While financial advisory work is often portrayed as a path to easy earnings, the reality is far more demanding than just having a few conversations with clients over coffee. 

“In a corporate job, you’re usually fine as long as you don’t mess up. Here, we need to perform well to even earn,” said Ms Chee. 

She added that closing a deal can take about a month on average, with more complex cases, such as family planning, sometimes stretching over a year.

Ms Ng echoed the sentiment. 

“A lot more goes into this than people realise. You need to let clients build trust at their own pace, which can take a long time – sometimes even a year,” she said.

Meanwhile, Ryan, who was lured to the industry by recruitment advertisements, found that day-to-day work differed from expectations of the lavish lifestyle promised during introductory sessions.

“Within the culture, we were often encouraged to post weekend updates of ourselves at our laptops to show we were grinding – practices that, to some extent, felt performative to me,” he said.

He said that despite the messaging that the industry was there to help clients, it turned out to be more sales-focused than he had expected.

New FAs often set targets with their directors, and in one instance, Ryan recalled being asked to call 100 personal contacts while a supervisor watched.

After seven months, he decided to leave as he didn’t feel he was truly helping anyone.

“I just didn’t enjoy what I was doing or how it was making me feel,” he said. 

Long hours and high sales target aside, there’s the added issue of harassment for female FAs who have to frequently interact with clients one-on-one. 

Ms Ng noted that some of her female colleagues receive unsolicited messages every day from prospects, often using inappropriate terms of endearment such as “babe”.

“It’s unfortunately very common for female advisers to face this, but I always try to stand up for myself,” she said.

And finally, there is the challenge that can cut deepest: seeing friendships fray under the weight of career-related misconceptions.

Ms Chee described how some friends were hesitant to admit they were uncomfortable with her new role as a financial adviser.

While a few eventually became open to having an honest conversation about her job, others gradually stopped texting her.

For Ryan, the impact was even more personal – moments when he genuinely wanted to catch up with friends were sometimes misread as attempts to prospect them.

“By the third friendship I lost, I was done (with this job).”