Only half of financial advisors would recommend the profession to a member of their family as a potential career, research shows.

Only half of financial advisors would recommend the profession to a member of their family as a potential career, according to new research from the Association of Professional Financial Advisors, suggesting that even practitioners fret about a sector that has been through one of the biggest shakeups in decades.

The research, carried out for APFA by NMG Consulting, surveyed 235 financial advisors between 8 and 20 October and revealed that 51 per cent of financial advisors would recommend that a family member took up financial advice as a career, while just one in 20 plan to hand their business to a family member on retirement.

“Whether you look at this from a glass half-full or glass half-empty perspective, the fact is for every advisor who would recommend financial advice as a career there is one who wouldn’t. There are some common factors likely to be behind this. Members tell us regularly that the burden of bureaucracy and costly regulation are real issues. Ultimately, they may be tainting what is a vitally important profession. This needs addressing,” said Chris Hannant, director general of APFA.

APFA’s research also found that 26 per cent of the financial advisors surveyed plan to sell their business when they retire, and a 26 per cent have no succession plans at all.

“The financial advice industry has arguably never had a more important role to play in helping people make good financial decisions. The legacy of today’s firms should be a vibrant and healthy profession tomorrow. This means ensuring all firms have succession plans in place when the time is right, but it’s also about the regulator doing more to reduce the burden on advisors and ultimately making the profession a more attractive career option,” said Hannant.

The findings come at a time when large numbers of mass affluent, or less well-off, individuals have been shut out of using some forms of advice as costs have risen, in some cases caused by regulatory changes such as the Retail Distribution Review. Separately, the whole financial industry, to varying degrees, suffered a severe blow to its reputation for trustworthiness and competence amid the 2008 financial crisis.