It’s time for the financial planning profession to step up and engage with the next generation!

Within the financial planning profession, we are aware that we need to engage with the next generation. We have an ageing demographic within the profession, and attracting the next generation will be vital. Sam Patterson, Head of Proposition at Equilibrium, believes a key part of this will be to engage with the wider public about an issue that impacts them.

One of the main challenges we need to confront is right in front of us, standing firmly behind the growing calls to reform the student loan system. It’s time we unite as a profession behind a single issue that could make a huge difference. After all, there are around 4 million currently on the student loan plan 2.

A personal stake

I was featured about this recently in The Sunday Times. I borrowed £42,000, I’ve repaid £10,511, and my balance is £51,224. The system doesn’t encourage repayment; it is systematically designed to maximise revenue.

The Times and Sunday Times’ campaign is built around three practical proposals:

• ending the repayment threshold freeze and relinking it to earnings as originally promised
• linking interest to RPI only by scrapping the additional 3%
• capping lifetime interest at 20% of the original loan in real terms

These aren’t radical demands. They’re the terms graduates were led to expect when they signed up. And for what it’s worth, I’m not arguing that graduates shouldn’t repay their loans. We absolutely should, including a reasonable level of interest. But there’s a difference between a fair return for the taxpayer and a system that charges higher earners 6.2% on a debt they had little choice but to take on at eighteen.

We talk a great deal about engaging the next generation, about demonstrating the value of financial planning to younger people. Well, here’s an issue that is shaping how an entire generation thinks about money, debt, and trust in financial systems. If we’re serious about relevance, we can’t sit this one out.

Beyond the loan itself

But this piece isn’t just about student loan reform, important as that is. It’s about a broader question that I think every advice firm needs to be asking itself: how are we serving younger people? At Equilibrium Financial Planning, it’s something we’ve put a lot of effort into; launching our Essentials Service proposition specifically aimed at younger accumulators.

Many of our existing clients are parents or grandparents who are increasingly asking whether they should step in and help with their children’s student debt. It’s a natural instinct, but it’s also one of the most nuanced financial decisions a family can face. Whether a lump sum repayment makes sense depends on the graduate’s earning trajectory, the opportunity cost of using that money elsewhere, and the very real possibility that the loan would have been written off anyway. A gift intended for a child can easily become a gift to the Treasury if the numbers aren’t properly understood.

That’s a financial planning conversation. It’s one that considers pensions, ISAs, property, estate planning, and the student loan in context rather than in isolation. And it’s exactly the kind of holistic thinking our profession exists to provide.

Yet too often, the next generation only enters our world as a line item on their parents’ cashflow model. They’re a future inheritance recipient, a dependant on a protection policy, or a reason for a trust. Rarely are they a client in their own right, with their own financial questions, their own anxieties about money, and their own need for guidance.

A call to action

So, I’m asking two things of our profession.

Firstly, back The Times’ campaign. Not because student loans are our core business, but because publicly supporting fair treatment of younger borrowers sends a powerful signal. It says we see them, we understand the financial pressures they face, and we believe in the principles of transparency and fairness that underpin everything we do. If our professional bodies, our networks, and our leading voices got behind this, it would carry real weight. It would also be a far more authentic form of ‘next generation engagement’ than any marketing campaign.

Secondly, take a look at how your firm serves younger people. Are they an afterthought, or are they part of your proposition? Do you have a credible answer when a client’s thirty-year-old asks what financial planning can do for them right now? The firms that crack this won’t just be doing the right thing; they’ll be building the client relationships of the next thirty years.

Our profession has always prided itself on acting in clients’ best interests and on taking the long view. The next generation is the long view. It’s time we started treating them like it.