Advice reqd from the professionals

Theron

Hello,

Im a recent graduate from Bham uni (business) and Ive always wanted to get into the finance sector. For the past year Ive wanted to be a financial advisor and get there by doing a cemap but now after saving up the £1000 to do it, Im having second thoughts?!

Is the money for cemap worth it, and will I get employed after? Within reason obviously! And also, what other routes could I persue?

Unfortunately, advice is hard to find unless you know people in the industry and they are all too busy to help a newbie like me! I dont want to spend my fragile savings on an company dishing out empty qualifications.

Any advice would be much appreciated
xx

dunstonh

For the past year Ive wanted to be a financial advisor and get there by doing a cemap but now after saving up the £1000 to do it, Im having second thoughts?!

cemap just gets you to be qualified to be a mortgage adviser. To be a financial adviser requires 5 more exams (at around £250 per exam). To be an IFA will very soon likely take another 4 exams costing another £250 each. Although going straight to IFA is not something I would recommend as is damned hard to take it all in at once.

Is the money for cemap worth it, and will I get employed after?

Mortgage business is down significantly and mortgage only advisers are really sufferring unless they are longer established and have a good client bank to do remortgage business. It really isnt the time to be a new mortgage adviser.

The natural route nowadays is to join a bank or an existing IFA. The latter isnt likely to do your pay packet much good in the early years. The former isnt likely to do your sanity much good However, you do stand more chance of success working for a bank first before moving on up.

in the good years, over half of new advisers failed and left the industry within 2 years. It will be significantly more than that now. Its a great career when you are successful and very rewarding. However, it takes a while to get there nowadays and most dont.

Theron

Hi thanks for the reply, I initially looked into banking and they require min cefa 1 and there are very few jobs, with all whats going on many banks are cutting back on recruitment and making more redundancies in the area.

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

I'd agree with dunstonh. Going down the IFA route give you more options. You can always get a CMAP Bridge qualification to do mortgages, but at least you can earn income through Pensions, Investments, Life Cover etc and build a client bank in time for when the housing market returns to some sort of normality.

Going straight into Mortgages only would be financial suicide just now.