Secondly, professionalism can show others why advice is a career with integrity.
“That's what the regulator is providing us with the foundations around consumer duty,” Hegarty said.
He said advisers needed to make sure they could demonstrate were doing the right thing for the clients at all times.
“I don't think I've ever met an adviser who gets out of bed in the morning to not do the best for their clients. It's more just, how do they do that? How do they demonstrate that? How do they show that?”
He explained professional integrity is being challenged at the moment due to unregulated advisers on TikTok and other social media channels.
“Regulated advisers feel a little bit inadequate because they are not able to do that because they've got to sign off all of their financial promotions and do things more carefully, so it's more difficult to be on TikTok.”
The third and final thing to look at is professional advocacy.
Hegarty said advisers should be proud of their profession and career and should actively show what good they can do.
“Financial advisers go to a family barbecue and other family members say to them, what do you do? They go ‘Oh I just work in finance’ and brush it aside. They're not proud enough of what they do.”
“The family members probably see all the bad press around misselling scandals and they'll tarnish everyone with that brush. But the only way we can really change that is to change those people's perceptions by saying ‘Hang on a minute, you might have seen that years ago, but we do amazing work for people’.
“Advisers should be highly valued in society. They help make people's financial aspirations and give them financial independence.”
amy.austin@ft.com
