'Career changers' emerge as largest new financial advisor talent pipeline: Report

The financial advisory industry’s long-anticipated talent crunch has arrived, and new benchmarking research from Schwab Advisor Services and Amplified Planning underscores just how urgent the problem has become. Recently at Schwab IMPACT 2025, InvestmentNews hosted a wide-ranging conversation featuring Suzanne Siracuse, CEO of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting, Leslie Tabor, director of business consulting and education at Schwab Advisor Services, and Hannah Moore, founder of Amplified Planning. The trio revealed the results of their research, outlining core findings — and highlighting the industry’s most promising solutions. 

The backdrop is stark. As Tabor noted, “based on industry growth, the number of RIAs that are in the industry today, we’ll need to bring on 70,000 new hires over the next five years just to keep pace with the growth that we’re experiencing.” She adds that nearly a third of current advisors are projected to retire in the next decade, which represents “41% of assets in our industry.”  

Moore said the problem isn’t a lack of interest among newcomers. “The talent is here… they’re ready to go, but many are facing a variety of barriers to entry." As a result, Moore said, these potential candidates are getting frustrated.

3 entry paths solve different needs
 

One of the hallmark findings of the new report is that historical demographic assumptions — especially around age — are misleading. Instead, it’s the entry point that defines an aspiring advisor’s mindset and needs.

Moore explained the research revealed three distinct points of entry:

1. Traditional college students
2. Career changers
3. Financial professionals in adjacent professions, such as accounting or banking 

Each entry point brings its own unique challenges, Moore said. Students want structured training. Career changers want their prior experience respected rather than being “made to do the career path that you’re having an entry-level college student do,” Moore said. Adjacent-field professionals, meanwhile, often need clarity on what advisory work actually entails. 

A common theme: confusion around job expectations and a lack of clarity around career progression. “There’s still a lot of confusion around what are the jobs? What am I actually expected to do? Am I expected to do a sales role?” Moore said. 

The rise — and untapped potential — of career changers

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the data, Siracuse said, was that career changers represent the largest share of externship participants. Many are inspired by personal financial experiences — saving for college, navigating an inheritance, or managing a family loss. “When you have your own real life experiences, and you’re realizing that a financial planner can help you… that’s becoming of interest to these career changers,” she said. 

Tabor sees a major opportunity for firms to engage this population more intentionally. “How do we get firms connected directly to those career changers? Because that being your largest demographic is huge opportunity,” she said. 

Purpose, not pay

Beyond demographics, what ultimately drives new entrants is purpose — not pay.

According to Moore, more than 94% of entrants say “helping people is a driver for why they’re coming into this.” Many have witnessed the power of financial guidance firsthand and “want to be part of the solution,” Moore said. She described experiencing hundreds of personal stories submitted through Amplified Planning's externship — many of them emotional — centered on improving the financial lives of family and community. 

This new cohort is also significantly more diverse. As Siracuse noted, “there’s a much higher diversity within the externship than there are currently in our industry,” with participants often driven by the desire to bring financial planning to underserved communities. 

The career path gap

While firms have made progress, the research identifies a critical gap between intention and execution around development.

“Aspiring advisors want the company that they’re going to work for to have a fully valued proposition,” Siracuse said — and above all, they want to know they’ll be trained. 

Moore added that even when firms have documented career paths, “they weren’t actually living into it.” Early-career hires want career paths to be “a living, breathing document… not just something that like, paycheck, we have a career path, and we’ll go check in in a year or two,” she said. 

Internship programs also emerged as a critical lever for both sides. Tabor argues that internships allow both firms and candidates to “try each other out,” and urges firms not to overthink internship structure. “The best advice is just get started” on building an internship program, Tabor said. 

Additionally, even small changes can also increase recruiting effectiveness. Many career changers say job descriptions read like firms are “looking to hire a coach,” which inadvertently discourages them. Moore urges firms to “tweak” language to be more inclusive. 

Meanwhile, the first thing candidates do after reading a job posting is visit the firm’s website — which Siracuse and Tabor say is a missed opportunity at many firms due to canned "about us" landing pages. Firms should clearly convey employee experience, purpose, and culture online. 

Looking ahead

The next five years, the trio agrees, could reshape the profession. Siracuse believes firms will increasingly recognize that “people and talent are  the most important things that they need to focus on.” Tabor expects a more diverse profession that mirrors clients’ lived experiences. And Moore envisions a world where talent enters the industry with clarity, confidence, and momentum: “They’re not here to go to your training program. They’re ready to hit the ground running and start adding value.”