Financial Planner / Investment 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 Planner / Investment Consultant earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $70,050

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $68,288

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Advises clients on financial plans and investment strategies. Discusses the client's financial objectives, focusing on investment options and products. 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 Planner / Investment 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.
• Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Sales: Experience selling products or services to consumers.
• Customer Service: Working experience with the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.
• Wealth Management: Wealth management as an investment-advisory discipline which incorporates financial planning, investment portfolio management and a number of aggregated financial services.
• Customer Contact: Experience working with business processes and technologies that are designed to engage customers and facilitate communication by a variety of channels.
• Business Development: Business development entails tasks and processes to develop and implement growth opportunities within and between organizations.

Distinguishing Skills

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

• Asset Allocation Theory: Working experience of Asset Allocation Theory. Asset allocation is the rigorous implementation of an investment strategy that attempts to balance risk versus reward by adjusting the percentage of each asset in an investment portfolio according to the investor's risk tolerance, goals and investment time frame.
• 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.
• Financial Consulting: Working experience suggesting and rendering financial services to clients or organizations based on their financial situations.
• Tax Planning: Tax planning is the analysis of a financial situation or plan from a tax perspective. The purpose of tax planning is to ensure tax efficiency, with the elements of the financial plan working together in the most tax-efficient manner possible.
• Fixed Income: Working experience of Fixed Income, which is a type of investment in which real return rates or periodic income is received at regular intervals and at reasonably predictable levels. Fixed-income investments can be used to diversify one's portfolio, as they pose less risk than equities and derivative investments.

Salary Boosting Skills

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

• Financial Modeling: Financial modeling is the task of building an abstract representation (a model) of a real world financial situation.

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 Planner
• Investment Consultant
• Pre-Planning Advisor Trainee
• Investment Advisor - Pnci
• Investment Advisor

Similar Occupations

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

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