There are three negative misconceptions about the financial advice profession Keith Beverly and Gary Clement want to debunk in the African-American community.

“One, all financial planning or wealth management roles require you to sell; two, there isn’t enough wealth in the black community to both serve black clients and do well financially; and three, the firm culture won’t be conducive to your success,” said Keith Beverly, the founder of moXY Financial, a network of advisors that provides financial education to Generations X and Y. “There are others, but those are probably the top three.”

The CFP Board estimates there are approximately 1,200 African-American certified financial planners. Combined with the estimated 1,500 Hispanic CFP professionals, these two groups represent only 3.5 percent of 82,000 CFP holders.

Though the overall size of the African-American community in the U.S. made up 13.4 percent in 2017, some associations and advisors in the financial services industry feel the percentages for diverse populations inside the industry should look more like figures for the population at large. African-Americans made up 4.8 percent of personal financial advisors in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ population survey in 2017. The CFP Board reported 6 percent of financial advisors are African-Americans.

To that end, national associations like the CFP Board and the Financial Planning Association have launched their own initiatives.

Beverly runs the “20 by 2020 Initiative,” a goal to help 20 African-American advisors become CFPs by 2020, with the help and support of Clement, the president of Clement Asset Management and a lead instructor at the Kaplan Schweser Certified Financial Planning Program. Outside, Beverly and Clement actively participate in their local community as educators and guest speakers, hoping to increase the visibility (and subsequently the awareness) of black financial advisors.

As both advisors perform outreach in communities, they bump up against comments and questions that highlight the misunderstanding between the financial advice industry and the African-American community.

The first misconception, that advisors have a requirement to sell, can be off-putting to prospects. The belief derives from entry-level financial advisor roles that require representatives to pool their networks, bring in revenue for a firm and then earn an income off commissions. Most people don’t end up hitting the required sales goals and that’s why there’s a high attrition rate in that area of the industry, said Beverly.

“There’s nothing wrong with selling,” said Clement. “But if you don’t have that experience that can be something that’s intimidating.”

The misconception that there isn’t enough wealth in the black community to be a successful advisor is founded on statistics of wealth as it relates to race, the belief that black advisors only serve black clients and the “perception that you have to have wealth in order to go into wealth management,” said Beverly.

The Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan nonprofit that performs economic research, reported that the average wealth for African-American families was low compared with that of white families in 2013: Blacks had an average wealth of $95,261 compared with the average $678,737 for whites. Figures such as these further polarize wealth management and the African-American community. In 2017, the Washington Post reported that less than 2 percent of black households were worth more than $1 million while 15 percent of white households were and 2.3 percent of Hispanic households were.

“Income gaps, wealth gaps and differences in financial asset profiles have historically made black households less attractive and less sought after as clients when compared to white households,” wrote Kenneth White Jr., an assistant professor at the University of Georgia, and Stuart Heckman, an assistant professor at Kansas State University, in their study, “Financial Planner Use Among Black and Hispanic Households.”

There is definitely a wealth gap among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. However, there’s still wealth in each group and there’s still people in need of financial advice.

“The demand [for African-American advisors] is already here; it far outstretches the supply,” said Clement. “There is such an overwhelming need for advice in the African-American community.”

“We’re going to need to find a way to get more [advisors who are] African-Americans to meet that demand,” he continued. “It’s a matter of how do we begin to chip away at meeting that need.”

Beverly speaks at colleges and universities about the financial advising profession.

“What I really try to get people to see is you need to see this career like you would see any other career,” he said. “No one is born wanting to be a [financial advisor].”

Believing that black advisors will end up serving a mostly black clientele or end up with a firm whose definition of inclusion is limited to their hiring process isn’t far-fetched. There’s an existing and prevalent thought that businesses should reflect the racial, ethnic and gender demographics of the communities they operate in. The concept is not wrong, but businesses find themselves in trouble when they force employees into or out of positions for the sake of reflecting the community.

For example, an African-American registered rep filed a complaint against J.P. Morgan for allegedly coercing him to relocate from managing four branches in New York City that included the Bronx, Castle Hill and Parkchester areas (places that are multi-racial and multi-ethnic but have low numbers of African-Americans) to manage its branch in Harlem (a mostly black area) because it was the “right fit” for him. The advisor, who lived in the Bronx, favored the other areas over Harlem because he claimed those branches managed more money than the Harlem branch.

Beverly also explained there’s a “disconnect between what [potential black advisors] want to do and what they have to do to pay bills” that leads them to believe that they must have wealth in order to enter into the wealth management profession. Whether they are interested in the broker-dealer side or the registered investment advisor side, Beverly and Clement aim to provide guidance on how they can financially obtain their career goals.

Beverly, who has a CFP and is a chartered financial analyst, wants more African-American advisors to have multiple designations too. He tweeted in September that he could name all the black advisors that held a CFP and CFA designation.