More ethical than car salesmen but a whole lot dodgier than dentists, financial planners are having little success in changing their public image, according to Roy Morgan research.
The Roy Morgan Image of Professions Survey 2013 again found that nurses are most highly regarded, closely followed by doctors and pharmacists, with planners languishing in mid-table.
Ironically, or perhaps as a result of, the oft-cited estimate that only one in five Australians are currently receiving financial advice, just 25 per cent of those polled rated planners very high or high for ethics and honesty.
Of all 30 professions surveyed in 2013, 21 saw their image enhanced but financial planning wasn’t one of these dropping from 26 to 25 per cent, the same figure as when first included on the list in 2009.
This put financial planning in eighteenth position, the same territory as directors of public companies, business executives and newspaper journalists, but significantly behind a top six made up of nurses, doctors, pharmacists, engineers, school teachers and dentists.
Insurance brokers were highly rated by just 13 per cent, but this at least represented some progress from 10 per cent in 2012.
This puts them in the same category as politicians with federal members of parliament (14 per cent, up 4 per cent) and state members of parliament (13 per cent, up 3 per cent), both making similar gains after last year recording their lowest ratings for ethics and honesty since 1998.
The lowest ranked profession is once again car salesmen, a position they have held for over 30 years. Just 4 per cent of those surveyed rated this much-maligned industry very high or high for ethics and honesty.
The next lowest were advertising people with 9 per cent and real estate agents with 12 per cent, which sounds terrible but is in fact the professions highest rating since it was first ranked by the survey in 1983.
The Roy Morgan telephone survey was conducted on the nights of April 16 to 18 with 645 Australian men and women aged 14 and over.
Respondents were asked to give a rating that best described how they would rate or score people in various occupations for honesty and ethical standards.