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Fears of further regulation is keeping a third of advice firm owners awake at night, according to the Lang Cat's State of the Advice Nation report.
The report, which surveyed 400 members of the advice profession, found advisers are concerned about the pace and volume of regulation being difficult to contend with.
In addition to the stresses of increasing regulation, for one in ten advisers, the fear of failing to meet client expectations is also causing sleepless nights.
Steve Nelson, director and co-author of the report, said: “The burden of regulation continues to be a massive headache for firms and it’s a real concern to see this driving some to breaking point. Many respondents from smaller firms talked about the disproportionate impact on them.”
Managing workload is also causing unrest with 9 per cent of advisers saying they have too few hours in the day to get everything done, according to the report.
Embracing technology
It also revealed for 8 per cent of advisers, the rising cost of doing business linked to regulatory fees and increase in tech budgets is also causing stress.
However, the report found advisers are leaning into tech and AI.
A third of advisers said they are currently using AI or intend to within the next year, jumping to 58 per cent when looking at the next five years.
Future business ownership
Elsewhere, 14 per cent of advice business owners said they are considering selling their business to a consolidator in future, rising to a third for advisers aged 65 and over.
The Lang Cat said there has been a notable drop in the number of business owners that see themselves owning the business in five years, stressing the need to recruit new talent into the industry.
This comes as Morven Grierson, compliance director at MKC Wealth told FTAdviser that regulation was impacting advisers mental health.
She said: “If you are a small firm, not only are you running the business, you have the commercial success of it resting on your shoulders, you have clients and employees to think about and then on top of that you need to try to understand and implement big chunks of regulatory change.
“This can start to take its toll on advisers who don’t want to get it wrong for their clients.”
alina.khan@ft.com
