Advisors team up with NAPFA to launch Black and Latino internships

Four financial advisors are teaming up with NAPFA members to provide a new entry path into fee-only planning careers — one without asset or sales goals.

The BLatinX Internship Program, or BLX for short, aims to connect some 100 college students, recent graduates or career-changers who are Black or Latino with internships in fee-only practices this summer.

Advisors Chloe Moore, Luis Rosa, Emlen Miles-Mattingly and Shawn Tydlaska announced the launch of the new program last week on Miles-Mattingly’s podcast.

The advisors came up with the idea for the internship program when Tydlaska approached the others about industry actions to take following the murder of George Floyd and widespread Black Lives Matter protests.

Fewer than 4% of CFPs are Black or Latino, despite those populations making up nearly a third of the U.S. population, according to census figures. The industry has gained more methods of attracting young people in recent years, including training programs like Wall Street Bound and scholarship opportunities. Still, aspiring Black or Latino advisors are more likely to find entry level opportunities in insurance with companies New York Life or Principal rather than with wealth managers like Morgan Stanley, says Miles-Mattingly, who is Black.

“We don't have the assets, but I can go sell insurance,” says Miles-Mattingly, the founder of Madera, California-based Gen Next Wealth. “I interviewed at Morgan Stanley. I didn't meet the checkbox requirements to go there. How do you get into the industry, and how many people have not gone into the industry because we weren't what they wanted?”

As a result of BLX’s efforts, some 20 fee-only practices of varying sizes have signed onto host interns for at least eight weeks or more this summer for 15 hours per week at hourly rates starting at $15.

Rosa, who is Dominican-American, notes that unpaid internships and the typical requirement that novices tap into their own network of contacts or use a cold-call list of leads aren’t expanding the base of prospective Black and Latino advisors.

“Unfortunately and traditionally in the communities of color, I don't know anyone who can come to me and say, ‘Hey, I have $1.5 million and I need someone to take care of it for me,’” says Rosa of Henderson, Nevada-based Build a Better Financial Future. “It's a lot easier for companies to say, ‘Hey, just come in, eat what you kill and we'll take a cut from it.’”

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Planning, not products

NAPFA agreed to help the advisors by providing administrative and consulting services. The 4,000-member organization seeks to correct a misconception that smaller practices don’t have the resources to support internships while boosting college planning programs at HBCUs and other institutions that may not be on their radar, CEO Geof Brown says.

“If this program is going to be successful, it's got to move beyond the schools that you see typically at the financial planning conferences,” Brown says. “They're producing great planners, and we want to make sure that they're aware of these opportunities as well.”

Both firms and internship candidates can apply on BLX’s website until Jan. 22. Citing the projections that show non-Hispanic whites will make up less than 50% of the U.S. population by the middle of the century, Rosa points out that interns and practices alike will benefit from the program.

“We do hope that a lot of interns who apply are people who never would have considered financial planning,” Rosa says. “We’re going to need financial planners who can relate to their clients and understand where they're coming from.”

Emlen Miles-Mattingly

The founders of BLX are limiting the new program to fee-only firms without brokerage affiliations, says Miles-Mattingly, who has also sought advice from Jonathan Sorrell, one of the asset management professionals who created the UK-based #100BlackInterns program. BLX could provide an alternative to traditional wealth management training and entry programs.

“You don't really get taught financial planning, you get taught to sell products,” Miles-Mattingly says. “The products get in the way of the real problem. You give people a product and not a solution.”