The current crop of City professionals and entrepreneurs are focused on their life after the City rather than on planning to meet liabilities, says a study commissioned by UK wealth manager the Route Group. And the planning profession must evolve with them. The first tranche of data to emerge from a major tracking study carried out by the Scorpio Partnership consultancy, showed that retired City professionals, or those approaching retirement, believed financial planning to be overly negative, with a concentration on liabilities and whether their funds and pensions were sufficient to survive retirement. The new generation of City professionals are focused on creating their own wealth and view their employment as a short term means to an end – a second career of some description. The majority had no intention of remaining in their current occupation until retirement. “The views expressed in this early phase suggest a change in positioning towards the aspirational rather than a change in the financial planning process, which is already deeply rooted in client goals,” says Mark Worrall, managing director at the Route Group. “Our clients are looking to see how we can develop our proposition as wealth managers and financial planners around life goals and aspirations. For financial planners it means understanding what our clients are trying to do with their lives, not simply ‘how much’ they need.” Last year the Route Group became the first wealth manager to move its business to a membership concept and the tracking study is based on a series of qualitative interviews with its own clients carried out by Scorpio Partnership. The programme is set to run until December 2008. Sebastian Dovey, head of Consulting at Scorpio, said: “The vast majority of wealth management groups believe they know their client and that is a dangerous assumption to make. An exercise like this enables you to take the actual pulse of the business.”