Focusing on new financial advisors, as well as those who are looking at retiring and those in mid-career, are NAPFA’s goals in the changing financial advice industry, said Frank Moore, the new NAPFA chairman, and NAPFA CEO Geof Brown, who has been in office for a little over two years.

Moore and Brown talked with Financial Advisor magazine recently about the trends impacting the financial advice industry and affecting NAPFA, the non-profit organization that represents fee-only advisors .

NAPFA, the Financial Planning Association and the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, share similar goals and are working together through the Financial Planning Coalition on a number of issues.

NAPFA, whose members charge fees for services and engage in holistic financial planning, wants to see young people have an opportunity to join the fee-only side of financial planning, they said.

“One of the things we have to do is beef up the opportunities for young people in fee-only firms, so the new graduates from university financial planning programs do not have to spend time working for commissions first,” Brown said..

“The new graduates are definitely hungry and they want to make an impact on the profession,” he said. “Over the next few years, there will be a huge transfer of information from older advisors to younger ones, but also the other way around.”

Younger advisors are used to using technology to their advantage and can tell older advisors what young clients want. Moore suggested advisors find out what their clients want in the way of communication through the new technology and social media sites and then guide their firm’s decisions by those wishes.

The other massive transfer that will affect the profession is the transfer of wealth now held by baby boomers to the next generation. “Advisors will want to establish a relationship with their clients’ children who may be all over the country,” Moore said, adding that technology will allow them to do that.

Technology also can be used to communicate with clients when markets go on a wild ride, as they did recently, Moore and Brown said. “Advisors should get in front of the situation when the market drops dramatically. Do not wait for them to contact you,” Moore said..

During the most recent market drop, Moore said his clients were remarkably quiet. Rather than panicking, they wanted to know if it was a good time to buy equities. Clients and advisors who went through the 2008-2009 recession were better able to understand the current situation and take advantage of it, he said.

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