There are many options within financial services that utilize the skills of a financial planner and advisers shouldn’t lose hope if they decide to leave the profession, according to a former adviser.
With 22 years of industry experience, Anuj Shangle decided to make the transition to a new career outside of consulting following Commonwealth Bank’s decision to drop licensee Financial Wisdom in 2019, the licensee under which he worked.
But providing quality advice was already getting harder and harder for Shangle before that, he said. Money management.
“In 2019, setting up a council has become extremely difficult. [The licensee] set up a quality consulting coaching team in the background.
“Whether you put a new plan in place, or whether you just did a review plan or, you know, whatever you did, you had to have it pre-checked by them.
“It was just extremely difficult.”
For these reasons, along with increased compliance requirements and the effect COVID-19 has had on the consulting industry, Shangle decided to approach their then business partner to let them know that they would move into a new area of financial services.
“[It] I got to a point where I was spending more time checking compliance boxes, for the sake of doing so, instead of actually adding value to customers.
Using its existing expertise, Shangle launched Melbourne-based Claims Advocacy, a company specializing in assisting clients with complex risk insurance claims such as total and permanent disability claims.
“There are too many things I have learned in the past 22 years. And I wanted to use the skill set and put together something different and so that’s what I did.
“This space that I’ve now ventured into, advocacy, that’s an area that I’ve always enjoyed. Even when I was working as a counselor, I was taking on cases that no one thought would be a successful day.
“And that was something I was really passionate about…helping customers in a situation where no one was willing to hold their hand.”
Shangle said his company is targeting a niche where an advisor might need help with a complex insurance claim due to a lack of time or the necessary expertise.
“This space for defending claims has traditionally been dominated by legal professionals.
“So I said, ‘well, we’re the technicians’. I really don’t understand why customers have to hire an attorney to file a TPD claim for them.
“I understand these terms better than them. I understand the process. I have done this so many times in the past with great success. So why wouldn’t I do it for the customers? »
Shangle’s message to other advisors who might find themselves in a situation similar to the one he found himself in was that “there is life after financial planning”.
“If you’re leaving the industry because compliance is getting too onerous – if you’re retiring, that’s fair enough – but if you’re still young and still hungry, the message is there’s a certain a number of other things you should consider, instead of giving up on the industry altogether.
“And that’s just one of the options you can choose after giving up counseling.
“You can coach junior advisors, you can… be a technical expert, for example. You might want to consider checking for compliance.
“[If you are] giving up advising after spending several years in the industry, you probably understand compliance better than those entering the industry now.
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