Colonial First State has joined forces with Striver, a graduate coaching service, to help more graduates come into the financial services sector.
The partnership aims to help more young people choose financial advice over other careers including accounting, law, IT or other professional services.
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The ultimate aim is to support the financial advice sector’s sustainability in the long term.
The tie-up will enable Colonial First State to offer university graduates the education, mentoring, and connections to support their career.
Striver CEO and founder Alisdair Barr said: “Through the partnership with CFS, we want to bring greater awareness of financial planning as a career path in order to attract substantially more talented graduates to the advice profession.”
Plans are on to enrol 240 students into financial services firms over the next 12 months.
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By GlobalDataThe alliance comes after a recent Adviser Ratings survey.
The survey found just 28% of students enrolled in tertiary financial planning courses eventually choosing to join a financial planning business.
Colonial First State general manager of Advice Relationships Bryce Quirk said: “There is a fundamental lack of awareness among students and graduates about the benefits of working in financial planning and helping improve people’s financial wellbeing.
“As an industry we need to work more closely with universities to build interest among students. There are approximately 100,000 accounting students enrolled nationally – that represents a huge pool of talent.
“Our goal is to drive more graduates and more people into the financial planning industry.”
Colonial First State offers investment, superannuation and retirement products to individuals and corporate and superannuation fund investors.
In May this year, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) agreed to sell a 55% stake in Colonial First State to investment firm KKR in a deal worth A$1.7bn ($1.1bn).
