Some firms have already started ‘social skills boot camps’- should you do the same?
Several City of London law firms have started putting their newest recruits through mandatory training on something that would once have needed no explanation: how to speak to a client down the phone, and how to hold a conversation face-to-face rather than over email or Teams. Addleshaw Goddard and rival firm Winston Taylor are among those that have introduced structured programmes covering phone etiquette, workplace technology and what one firm called "business communication" for trainees moving through their early-career pathways, trade title City AM reported last week.
It's a legal story on the surface. But talk to people running mortgage brokerages and networks, and a similar worry comes up constantly, usually framed as "we can't get young people through the door" rather than anything to do with phones specifically. The two problems may be more connected than they look.
Surely it’s not rocket science?
The Mortgage Adviser apprenticeship standard, the entry-level qualification route most new advisers train through, describes the role as one where advisers "typically engage with customers through face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations, and increasingly through digital communication channels," and notes many will handle enquiries "in a call centre environment." The occupational standard itself treats phone-based client conversation as a core, expected part of the job, not an optional extra.
A generational data point from March adds some texture to that. YouGov research found only a third of Gen Z adults say they're comfortable making phone calls, against roughly two-thirds of baby boomers and around half of millennials.
Asked their preferred way of getting in touch, only 17% of Gen Z picked the phone, against 65% who opted for text, email or instant messaging. YouGov found the discomfort sits almost entirely with calls to strangers rather than friends or family. That happens to describe a trainee adviser's cold-calling and client check-in workload fairly well.
Read next: Top 10 mistakes made by mortgage brokers – and how to avoid them
The adviser pool is already shrinking
Unlike law, where the immediate worry is training junior staff fast enough, mortgage advice is dealing with a workforce that's ageing and thinning out at the same time. According to the Financial Conduct Authority's own 2025 survey of financial advice firms, the average financial adviser is in their late 40s, which the regulator itself flags as a reason succession planning needs to become more deliberate rather than informal.
The headcount trend backs that up. FCA data reported by MPA shows the number of mortgage advisers in the UK fell from around 28,616 in 2019 to 24,422 in 2023, a figure roughly 47% below the 2007 peak.
Bobby Lumsden, a firm principal with 23 years in mortgage broking, put it plainly in an interview with MPA: as an older adviser himself, he sees "the influx of young talent" as "minimal," and argues the industry needs to become more accessible to younger entrants before the age gap widens further.
Read next: 'Broking must appeal to the next generation'
Firms are already trying to fix the pipeline, if not the phone problem specifically
Some of the response has focused on getting people into the industry at all, rather than on any particular skill gap once they arrive. Just Mortgages launched a programme called Just Learning aimed at candidates with no prior mortgage experience or qualifications, built around the CeMAP 1 qualification and a guaranteed interview for anyone who completes it. Separately, Walbrook Institute London has launched a fully funded 15-month apprenticeship route to CeMAP qualification, backed by New Leaf Distribution's broker network of more than 400 firms.
Read next: Mortgage firms offered fully funded route to train next generation of advisers
None of that is framed around phone confidence specifically. That's the gap most of these programmes leave open. Getting someone through a CeMAP qualification tells you they understand lending criteria and regulation. It doesn't tell you whether they're comfortable ringing a first-time buyer to talk through why their offer just fell through, a conversation most advisers would rather have live than over email precisely because tone and reassurance matter.
Why this compounds rather than cancels out
Part of what's changed is simply timing. Anyone who qualified as an adviser from around 2020 onwards has spent their entire working life inside an office culture already built around Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom rather than the phone, because those tools went from niche to standard with unusual speed.
Slack took roughly six years of steady growth after its 2013 launch to reach around 12 million daily active users. Zoom went from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million just four months later, once COVID-19 lockdowns forced remote work practically overnight. A newly qualified adviser hired any time in the last five years has plausibly never worked anywhere that a written, asynchronous channel wasn't the default option. Layer that onto a profession that's simultaneously losing its most experienced phone-based client handlers to retirement, and the two trends don't cancel out. They compound: fewer senior advisers around to model good call habits, at exactly the point new entrants need the most of that modelling.
Read next: The mortgage industry's struggle to recruit
What a broking-specific version might look like
The law firms' bootcamps aren't a template mortgage networks could necessarily just copy outright, but the underlying idea, that phone and face-to-face client communication is a skill to coach deliberately rather than assume, maps fairly directly onto broking. A firm or network taking the same approach might:
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Build structured call-shadowing into the CeMAP training period, before a trainee ever takes a client call solo
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Pair every apprentice with a senior adviser for a fixed number of live client calls in their first few months, not just case reviews after the fact
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Add a short phone-confidence module alongside CeMAP 1 and 2, rather than treating it as something that sorts itself out on the job
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Track call confidence explicitly in early performance reviews, alongside product knowledge and compliance accuracy
None of that requires new regulation or a new qualification. What it requires is treating a skill the occupational standard already assumes advisers have as one that needs building, at a moment when the industry can least afford to lose client trust to an avoided phone call.
Read next: Gen Z bets on the ladder: Why younger buyers are still backing homeownership in 2026
For a profession built on trust between adviser and client, at the exact moment a client is making the biggest financial commitment of their life, a five-minute call can do work that a chain of emails can't. Law firms have decided that's worth training for deliberately rather than leaving to chance. Mortgage advice, already short of advisers and losing its most experienced ones to retirement, may not be able to afford to leave it to chance either.
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