The gap between those who need advice and those who can access it - the so-called 'advice gap' - is one of the long-standing conundrums the financial advice profession has faced.

For some advice firms, the solution is to encourage more people into the profession to level out the supply and demand imbalance which has led to a surge in the number of advice academies being launched.

So what role do these academies - many of which are associated with large, vertically integrated advice firms - have in the future of the advice profession? And what can individual advisers do to help expand the profession?

This week FTAdviser senior reporter Sonia Rach is joined by Sarah Lord, president of the Personal Finance Society, and Matt Jordan, academy development manager at Openwork, to find out more about what the industry is already doing and what it could do more of.

They discuss the growth of academies in the industry, whether it will help close the advice gap, what the next generation of clients will need and the importance of teaching soft-skills.

The FTAdviser Podcast is the weekly podcast for financial advisers, brought to you by FTAdviser. Each week, FTAdviser is joined by guests from the industry to discuss the week in news and pressing industry issues.

The FTAdviser Podcast is designed to inform regulated UK advisers on a range of topics, covering investments, pensions, regulation and other key issues.

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