Steve Conley
December 15, 2025
The Personal Finance Society (PFS) has recently announced that more than 400 people have expressed interest in its new Pathway to the Profession initiative — a £1 million recruitment campaign designed to attract and nurture new entrants into financial planning.
On the surface, this is welcome news. A profession that genuinely serves the public should always be thinking about renewal, access, and future talent.
But when we look more closely at the context in which this initiative sits, an important question emerges:
Is this investment preparing new professionals for the future of financial planning — or reinforcing the structures of its past?
The Shifting Ground Beneath Financial Advice
The traditional advice model — built around product distribution, assets-under-management fees, and information asymmetry — is under sustained pressure.
Several forces are converging:
- AI and digital tools are rapidly reducing the need for intermediated information and product comparison.
- Retail investments are becoming increasingly commoditised, with falling fees and platform consolidation eroding margins.
- Transparency expectations are rising, exposing long-standing tensions between advice, sales, and incentives.
- Public trust remains fragile after decades of misaligned outcomes.
In this environment, consumers are increasingly seeking empowerment, clarity, and agency — not more complex intermediaries.
Industries facing this kind of shift often appear healthy right up until the moment they aren’t. History is full of examples where established models doubled down on what once worked, rather than adapting to what was coming next.
A Question of Direction, Not Motive
This brings us back to the PFS initiative.
A £1 million investment in recruitment inevitably shapes the future character of a profession. So it’s reasonable to ask:
- What kind of practitioner is this pathway designed to produce?
- What business models are new entrants most likely to be absorbed into?
- What assumptions about the future of advice are embedded in this design?
When recruitment pipelines primarily feed existing distribution networks, even unintentionally, a tension can arise between professional independence and commercial alignment.
This isn’t about questioning anyone’s integrity. It’s about recognising that structures and incentives matter — often more than individual intent.
The Innovation Question
Here’s a simple thought experiment.
If you had ÂŁ1 million to invest in the future of mobility, would you place it in:
- A system that still relies on human drivers operating within legacy constraints, or
- A model designed from the ground up around autonomy, transparency, and user control?
This isn’t about cars.
It’s about who holds the steering wheel.
Financial planning now faces a similar inflection point. The real question is whether recruitment strategies are preparing people to operate within legacy systems — or equipping them to help design what comes next.
Professionalism, Revisited
If the long-term goal is genuine professionalism, then clarity matters.
Professional financial planning implies:
- Client-centred, fiduciary thinking
- Independence from product incentives
- A strong foundation in ethics, education, and human judgement
- Recognition that money is a means, not the purpose
It also raises an uncomfortable but necessary question:
Would today’s recruitment strategies look different if they were designed primarily around planning, rather than distribution?
That’s not a criticism — it’s a design challenge.
A Responsibility to New Entrants
Those considering a career in financial planning deserve transparency about the landscape they’re entering.
That includes a clear-eyed view of:
- Technological disruption
- Regulatory direction
- Changing consumer expectations
- The long-term viability of different business models
A proper PESTLE perspective would suggest that the fastest-growing opportunities lie not in product sales, but in education, life design, behavioural insight, and structurally trustworthy advice.
Preparing people for yesterday’s model may feel safe. Preparing them for tomorrow’s reality is the real duty of care.
What Might a Different Investment Look Like?
Imagine if ÂŁ1 million were directed toward:
- Training planners in product-agnostic, client-led planning
- Building open, accessible financial literacy tools
- Supporting communities to develop self-planning capability
- Developing AI-assisted platforms that educate and empower rather than sell
That would represent a recruitment pathway aligned not just with jobs, but with long-term relevance and trust.
A Call for Alignment
Financial planning doesn’t lack people.
It lacks structural clarity.
The future of the profession will be shaped less by how many people we recruit — and more by what we train them to become.
At the Academy of Life Planning, we’re working to support a new generation of planners focused on Total Wealth — integrating human capital, ethical design, and structural trustworthiness at the core of financial empowerment.
That’s not a rejection of the profession’s past — but an invitation to design its future more consciously.
Academy of Life Planning 