{"id":29774,"date":"2015-05-26T19:57:56","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T09:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=29774"},"modified":"2025-05-21T14:21:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T03:21:54","slug":"knowledge-gap-becoming-a-chasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2015\/05\/26\/knowledge-gap-becoming-a-chasm\/","title":{"rendered":"Knowledge Gap Becoming a Chasm?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"polls-143\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t\t<div class=\"pollHeader\"><strong>Are emerging advisers being taught the right skills in order to deliver the optimal level of service to their clients?<\/strong><\/div><div id=\"polls-143-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li>No <small>(73%)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 73%\" title=\"No (73% | 62 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<li>Not sure <small>(22%)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 22%\" title=\"Not sure (22% | 19 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<li>Yes <small>(5%)<\/small><div class=\"pollbar\" style=\"width: 5%\" title=\"Yes (5% | 4 Votes)\"><\/div><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><div style=\"text-align: center\"><\/div><\/div>\n\t\t<input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_143_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"8e58c25067\" \/>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>Our latest poll seeks your views about the capacity of emerging risk-focused advisers to deliver what consumers need.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In asking this question, we&#8217;re effectively conducting a poll on soft skills capability, especially for more recent entrants into the life insurance advice sector.<\/p>\n<p>Our industry is rightly focused at present on adviser remuneration and other issues stemming from the ASIC Review of Retail Life Insurance Advice and the consequent Trowbridge recommendations, particularly those dealing with adviser remuneration. But the issues pertaining to our latest poll may hold more significant long-term consequences in terms of the ability to deliver appropriate life insurance advice that will serve the interests of the consumer.<\/p>\n<p>We want to know whether you think &#8216;soft skills&#8217; is becoming a lost art &#8211; whether what is generally perceived by the industry as a gap at the moment may be turning into a chasm. In doing so, we&#8217;re making the assumption that &#8216;soft skills&#8217; or &#8216;relationship skills&#8217; are critically important in the process that discovers the true needs of the client and in the ability of the emerging adviser to deliver the appropriate solutions required.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>People aren\u2019t hard-wired to talk about what will happen when they die<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We recently put this same question to a passionate group of financial services contributors at our special edition <a href=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/anzafagenxt2015\/anz-wealth-afa-genxt-round-table\/#.VWQ_XEbgVHs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ANZ AFA Genxt Round Table<\/a>, and we received contrasting responses, especially from our adviser and licensee panellists. For example,\u00a0<strong>Patrick McLaughlin<\/strong>, a Gen X adviser and MD of his Sydney-based risk specialist advice firm, Foundation Life Insurance &amp; Mortgage Broking, responded to the question by qualifying where the new adviser would be learning their craft:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they\u2019re being employed into a bank, then the answer is \u2018probably not\u2019. Patrick added, \u201cTo me, the soft skills are about having the conversation. People aren\u2019t hard-wired to talk about what will happen when they die. And the adviser needs to make that conversation happen. Those skills have been lost and the industry is becoming \u2018dis-intermediated.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The focus has been lost but I don\u2019t think the inherent skill set has been lost<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Contrasting this approach, FSP dealer group MD, <strong>Matthew Brown<\/strong>, suggested there exists an underlying capability within today&#8217;s advisers to employ the soft skills needed in order to truly serve the best interests of clients: &#8220;There are as many new generation advisers who are good at those conversations as there are \u2018tech-heads\u2019,\u201d he said. Matt told his peers he believes the focus on those skills has been lost as the industry concentrates on product training and meeting compliance requirements. \u201cThe focus has been lost but I don\u2019t think the inherent skill set has been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are more points to make and more arguments to present present. But we&#8217;ll continue our conversation next week when we report the result of your votes&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our latest poll seeks your views about the capacity of emerging risk-focused advisers to deliver what consumers need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,3,49,248],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-29774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-conferences-and-events","7":"category-general","8":"category-polls","9":"category-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}