Who is today's financial advice industry really built for?

South African households have changed faster than the people advising them. For a long time, advisers worked from a familiar picture of the client. Today, that picture looks very different.

The shift is backed by the data: The 2026 Bureau of Market Research's Women and Financial Advice Report, based on Momentum's nationally representative Household Finance Survey, found that women make up 53.8% of the financially knowledgeable people in South African households surveyed. In addition, almost eight in ten described themselves as both the head of household and the primary financial decision-maker.

Those figures point to something bigger than a demographic shift. They expose a commercial reality.

The changing household picture

Every successful business depends on understanding its customers. Markets change, households change and the people making financial decisions change. Businesses that recognise those shifts stay relevant. Those that don't risk making decisions based on assumptions that no longer reflect the market they serve.

To me, that's exactly the challenge facing the financial advice industry. According to Stats SA, women now head more than 42% of South African households, yet fewer than a third of South Africa's financial advisers are women. That isn't an argument for matching clients and advisers by gender. It is, however, a reminder that the industry needs to keep pace with the households now driving financial decisions.

I don't believe the explanation is as simple as a lack of interest in financial advice as a career. In my view, we've been telling the wrong story about what a career in financial advice really looks like. If we continue presenting the profession through a narrow lens, we shouldn't be surprised if the people choosing it continue to come from a narrow pool. Too often, the focus is on commission, production targets and building a client book from scratch. Those realities exist, particularly early in an adviser's career, but they are only one part of the job.

The advisers who build long, successful careers are rarely defined by sales alone. They build trust, guide families through life's biggest financial decisions and develop relationships that often span decades. In my experience, that's the side of the profession we don't talk about nearly enough. How we talk about a profession influences who sees themselves in it, and I believe financial advice has been selling only part of its story.

The profession's message

At Multilink, we work across advisers, product providers and investment solutions every day. That gives us visibility across the advice landscape and the people moving through it. We experience the same recruitment challenges as the rest of the industry, but we also see where new talent is coming from, where the profession is changing and where progress has been slower than many expected.

None of this is about meeting a diversity target. It's about making sure the profession doesn't lose sight of the households it exists to advise.

The South African household has already changed. The profession now has a choice: keep pace with the market it serves, or keep advising the client it remembers.