Sometimes you have to see it to be it

So being asked back to speak to students at a careers expo was unexpectedly emotional. Standing in front of an engaged room, I found myself thinking about how rarely life follows a straight line and how often careers happen almost by accident.

But I also left with another thought, one that links closely to new research we’ve just published at The Lang Cat. Put simply: young people can’t choose a career they can’t see.

Financial advice is one of those invisible professions, I think. Most people only discover its existence later in life, often when they’re buying a house, receiving an inheritance, or trying to make sense of pensions.

That’s understandable. Financial advice isn’t something you learn about in school. It’s not a job that appears in TV dramas. Children don’t grow up saying they want to be a financial planner in the way they might want to be a doctor, teacher, engineer or Scott McTominay. Hell, I still want to be Scott McTominay.

Our recent “New Blood” research looks at the challenge of attracting the next generation into the financial advice profession and the numbers are sobering. Across the UK, there are just 174 financial advisers under the age of 25. At the same time, more than 6,000 advisers are now over 60. It’s a profession ageing faster than it’s renewing.

That may sound like an industry problem, but it’s really a public one. Because if fewer advisers enter the profession, fewer people will be able to access help with the big financial questions that affect everyday life – how to retire well, how to support family, how to make the most of savings, and how to avoid costly mistakes.

The students I met in Edinburgh were bright, thoughtful and full of potential. They asked smart questions about work, purpose, and what a “good career” even looks like in 2026. But many had never even considered financial planning as a path. Not because they weren’t interested, but because no-one had ever shown them it existed.

Our research found that just 21 per cent of young people see financial advice as an appealing career, with three quarters saying it simply isn’t for them.

If we want more young people to join the profession, we need to make it visible. We need to explain that financial advice isn’t just about numbers, but about helping people live the lives they want. Crucially, we need to tell the story that their skillset can find a home there.

Careers don’t have to be straight lines. But they do need signposts. And right now, for too many young people, financial advice is a career hiding in plain sight.

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