While UBS has scaled back its traditional advisor training program, the move is about “realizing an opportunity” and recognizing that clients are more satisfied when they’re getting more holistic wealth management, Nilesh Parikh tells Family Wealth Report.

UBS Wealth Management Americas has, as reported by this publication last week, this year scaled back its traditional advisor training program. But the move is about “realizing an opportunity” and recognizing that clients are more satisfied when they’re getting more holistic wealth management, Nilesh Parikh, head of new financial advisors and wealth planning analysts, told Family Wealth Report.

“There’s a lot going on in the world that is driving the client’s desire for one source of advice,” Parikh said.

After examining what it thought its client were demanding more of, or could demand more of in the future, UBS decided to take a different training approach and unveiled a pilot training program with capacity for around 50-60 prospective financial advisors.

Parikh said the program - which launched this year - has so far attracted a lot of attention, citing over 2,000 online applications for just between 50 and 60 places.

“Essentially what we’re doing is trying to change the way we develop our advisors, and a lot of this is client-driven,” Parikh said. “There’s clearly an increasing complexity in the things that clients have to deal with, so there’s a need for advisors to be able to consistently deliver more.”

The aim of the Wealth Planning Analyst program, he explained, is to build advisors “from the ground up” so they can engage with clients on any topic, as opposed to nurturing a specialist in one particular field.

This new approach is also attracting a “different profile of applicant,” encouraging talented individuals from across a range of industries to consider becoming a financial advisor - with less pressure and with a greater chance of success.

Describing it as an apprenticeship model, Parikh said: “Each individual is adding value to multiple, existing advisors teams' books of business while learning how to be a wealth manager, and then transitioning onto a team as a financial advisor after the two years.”

He added: “We thought, how can we ensure that every person that goes through a training program here is a ‘blackbelt’ in financial planning, and one way to do that is to not have them build a business early on, but potentially have them just focus on learning the financial planning process, and the different elements of wealth management, prior to partnering with a team as a producing advisor.”

Improving wealth manager competency across the industry

According to this year's World Wealth Report (view coverage here), compiled by RBC Wealth Management and Capgemini, firms should enhance training programs to account for new regulatory requirements as well as to reinforce and strengthen the ability of wealth managers.

Wealth manager competency emerged as a top priority among high net worth individuals, according to the report. Having highly-skilled and experienced staff is therefore one of the biggest differentiating factors for wealth management firms, it recommends. 

Meanwhile, UBS' new take on training the future generation of advisors also serves as a reminder of the issue that the industry is confronted by an aging workforce.

“Solving for the aging advisor workforce is clearly about developing highly-skilled new advisors to partner with senior advisors to strengthen and grow existing client relationships before the senior advisors transition out,” said Parikh.

And through UBS’ modified training program, senior partners will likely have significantly more confidence that the junior partner they’re bringing on is able to take care of their clients, he said.

“The need for advice and counsel is increasingly important, and the only way I think we can provide that is to ensure that we're bringing in the right caliber of talent.”