Progeny CEO, Neil Moles, was recently interviewed by the Octo financial services forum on his advice for those entering the financial advice industry, why more discussion is needed around diversity and how working together can create a platform for positive change.
Asked about his advice for young people looking to enter the financial services industry, Neil said:
You’ve got to get through the examinations as soon as you can early on in your career. But it’s not just about qualifications. I think there are some great development courses you can go on and people you can listen to and sit with. It’s about waking up your mind to the rest of it. Rather than just ‘great, I’m Chartered, I can be a great adviser’, because that’s just step one.
Neil spoke about the need for more discussion around diversity in the financial services community.
The only way to change people’s opinions and beliefs about diversity is to educate. As an industry, we’ve got to really look beyond where we are to work out how we can attract everyone into this industry and give them equal opportunities.
Addressing Progeny’s current focus, he explained:
Our biggest passion at the moment is learning and development. We’re really starting to spin out programmes to help everyone improve, even the executive team.
Considering the bigger picture, and forming the future of the financial advice industry, Neil said:
It should mean that everything we do has to have the clients’ best interests in mind, not creating different structures so we can sell them different things in different ways without them realising what we’ve done.
We’ve got to work together. So I’m reaching out to CEOs of a lot of the major advisory businesses in the UK to see if we can try and create a platform for change, but not one that relies on other people fixing our problems. Let’s fix them ourselves.
The interview can be found in full on the Octo members website [membership required].
