Financial Advisor Income
If you are considering becoming a financial advisor, I am pretty sure that financial advisor income is near the top of your criteria list. So how much do they make? you ask. Well, that depends. There are a lot of different careers in the personal finance arena. So let's go through the various jobs that a person could have. Call Center Customer Service/Trader. This is where a lot of financial advisors get their start. Big companies like Fidelity Investments or Vanguard will hire qualified individuals who have no formal experience in finance to work in their customer service call centers. The employer will pay you to get trained and licensed to be able to discuss, do sales of, and place trades for various securities. This in itself is a very valuable benefit. Studying to pass exams for the Series 6, Series 7, Series 65, & insurance licenses can be very time consuming and expensive. Getting paid to do this (with benefits), and getting real world experience at the same time is a great combination. An entry level position such as this could expect pay of somewhere in the range of $24,000 - $30,000 per year to start. Local branch Customer Service Rep. This is an entry level job very similar to the call center job mentioned above, but would be in a local branch of a bank, a mutual fund company, or brokerage wire house (Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Scottrade, etc.) Your employer would most likely pay to get you trained and licensed just like in a call center. But you may be doing more of your studying on your own time (depending on the employer). You would work the front counter taking deposits, answering phones & fulfilling general customer service requests. You are going to be expected to look for cross-selling opportunities for the financial planning advisors. Being good at that is what will get you promoted to being one of those advisors much faster. This job would typically pay around $24,000 - $30,000 per year. Call Center Sales Representative. As a financial advisor gets promoted up through the call center environment, the sales representative role is a logical next step. In this role a person hopefully learns the process of "needs-based selling", or discovering the clients needs and presenting appropriate solutions. In my opinion, the telephone selling environment forces a planner to learn the finer skills of asking good open-ended questions to really open the client up. Since you don't have body language or facial expressions to help you communicate, your questioning strategy has to really be perfected. This will help a planner immensely in the future as they move into a face-to-face environment. Financial advisor income in these roles can range anywhere from $45,000 - $60,000 per year. Call Center Financial Advisor. This job would be something to move into after having 3 - 5 years experience working with clients in a call center. Here you are not just selling products to people, but you're actually starting to build ongoing relationships over the phone. You could have clients all over the country, or they may be located in a certain region of the country. This is where you would start giving financial planning advice to individuals, and working on your Certified Financial Planner designation would be very helpful, but possibly not required. To learn more about the CFP designation, click here. Depending on the company you work for, financial advisor income for this job could range anywhere from $60,000 - $100,000 per year. Local Branch Financial Advisor. This job is going to include everything that a call center advisor did, but will be at the next level. Working in a local branch of a bank brokerage, mutual fund company, or major wire house, you're going to learn a whole new set of sales & relationship skills. To be good at this, you still need to have excellent phone skills in addition to face-to-face capabilities. Sales goals will be a very heavy focus for people in these roles, which you may or may not enjoy. You will be expected to sell certain amounts of the various financial products that your employer offers if you want to keep you job. These jobs usually require you to constantly be bringing in new clients for the firm, so long-term relationships can be hard to build. When I say heavy sales, I mean your day will most likely be 85% salesmanship & 15% actual financial planning. Depending on how productive you are, financial advisor income would range anywhere from $80,000 - $150,000 per year. Private Client Financial Advisor These people are usually those who have been the most successful as branch financial advisors. They have proven that they are good at working with clients, and they know how to sell appropriate products. Relationship building and financial planning is much more important here than actual sales, but you're still going to have very real sales goals to hit each year. These planners are usually expected to have a CFP designation (High Net Worth clients like to see that), and typically have 5 - 10 years of experience in the industry. Usually you will be assigned a set group of clients to take care of, as well as being expected to bring in new ones each year. Financial advisor income here can range anywhere from $125,000 - $250,000 per year. Independent Certified Financial Planner/Money Manager. This is the next logical step once you've had 8 - 10 years of experience and you're ready to go out on your own. It would be very difficult to start out this way and build a business from scratch, but there are many who do it that way. This job is for the entrepreneurial type who really wants to practice financial planning, and not be hounded with sales goals. There are a lot of ways that you could build a practice like this, but they pretty much fall into three categories. Compensation here can vary widely based on how large of a book of assets you're managing (based largely on how long you've been in the business) and how much commission based sales you're doing. Financial advisor income could easily range from $100,000 - $750,000 per year or more. As you can see, there are a lot of different careers in financial planning bringing in a wide range of financial advisor income. How much you make and how far you go is completely up to you. If you think you have the interpersonal skills to develop trust and work with sometimes difficult people, and you enjoy the world of personal financial planning, then you will go far in this business. Go From Financial Advisor Income page back to Careers page
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