Wealth advisers as spiritual advisers?

Governments encouraged workers to have individual retirement accounts (IRAs in the US) or forced them to save (as with Australia's Superannuation Guarantee Levy).

In a separate development, many people lost faith in religion. For example, fewer people attended churches, synagogues or mosques. Faith became more a personal choice rather than a driving force of societal change.

Spirituality – the underlying driving force in a person's life ("why does a person get out of bed in the morning?") - remained a matter of concern. Organized religion was failing to produce answers. People started looking for alternatives. Some landed with TV personalities such as Oprah Winfrey.

I think financial planners have also got a role here. Clients have intimate discussions with their financial planners on such matters as goal-setting, how to spend their money, on whom to spend it (and on whom not to spend it). How do they wish to be remembered? What sort of legacy would they like to leave for others? They have become "financial fitness coaches".

Clients have relationships with individual financial planners – rather than financial planning companies. Trust and reliability are important factors.

Therefore, the challenge for governments and the financial planning industry is to make sure that the new "priests of finance" are ethical. They do not want to run into the "abuse" problems encountered by many religious organizations (financial abuse is the most common form of elder abuse).

Financial planning needs to be reframed as an honourable calling.