Increase in the share of women and a drop for the first time in the average age of financial advisors on the Ocf register
Sustained growth, then, for the small register of self-employed advisors, which saw a 40 percent annual increase in membership through 2021
There is some small and big news in the world of Italian financial advisors: accounting for this, as every year, is the snapshot taken by the Supervisory Board for Financial Advisors (Ocf).
For the first time in its history, the average age of registered members is lower (a low, from 51.7 to 51.6). Although the over-50s still account for more than 60 percent of the membership. On the other hand, 2021 saw an increase in the share of financial advisors under 30 to 3.2 percent of the total.
Still improving, then, is the percentage of female representation in a traditionally male-dominated profession: compared to 2020, consultants increased by 2.4 percent and now represent 22.1 percent of the total. There are also good signs among applicants for admission to the bar, as more than a third (34.5 percent) of last year’s applications came from female candidates.
Then there is the strong growth, in proportion to its still small size, of the register of autonomous financial advisors-that is, not affiliated with any financial group established at the end of 2018. The increase in membership in this particular register approached 40 percent between 2020 and 2021, bringing the number of members from 306 to 428. By the end of April 2022, the number of self-employed members had already risen further to 475. Demographically, the self-employed tend to be more frequently men, but they are also younger than advisors licensed to offer outside the office, with an average age of about 46.
In the largest register, precisely that of financial advisers licensed to offer outside the office, 52,267 people are enrolled (as of the end of April this year), of whom 34,417 are active with a mandate, a slight increase from a year earlier.
Advisors, here are the most served regions
Geographically there is, but this is nothing new, a specific imbalance in the northern Italian regions regarding the ratio of financial advisors to population. From this point of view, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, and Veneto are notably “served” by this profession. On the opposite side, there are few advisors in Sardinia, Basilicata, and Calabria to their population
The comparison between consultants and regional GDP sees greater alignment between consultants and income, although Sardinia, Basilicata, and (due to high GDP) even Trentino-Alto Adige remain decidedly neglected. In absolute terms, Lombardy is the region that employs the most significant slice of consultants: 22.5 percent of members work in this region.
Consultant violations, here are the most sanctioned
Ocf, as the main activity, supervises and sanctions violations made in the practice of the advisor profession. In 2021, Ocf initiated 516 supervisory proceedings, 934 requests for information, and 93 sanction proceedings (compared to 123 in 2020). On the podium of the most reported violations, Ocf says:
- the disclosure or transmission of untrue information or documents to the client or intermediary (accounting for 11.4 percent of reports);
- the failure to comply with disclosure requirements of information elements related to registration (9 percent);
- the acquisition, even temporarily, of the availability of sums or values of customers (8.4%).
