financial goals and dreams.

At Spring, we recognise that successful individuals can be found with a wide variety of prior life experiences. Of most importance to us is the calibre and attitude of the individual. Education and/or prior experience in finance, economics, business, law, sales, accounting and/or marketing within or outside of the financial services arena are all possibilities.

Regardless of background to succeed at Spring you will need to be able to demonstrate a strong track record of success in past achievements.

You will also need:

 

  • To be highly motivated and driven
  • Possess strong communication skills
  • Be readily adaptable to change and challenging problems
  • Enjoy a fast-paced and diversified work environment

What is the recruitment process at Spring?

Spring operates an intensive multi-staged recruitment process.

In the first instance forward a brief cover letter (including which one of the three pathways (3P) you are applying for) and a concise resume to careers@springfg.com.

The most suitable and compelling candidates will be contacted to attend a first round interview.

Please note: Applications without cover letters will NOT be considered.