Quora Answer: What are Some of the Negative Aspects of Being a Financial Planner in Singapore?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What are some of the negative aspects of being a financial planner in Singapore?” 

Generally, despite Singapore being a major financial centre, the retail market is not particularly sophisticated.  This means that most Singaporeans are massively underinvested, and under-insured.  As such, much of financial planning actually involves education first, before we get to actual financial planning.  There is a certain recognition of this among people, but because of that lack of education in finance, too many people get caught in ridiculous scams and silly investments, when you would expect them to know better. 

Another point of consideration is that the way some agencies are run has not caught up with the market.  We have too many old-school financial services directors who still run their agencies as if it was still thirty years ago.  Modern financial consultancy is no longer about having a team of people pushing products and chasing sales targets.  This is not a team game, requiring a certain level of specialisation, with a focus on actual consultancy.  This means there is sometimes a disconnect between market needs and financial consultant knowledge.  Because of this, industry turnover is very high, and that means a loss of time invested in training new people. 

Finally, many Singaporeans lack the sort of resilience and initiative to grow their network and progress in the industry.  This makes it difficult to fill that service gap.  Financial consultancy is still part of the service industry, which time is dictated by client availability, which means working outside office hours.  This is not an industry for people who only want to work office hours.  However, those who are established in the industry work lesser hours because they have that client base to sustain them.