Quora Answer: Will Financial Consultants Still be Needed in Future?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Will financial consultants be needed in the future?” 

As long as people need to acquire, to grow and to protect their wealth, there will always be a role for a financial consultant.  The duty of the financial consultant is to provide dynamic advise on the management of funds, the mitigation of liabilities and the acquisition of wealth.  Robo advisors cannot do that. 

The problem we have with the financial advisory business, as a whole, is a microcosm of the macrocosm of the finance industry, which is an emphasis on lead generation and sales over actual consultancy and service.  In places such as Singapore, there is a strict regulatory regime and an emphasis on training to change this.  In other markets such as the US, the focus is on deregulation, which has the side effect of encouraging predatory finance. 

If this predatory behaviour is not curbed, it will affect the credibility of the industry as a whole, which is a detriment to the industry and the consumer.  The market will shrink, and in a connected world, people will simply move to a market that looks after their needs, in the same way that Singapore has essentially cornered the HNW and UHNW market in Southeast Asia.