An excellent profession / business to do now is the financial planning business. Of course some people call it a profession too.

Why am I saying this?

Simply because we are in the very early stages of the profession. It is like being in the banking business in the 1900s, in the mutual fund business in the 1990s, in the broking business prior to SEBI’s formation, in the life insurance business in 2002…

At this stage you have the following characteristics:

– anybody can call himself by any name and make people believe that you know everything about personal finances, law, insurance, mutual funds, calculators, psychology of investing, etc.

– there is no organized or recognized body which regulates the profession

– there is a huge population which believes that they need a financial planner

– there is a huge, super huge population which is not capable of  knowing who is advising and who is selling

– there is no regulator who understands what a planner does

– obviously the charges for doing this work depends on what the customer is willing to pay, and the amount can vary from Rs. 5000 a year to Rs. 50,000 a year

– extreme ease of entry and ease of exit

-customer will know that a financial planner has done a bad job only after 10 years of being with a planner..and then inertia sets in

-manufacturers budgets for people who recommend is big enough for the planner to be able to charge NIL fees, but hey, the end user HAS no chance of knowing that