Why Millennials Aren't Getting Love from Financial Advisers

“Follow the money” was sage advice in All the President’s Men, and “show me the money” worked well enough for the characters in Jerry Maguire. Now financial advisers are taking the same approach in their pursuit of new clients.

A third say they aren’t interested in your business if you have less than $500,000 to invest and 57% want at least $250,000 in assets to get on the phone, according to a survey from Principal Financial Group. Okay. These are business people following the money in their quest for higher fees and more commissions.

Yet this approach pretty much ignores the next mega-generation—the 80 million Millennials, the oldest of which are now turning the corner on 30. Just 18% of financial advisers say they are prospecting in this demographic. Millennials don’t have a lot of assets at this point in their life, and 29% of advisers say this generation has little interest in their services because of the cost, Principal found. So why bother?

Well, anyone building a wealth management business for the long term might find plenty of gold in this group. Millennials are hell-bent on saving and investing long term, and providing for their own financial security. Eight in 10 Millennials say the recession convinced them they must save more now, according to the 2014 Wells Fargo Millennial Study. Meanwhile, the financial industry, banks in particular, have a long way to go win this generation’s trust. They might want to get started.

Most wealth advisers are focused on Baby Boomers (64%), high net worth clients (64%) and business owners (62%). For those willing to work with the less well-heeled—advisers who just getting started and willing to build a practice over time—these twenty-somethings offer a huge opportunity. One issue, though, is that there aren’t a lot of young wealth advisers out there. Like bus drivers and clergy, this profession has a slow replacement rate and is aging fast. Among the 300,000 or so full-time financial advisers, the average age is about 50, and 21% are over 60.

The result is an industry filled with people that largely do not relate to Millennials and do not care because they have so little to invest. At the same time, we have a generation that has got the message on saving and wants to get serious about investing for its financial future. So it's not surprising that a growing number are turning instead to online financial advice firms—start-ups such as Betterment, Wealthfront and Personal Capital—to get investment guidance with little or no minimum and at lower cost. Millennials may be broke and fee averse. But they won’t be that way forever. This time, "show me the money" may be bad strategy.