Are We Educating the Next Generation — or Recruiting Them Into a Broken System?

When a profession celebrates widening access, it must also ask a harder question: access to what?

This week, the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and Personal Finance Society (PFS) announced that over 6,600 young people have taken part in their virtual work experience programmes since 2023.

The story is being framed as a success:

Diverse participation
Reduced socio-economic barriers
Increased confidence about careers in finance
Greater awareness of insurance and personal finance roles

On the surface, it’s positive.
And in one important sense, it is.

But beneath the feel-good headlines sits a deeper ethical and structural question that the profession can no longer avoid:

Are we genuinely educating the next generation —
or are we recruiting them into a system that is no longer fit for purpose?

1. Access Is Only Meaningful If the Destination Is Healthy

Widening participation matters.
Removing barriers matters.
Opening doors to underrepresented groups matters.

But those achievements lose their moral weight if the system young people are being welcomed into is itself structurally conflicted.

Because today’s mainstream financial services model is still built on:

Product distribution, not human wellbeing
Revenue extraction, not life outcomes
Regulatory protection of firms, not clients
A business logic that treats money as the engine of life
rather than the output of human capability

So when we celebrate inclusion, we must ask:

Are we expanding opportunity —
or expanding the intake into an extractive paradigm?

Representation inside a broken system is not the same as justice.
It’s just a more diverse version of the same architecture.

2. The Confidence Boost Is the Most Concerning Metric

Participants reported:

Feeling less intimidated by finance
Becoming more excited about careers in the industry
Gaining clarity about different professional roles
Increased confidence and motivation

Again, this sounds positive.

But psychologically, it’s also a classic early-stage identity capture pattern.

Young people are being:

Reassured that the system is benign
Introduced to curated narratives about “helping people”
Shown a simplified, conflict-free version of the profession
Encouraged to emotionally attach to an industry identity

Before they are exposed to:

The reality of mis-selling scandals
Regulatory capture
Suitability vs. best-interest conflicts
Long-term consumer harm
The psychological toll of selling misaligned products
The limitations of cashflow-only planning
The lived trauma of financial victims
The emerging reality that AI already outperforms most retail planning tools

This isn’t malicious.
But it is incomplete.

And incomplete education becomes structural deception when it shapes life choices.

3. What Isn’t Being Taught Is More Important Than What Is

Here’s what no mainstream work-experience programme currently teaches:

That most “financial advice” revenue still comes from product extraction
That “suitability” is not the same as acting in a client’s best interest
That cashflow models fail when they ignore human behaviour
That financial trauma is widespread and under-acknowledged
That regulatory systems systematically favour firms over consumers
That human capital — skills, health, agency, purpose — drives most lifetime wealth
That AI tools already outperform legacy planning software
That product-free, conflict-free planning models already exist
That client sovereignty is possible without intermediated control

So the next generation is being trained inside a curated illusion.

They’re learning how to operate the machine —
not how to question whether the machine should exist in its current form.

4. This Isn’t About Attacking Institutions — It’s About Updating the Paradigm

Let’s be clear:

This is not an anti-CII argument.
It’s not an anti-PFS argument.
It’s not an anti-career argument.

It is a pro-truth argument.

Every profession goes through evolutionary phases:

Medicine did
Education did
Law did
Energy did
Media did

Financial services is now in the same moment.

The industry is facing:

AI-driven disintermediation
Collapse of public trust
Growing regulatory fatigue
Rising consumer harm cases
A generational shift away from institutions
Demand for transparency, agency, and ethical coherence

To keep training young people into yesterday’s model —
without introducing tomorrow’s alternatives —
is not professional stewardship.

It’s institutional inertia.

5. The Missing Pathway: Human-First, Product-Free Planning

There is already a post-extractive alternative emerging.

It looks like this:

Planning life before planning money
Treating human capability as the primary wealth engine
Using AI to return agency to clients
Removing product sales from the planning relationship
Replacing commission and AUM with transparent service fees
Supporting people before, during, and after financial harm
Measuring success in life outcomes, not portfolio returns
Training planners as coaches, educators, and strategic allies
Designing systems around sovereignty, not dependency

This is what we call Total Wealth Planning.

Not lifestyle fluff.
Not anti-finance ideology.
Not technical incompetence.

But a correction of a 50-year category error in financial theory.

6. The Real Opportunity: A Next-Generation Intake Path That Tells the Whole Truth

Here’s the constructive invitation:

If institutions genuinely care about the future of the profession,
then virtual work experience must evolve beyond marketing pipelines.

It should include:

Human capital literacy
Ethics-first planning models
AI-native planning tools
Product-free career pathways
Financial trauma awareness
Regulatory reality literacy
Client sovereignty frameworks
Multiple futures, not one funnel

Young people deserve to see the full landscape, not just one curated route.

7. A Gentle Challenge to the Profession

So let’s hold two truths at the same time:

It’s good that more young people are being introduced to finance.
It’s not good that they’re being introduced only to a shrinking, conflicted version of it.

If we really want to serve the next generation —
not just recruit them —
we must stop confusing access with empowerment.

And we must stop mistaking confidence-building for truth-telling.

Closing Reflection

The future of financial planning will not be defined by better distribution.

It will be defined by better alignment:

With human wellbeing
With ethical coherence
With technological reality
With client sovereignty
With long-term life outcomes
With social legitimacy

The question is not whether young people should enter finance.

The question is:

Which version of finance are we inviting them into?

Invitation

If you’re an educator, regulator, planner, or student who senses that something deeper is missing from the current model — you’re not alone.

A new pathway is already emerging.

One that treats planning as a tool for liberation, not extraction.
One that places human life before financial products.
One that returns agency to people, not institutions.

That’s the future worth building.

If you’re a young person considering a career in finance — or a parent supporting that decision — one gentle suggestion:

Before committing to any pathway, take time to explore the full lived reality of the industry.

Not just the promotional side.
Not just the qualification route.
But the day-to-day ethical pressures, conflicts of interest, regulatory realities, and long-term wellbeing impacts on both professionals and clients.

An informed choice is an empowered choice.

We publish unfiltered, experience-based perspectives on the real structure of financial services — including where it works well, and where it quietly causes harm — at the Academy of Life Planning.

🧭 Explore the full picture here:
academyoflifeplanning.blog

Because careers shape lives.
And young people deserve more than a curated illusion.