The Coronavirus pandemic has hit the Financial Planning profession hard and resulted in major business change but despite this Financial Planning Today readers have voiced remarkable confidence in the future in our annual Financial Planning Survey.

Well over half (56.8%) of readers working at Financial Planning and Wealth Management firms surveyed for our latest annual Financial Planning profession survey said they were “very positive” about the future.

This is a small rise from last year’s survey, carried out in June 2019, but given the Covid-19 impact this year the figures show strong resilience within the profession.

The majority of planners (83%) also said they were positive about the future compared to just over 77% last year when Brexit loomed.

The confidence is especially remarkable as the survey showed that many planning firms have furloughed staff. Just under half of Financial Planning and Paraplanning firms (46.9%) reported they had furloughed team members.

Client numbers also remaining strong. The majority (92.6%) of respondents said client numbers had stayed the same or risen over the past 12 months (2019: 90%), with only 7.4% saying that client numbers had fallen.

However, while confidence is strong the news was not all positive. The number of respondents that said they expect staff numbers to fall over the next two years rose to 17.7% compared to 12.5% last year.

In terms of business areas, firms were moving towards a Financial Planning/Wealth Management model as 94% said they offered Financial Planning services to clients. This was one of the highest totals seen over the past five years of the survey.

The survey was carried out in the first half of June and the full results can be read in the latest edition of Financial Planning Today Magazine.

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