Gray Area

Not only are there fewer active advisers, those still working or entering the market “are graying rapidly,” Cerulli says. During the 1980s, more than 62% of advisers were younger than age 30 when they entered the industry; so far during the 2000s, only 53% of new advisers have been younger than age 30 when starting in the field. Furthermore, in 2007, only 3% of financial advisers were younger than 30.

Part of the aging of the adviser population is because the job of financial adviser increasingly is becoming a haven for second-career professionals, Cerulli notes. Many people coming into the advising profession were from related fields: Of the 78% of advisers for whom being a financial adviser was not their first career, about 15% were in sales in another industry, about 7% were insurance agents, and 6.5% were in accounting or were CPAs. However, the largest group, about 32% of advisers, responded “other,” and were quite varied, Cerulli says.