As banks report rise in job losses – number of IFAs looking for new careers soars
Royal Bank of Scotland announced at the end of last week that it was to slash at least 30,000 jobs, leaving the banking giant with the lowest staff numbers in over a decade.
RBS is not alone in cutting its workforce. Earlier this month Barclays also announced 12,000 proposed job cuts, following a fall in gross profits to £191 million at the end of 2013, compared to £1.4 billion a year before.
In January, Lloyds Bank revealed over 1,000 employees would be made redundant, with another 300 roles outsourced to an external firm.
As more and more banks are slashing their headcount, we’ve seen an upward trend of advisers seeking out new career opportunities with deVere.
Many experts attribute a large proportion of the bank job losses to the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). RDR’s primary objective was to increase transparency and reduce the risk of mis-selling in the industry, but many banks and financial institutions have found that the stringent rules and regulations are too much of a burden and have decided to exit the sector. This has led to a subsequent fall in the number of financial advisers – now less than 20,000 in the UK.
As we reported here, deVere United Kingdom has recently launched a recruitment drive, as part of its ongoing expansion plans and the number of independent financial advisers applying to join this division of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations, has been impressive and continues to increase.
Advice ‘black hole’
As banks continue to report job cuts, it’s not just former members of staff looking for new career opportunities. Many clients are either being, in effect, ‘abandoned’, and this is, in part, driving the expansion of deVere United Kingdom as more and more individuals seek our specialist financial advice.
