Financial Consultant

Career Area: Finance

Occupation Group: Investment Specialists

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Financial Consultant earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $82,680

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $80,450

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Advises clients on financial decisions. Discusses the client's financial objectives, researches and recommends investment options. May be licensed to buy and sell financial products such as stocks and bonds.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Financial Consultant is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Building Effective Relationships: Building relationships is about your ability to identify and initiate working relationships and to develop and maintain them in a way that is of mutual benefit to both yourself and the other party. Good relationships are the key to getting things done and are essential when your success is dependent on others.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Financial Consulting: Working experience suggesting and rendering financial services to clients or organizations based on their financial situations.
• Wealth Management: Wealth management as an investment-advisory discipline which incorporates financial planning, investment portfolio management and a number of aggregated financial services.
• Investment Strategy: Working experience designing a set of rules, behaviors or procedures to guide investors' selection of an investment portfolio.
• Retirement Planning: Retirement planning, in a financial context, refers to the allocation of savings or revenue for retirement.
• Customer Service: Working experience with the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Financial Consultant that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Investment Recommendations: Working experience of Investment Recommendations. Investment advice refers to any recommendations regarding an investor's portfolio. Many professionals, including financial planners, bankers and brokers, can provide investors with investment advice that is specific to their financial situation and short- and long-term financial goals.
• Asset Consolidation: To consolidate is to combine assets, liabilities and other financial items of two or more entities into one.
• Annuities: Working experience of Annuities. An annuity is a financial product that pays out a fixed stream of payments to an individual, primarily used as an income stream for retirees. Annuities are created and sold by financial institutions, which accept and invest funds from individuals and then, upon annuitization, issue a stream of payments at a later point in time.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Mergers and Acquisitions: Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations or their operating units are transferred or combined.
• Insurance Sales:

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Financial Consultant
• Vice President, Financial Consultant
• Associate Financial Consultant
• Senior Financial Consultant
• Financial Consultant - , In

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Financial Planner / Investment Consultant
• Personal Financial Advisor (General)
• Investment / Portfolio Analyst
• Financial Services Manager