Hard Lessons from a Lost Account

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Every cou­ple of weeks for the past year and a half, I’ve taken an evening or a week­end morn­ing to talk to investors — dis­cussing their mood and  chat­ting about what they’re think­ing and doing.

A cou­ple of weeks ago I talked to an investor who had recently switched advi­sors — and who  pro­vided an exam­ple of  the stress that investors expe­ri­ence when they’re not sure whether their advi­sor is really on top of their finan­cial affairs.

“I’d been work­ing with this advi­sor for a few years” he said “and I liked him well enough. He’s actu­ally a really nice guy.

But late last year I real­ized that I was los­ing sleep because I wasn’t sure whether he was really on top of my sit­u­a­tion.“

I asked this investor what had led to the deci­sion to change advisors.

“Two things really” he answered.

“First, my advi­sor had put together a finan­cial plan about three years ago.

In light of every­thing that’s hap­pened, about a year ago I asked him whether the plan needed to be updated. His answer was that the plan had a long term focus and that what we’d been through was just a blip and that I didn’t need to worry.

Given that I kept read­ing about how the finan­cial sys­tem was melt­ing down, I didn’t entirely buy that — and got more and more con­cerned that my advi­sor wasn’t really tak­ing my account seriously.”

Then he went on.

“The other thing that con­cerned me was that aside from get­ting a call from his assis­tant to book a meet­ing once a year, I had to take all the ini­tia­tive to stay in touch.

When­ever I called him, he always got back to me right away — he was really good on that.

But I only heard from him when I called. I was just con­cerned that I wasn’t impor­tant enough for my advi­sor to really care about — and that my half a mil­lion dol­lars was sec­ondary to his other big­ger clients.”

Like many peo­ple who switch, this investor didn’t rel­ish the prospect of break­ing the news  — and the new advi­sor told him he’d get in touch with his pre­vi­ous advisor’s office and take care of all the paper­work entailed to switch his account over.

Inevitably, the investor got an imme­di­ate call from his old advisor.

“I was really sur­prised to get a request to trans­fer your account” was how the con­ver­sa­tion began.

“I know that the mar­kets have been tough but I thought that we had talked about how your account has really bounced back and in fact done well under the cir­cum­stances. Based on our last con­ver­sa­tion, I thought you were actu­ally rea­son­ably happy.  ”

This investor explained that it was noth­ing per­sonal and that his move was not pri­mar­ily because of the per­for­mance of his portfolio.

He went on to men­tion that one of the rea­sons for his move was the con­cern that his plan hadn’t been brought up to date.

“That was actu­ally on my list to talk to you about the next time we met” was the response from the old advisor.

“I didn’t real­ize that this was that big a  con­cern — if you’d told me I would have been happy to do this for you.”

There are a cou­ple of impor­tant lessons from this expe­ri­ence — costly for the advi­sor who lost the half a mil­lion dol­lar account, but avail­able free of charge to every­one else.

The first les­son is to lis­ten for hid­den mean­ing when talk­ing to clients and to never dis­miss any con­cern or appre­hen­sion, no mat­ter how small it might seem. Chances are that if the advi­sor had acted when his client first ques­tioned whether his plan con­tin­ued to reflect the mar­ket real­ity at the time, he would still have that account.

The sec­ond les­son relates to the stress that many clients expe­ri­ence when they feel they have to ini­ti­ate all the con­tact with their advisor.

I’ve writ­ten in the past about the dif­fer­ence between a con­ver­sa­tion that a client ini­ti­ates on a topic such as TFSAs or RESPs for grand­chil­dren and that same con­ver­sa­tion if the advi­sor picks up the phone to make the call first.

It can be exactly the same con­ver­sa­tion, but if it hap­pens at the client’s ini­tia­tive, the advi­sor gets dra­mat­i­cally less credit — peo­ple won­der whether that con­ver­sa­tion would have hap­pened if they hadn’t picked up the phone and called.

I recently talked to an advi­sor who last spring began set­ting aside half an hour a day to pick up the phone and check in with clients who he hadn’t spo­ken to for a while. He told me he was aston­ished at the pos­i­tive response — and the relief many clients seemed to feel just know­ing that he was on top of their situation.

In fact, this advi­sor com­mented that the most pro­duc­tive 30 min­utes was when he didn’t actu­ally reach any clients and sim­ply left mes­sages, say­ing some­thing like: “It’s Joe Smith. I’m just call­ing to check to be sure everything’s okay and in case you have any ques­tions you’d like to talk about. If there’s any­thing you want to dis­cuss, give me a call at the office — oth­er­wise, I look for­ward to sit­ting down when we meet in a cou­ple of months for our reg­u­lar review.”

Along sim­i­lar lines, a cou­ple of years back, I inter­viewed an extremely suc­cess­ful busi­ness owner who talked about what he looked for from his pro­fes­sional advisors.

“I assume that most peo­ple are basi­cally com­pe­tent and know what they’re doing” he said.

“What I look for are peo­ple who are proac­tive and are always think­ing about my sit­u­a­tion so that I don’t have to” he said. “That’s what I look for in my accoun­tant, that’s what I look for in my lawyer — and that’s what I look for in my finan­cial advisor.”

Not every client artic­u­lates this as clearly as this busi­ness owner. But those words cap­ture the essence of what many clients look for — the con­fi­dence that their advi­sor is on top of their sit­u­a­tion so they don’t have to be.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advertisement, Blip, Compendium, Financial Affairs, Hard Lessons, Initiative, Investor, Investors, Losing Sleep, Lost, Nice Guy, Sleep, Stress, Target, Term Focus
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Red Flags for Advisors — “Communication Gaps with Affluent Clients”

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Red Flags for Advi­sors — “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Gaps with Afflu­ent Clients”

When hard facts come to light that con­tra­dict your pre­con­cep­tions, it’s time to sit back and reassess you think­ing. That’s exactly what advi­sors should do fol­low­ing a new research study of Amer­i­cans with at least $3 mil­lion in investments.

Released recently, the study points to alarm­ing defi­cien­cies in estate plan­ning and gap­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps between many wealthy Amer­i­cans and their spouses and chil­dren, as well as their advisors.

For instance:

Even though 84 per­cent of par­ents think their chil­dren would ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with a finan­cial pro­fes­sional, six in 10 have never intro­duced their chil­dren to the pro­fes­sion­als man­ag­ing their finan­cial affairs.

Wealthy Amer­i­cans are increas­ingly inter­ested in see­ing the impact of their giv­ing now, rather than leav­ing a legacy when they pass away. Despite this, four in 10 have never sought advice about legacy plan­ning or phil­an­thropic strategies.

Fur­ther, few afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have well-developed plans to pre­serve and pass on their assets to either their chil­dren or char­ity. When it comes to finan­cial goals, less than half of wealthy par­ents put leav­ing an inher­i­tance to chil­dren as a pri­or­ity; this was fifth on the things they want to do with their money, just ahead of “hav­ing fun”.

This is despite the fact that many afflu­ent Amer­i­cans con­sider the suc­cess of their chil­dren to be one of the most impor­tant mea­sures of their own suc­cess. This points to a dra­matic divide between the pri­or­ity that pre­vi­ous wealthy gen­er­a­tions gave to trans­fer­ring wealth to chil­dren com­pared to the impor­tance placed on this by many afflu­ent boomers.

Even if your clients don’t have invest­ments of $3 mil­lion, there are still impor­tant lessons from this research, con­ducted ear­lier this year among almost 500 afflu­ent Amer­i­cans and was com­mis­sioned by the U.S. Trust divi­sion of Bank of America.

Selected research find­ings and excerpts from the press release follow:

Boomer plans for retirement

Many of today’s afflu­ent baby boomers are self-made, first-generation wealthy who are just begin­ning to enter retire­ment but show no signs of slow­ing down.

The top activ­ity in retire­ment is expected to be vol­un­teer activ­ity, listed by 55% of boomers.

Almost half said they will con­tinue work­ing in retire­ment, many plan­ning to start a sec­ond career or new busi­ness. Notably 21% said they will never retire.

Key take­away:

Many boomers look­ing to con­sult, teach or vol­un­teer on boards of local char­i­ties are in for an unpleas­ant sur­prise — when they say they want to work or vol­un­teer, few are think­ing of being a greeter at Wal­mart or vol­un­teer­ing at a food bank.

The num­ber of boomers seek­ing high income jobs and pres­ti­gious vol­un­teer roles is already out­weigh­ing the num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties — many uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges have seen a glut of inquiries about teach­ing from retired exec­u­tives, well beyond the demand for these posi­tions. One impor­tant role for advi­sors is to pro­vide a real­ity check for boomers who are incor­po­rat­ing sig­nif­i­cant income from part-time work, con­sult­ing or teach­ing into their retire­ment thinking.

Finan­cial pri­or­i­ties in retirement

Hav­ing worked hard for finan­cial secu­rity and free­dom, afflu­ent Amer­i­cans now want to be able to travel and focus on relationships.

The top pri­or­i­ties for using their money among afflu­ent Americans:

1. Finan­cial security

2. Finan­cial freedom

3. Travel

4. Improv­ing rela­tion­ships with fam­ily and friends

“Leav­ing an inher­i­tance” was in fifth place; tied for sixth were “hav­ing fun” and “mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact on society.”

Key take­away:

The impor­tance of travel cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity for advi­sors look­ing to deepen client rela­tion­ships. Con­sider explor­ing a rela­tion­ship with a travel agent who spe­cial­izes in travel for active seniors — of note, the kind of travel most retired boomers have in mind is very dif­fer­ent than the bus tours of Europe their par­ents went on. Some advi­sors have seen a great response to quar­terly pre­sen­ta­tions on inter­est­ing and unusual travel des­ti­na­tions — and in some cases have estab­lished refer­ral rela­tion­ships with travel agents spe­cial­iz­ing in high end travel. (Note that high end trips for seniors is one of the fastest grow­ing niches in the travel industry.)

As part of this, be sure to inform your­self about out of coun­try health insur­ance options for seniors — health insur­ance while abroad is a big con­cern for many retirees inter­ested in travelling.

Insuf­fi­cient estate plans

Many afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have only basic finan­cial and estate plans:

While 88 per­cent of the wealthy have an estate plan in place, nearly four in 10 say their estate plans are not com­pre­hen­sive.
Almost half indi­cate that there are gaps in their under­stand­ing of some aspect of their estate plan.

Most estate plans con­tain basic ele­ments such as a will and ben­e­fi­ciary des­ig­na­tions for insur­ance and retire­ment sav­ings, but more sophis­ti­cated tools such as revo­ca­ble trusts, irrev­o­ca­ble trusts, life insur­ance trusts and char­ity trusts are only uti­lized in 10% to 50% of cases.

Fifty-six per­cent have not doc­u­mented per­sonal prop­erty and assets, and half (51 per­cent) have not doc­u­mented instruc­tions about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of per­sonal pos­ses­sions among heirs, often a source of fam­ily con­flict and heartache in the set­tle­ment of estates.

Only 30% have a power of attorney.

Four in 10 do not have a finan­cial plan that fac­tors in the impact of long-term care and/or end-of-life health­care costs on fam­ily wealth.

Aston­ish­ingly, only 3 per­cent of wealthy busi­ness own­ers have a busi­ness suc­ces­sion plan in place.

Key take­away:

This sur­vey points to huge defi­cien­cies in estate plans of many wealthy investors — just the 97% of busi­ness own­ers with­out a suc­ces­sion plan should set alarm bells off.

This research report could be a cat­a­lyst in talk­ing to clients about their estate plans. When set­ting up the next meet­ing with afflu­ent clients, con­sider say­ing “A recent sur­vey of afflu­ent investors indi­cated that many had sig­nif­i­cant gaps in their estate plans around things like doc­u­men­ta­tion of assets, pow­ers of attor­ney and the use of dif­fer­ent kinds of trusts. I won­der whether this is some­thing we should review at our next meeting.”

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps with spouses

Almost all afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have dis­cussed some aspect of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion with their spouses — 90% have talked about taxes and almost 80% have dis­cussed invest­ment deci­sions, risk tol­er­ance and con­ver­sa­tions with their finan­cial advisor.

More dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions are less likely to take place:

30% haven’t dis­cussed income needs in retire­ment.
One third haven’t talked about each other’s debts and oblig­a­tions
Four in ten haven’t shared the details of their estate plan
Almost half haven’t dis­cussed plans for long term care

Note that these are over­all aver­ages — in every case, men are less likely to have talked about these issues with their wives.

Key take­away:

Ensur­ing that both mem­bers of a cou­ple fully under­stand where they stand finan­cially isn’t just the right thing to do, fail­ing to do so could expose advi­sors to lit­i­ga­tion after the “dom­i­nant client” passes away. Rec­og­niz­ing that this can be a sen­si­tive topic, you can offer to help break the silence. In cases where you nor­mally deal with only one mem­ber of a cou­ple, sug­gest facil­i­tat­ing a joint con­ver­sa­tion with their spouse about unan­swered ques­tions on where the cou­ple stands on their finances. Worst case, you can always blame your com­pli­ance depart­ment for insist­ing that you have this conversation.

Con­cerns about chil­dren and wealth

Even among par­ents plan­ning to leave an inher­i­tance, many are con­cerned about whether their chil­dren will be pre­pared to han­dle it. Among wealthy par­ents surveyed:

Only about one in three strongly agree that their chil­dren will be able to han­dle the inher­i­tance they plan to leave them
Two thirds say their heirs don’t fully under­stand their wishes on how to divide per­sonal prop­erty
Nearly half do not believe their chil­dren will reach a level of finan­cial matu­rity to han­dle the fam­ily money they will inherit until they are at least 35 years old.
Half of par­ents have not fully dis­closed their wealth to their chil­dren, and 15 per­cent have dis­closed noth­ing about the fam­ily wealth. Key rea­sons for avoid­ing a dis­cus­sion about their wealth were fear that their chil­dren would become lazy (24 per­cent); would make poor deci­sions (20 per­cent); would squan­der money (20 per­cent); or would be taken advan­tage of by other peo­ple (13 percent).

Key take­away:

Some­times help­ing clients get what they want from their money can be tricky. There are instances where clients have made a con­scious deci­sion not to share some aspects of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion with chil­dren — in those cases advi­sors can make sug­ges­tions but need to draw the line at becom­ing intrusive.

Where clients are resis­tant to hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions with their chil­dren, con­sider start­ing with eas­ier con­ver­sa­tions on things like divid­ing per­sonal prop­erty (although some­times this in and of itself can be tricky) before get­ting into more sen­si­tive areas like over­all fam­ily wealth. If your client has a trusted lawyer or accoun­tant, another option is to include them in a con­ver­sa­tion about how to close the com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap with children.

Gaps in con­ver­sa­tions with advisors

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps don’t just exist with spouses and chil­dren — they also exist with their finan­cial advisors.

Even though 84 per­cent of par­ents think their chil­dren would ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with a finan­cial pro­fes­sional, six in 10 have never intro­duced their chil­dren to the pro­fes­sion­als man­ag­ing their finan­cial affairs.
One in four have never dis­cussed inter­gen­er­a­tional wealth trans­fer with their advi­sor, and one in three respon­dents has never dis­cussed the expec­ta­tions of next-generation heirs.
Half have never dis­cussed ways of teach­ing chil­dren to han­dle wealth respon­si­bly.
Four in ten haven’t dis­cussed legacy goals or their phil­an­thropic strat­egy.
Wealthy Amer­i­cans are more inter­ested in see­ing the impact of their giv­ing now, rather than leav­ing a legacy when they pass away. Despite this, four in 10 have never sought pro­fes­sional advice about legacy plan­ning or phil­an­thropic strategies.

Key take­away:

These find­ings point to some very big red flags for advi­sors. I’ve talked to advi­sors who’ve seen arti­cles or research reports such as this one, said to them­selves “that’s inter­est­ing” and then returned to busi­ness as usual. To get value from the time you’ve spent read­ing this, write down the one thing you’re going to do dif­fer­ently as a result of the insights from this arti­cle — and then share this with your team and make act­ing on this a pri­or­ity in the next 30 days.

Click here to see the full report:

http://​www​.ustrust​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​s​h​/​u​s​t​_​0​7​2​2​1​0​/​U​S​T​S​u​r​v​e​y​/​p​d​f​s​/​D​e​c​k​-​F​u​l​l​.​pdf

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Affluent Clients, Assets, Bank Of America, Boomers, Charity, Communication Gaps, Deficiencies, Exce, Financial Affairs, Financial Goals, Generations, Having Fun, Inheritance, Investments, Leaving A Legacy, Preconceptions, Red Flags, Research Findings, Trust Division, Wealthy Parents
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

The Slower You Go, The Quicker You Get There

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

By Norm Trainor

We live in a hurry/hurry, go/go world. It seems as if most of us are in a hurry to get some­where. Yet, we know that there are times when the slower you go, the quicker you get there. Let’s use a sim­ple exam­ple. The quick­est way to com­mu­ni­cate an idea is to tell some­one. But this method is often the slow­est way to obtain buy-in. Peo­ple are more com­fort­able with their con­clu­sions than ours. You are more likely to win some­one over if they are given an oppor­tu­nity to express them­selves and feel that they are in con­trol of the process.

Rod Tyler is a finan­cial advi­sor whom I coach. He is based in Regina. Recently, Rod was referred to a cou­ple who had $2,000,000 to invest. They received the money through a set­tle­ment and did not have expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing money. Ini­tially, they were hes­i­tant to trust Rod, even though he had been referred by some­one they trusted.

The first prin­ci­ple in build­ing trust is to focus on the other person(s). Rod began by ask­ing a lot of ques­tions to help them iden­tify, clar­ify and inten­sify what was impor­tant. Their pri­mary con­cern was the safety of their cap­i­tal. Rod also took the time to patiently answer their ques­tions. Rec­og­niz­ing their con­cerns, he pro­ceeded slowly and met with them a num­ber of times. At the same time, they met with a banker who rec­om­mended one of the bank’s bal­anced invest­ment funds. They told Rod that they were more com­fort­able deal­ing with the bank. Rod sug­gested to them that they needed three peo­ple to help them with their finan­cial affairs, two of whom were already in place. The first was a good lawyer who could assist in struc­tur­ing their wills and estate plan­ning. The sec­ond was a good accoun­tant who could pro­vide tax and account­ing advice. Rod knew both their lawyer and accoun­tant and expressed his con­fi­dence in them. The third per­son is some­one to pro­vide invest­ment coun­sel and assist with the insur­ance require­ments of the estate plan.

At that point, Rod asked them the name of the banker with whom they were deal­ing. They could not remem­ber his name. Rod asked them, “What are the chances you will see the same per­son in the branch three years from now?” The wife laughed and reminded her hus­band this was the third per­son they had seen in the last six months. Rod shared a story of another client who was in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion and had the same con­cerns. In the story, he illus­trated the range of choices avail­able to them to pro­tect their cap­i­tal and pro­vide enough growth to off­set infla­tion and with­drawals. The story res­onated with them.

Peo­ple treat facts as fac­tors, but make deci­sions pri­mar­ily based upon feel­ings. Rod con­nected with these peo­ple at an emo­tional level. At no time did he hurry them or press them to make a deci­sion. In due course, they made the deci­sion to work with Rod. Some­times, the slower you go, the quicker you get there.

Norm Trainor is the Pres­i­dent & CEO of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit the web­site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Accountant, Accounting Advice, Building Trust, Coach, Conclusions, Confidence, Financial Affairs, First Principle, Hurry, Insurance Plan, Insurance Requirements, Invest Money, Investment Counsel, Investment Funds, Lawyer, Managing Money, Norm Trainor, Regina, Third Person, Wills
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Red Flags for Advisors – Communication Gaps with Affluent Clients

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Red flags for advi­sors — “com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps with afflu­ent clients”

When hard facts come to light that con­tra­dict your pre­con­cep­tions, it’s time to sit back and reassess you think­ing. That’s exactly what advi­sors should do fol­low­ing a new research study of Amer­i­cans with at least $3 mil­lion in investments.

Released last week, the study points to alarm­ing defi­cien­cies in estate plan­ning and gap­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps between many wealthy Amer­i­cans and their spouses and chil­dren, as well as their advisors.

For instance:

• Even though 84 per­cent of par­ents think their chil­dren would ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with a finan­cial pro­fes­sional, six in 10 have never intro­duced their chil­dren to the pro­fes­sion­als man­ag­ing their finan­cial affairs.

• Wealthy Amer­i­cans are increas­ingly inter­ested in see­ing the impact of their giv­ing now, rather than leav­ing a legacy when they pass away. Despite this, four in 10 have never sought advice about legacy plan­ning or phil­an­thropic strategies.

Fur­ther, few afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have well-developed plans to pre­serve and pass on their assets to either their chil­dren or char­ity. When it comes to finan­cial goals, less than half of wealthy par­ents put leav­ing an inher­i­tance to chil­dren as a pri­or­ity; this was fifth on the things they want to do with their money, just ahead of “hav­ing fun”.

This is despite the fact that many afflu­ent Amer­i­cans con­sider the suc­cess of their chil­dren to be one of the most impor­tant mea­sures of their own suc­cess. This points to a dra­matic divide between the pri­or­ity that pre­vi­ous wealthy gen­er­a­tions gave to trans­fer­ring wealth to chil­dren com­pared to the impor­tance placed on this by many afflu­ent boomers.

Even if your clients don’t have invest­ments of $3 mil­lion, there are still impor­tant lessons from this research, con­ducted ear­lier this year among almost 500 afflu­ent Amer­i­cans and was com­mis­sioned by the U.S. Trust divi­sion of Bank of America.

Selected research find­ings and excerpts from the press release follow:

Boomer plans for retirement

Many of today’s afflu­ent baby boomers are self-made, first-generation wealthy who are just begin­ning to enter retire­ment but show no signs of slow­ing down.

• The top activ­ity in retire­ment is expected to be vol­un­teer activ­ity, listed by 55% of boomers.

• Almost half said they will con­tinue work­ing in retire­ment, many plan­ning to start a sec­ond career or new busi­ness. Notably 21% said they will never retire.

Key take­away:

Many boomers look­ing to con­sult, teach or vol­un­teer on boards of local char­i­ties are in for an unpleas­ant sur­prise — when they say they want to work or vol­un­teer, few are think­ing of being a greeter at Wal­mart or vol­un­teer­ing at a food bank.

The num­ber of boomers seek­ing high income jobs and pres­ti­gious vol­un­teer roles is already out­weigh­ing the num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties — many uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges have seen a glut of inquiries about teach­ing from retired exec­u­tives, well beyond the demand for these posi­tions. One impor­tant role for advi­sors is to pro­vide a real­ity check for boomers who are incor­po­rat­ing sig­nif­i­cant income from part-time work, con­sult­ing or teach­ing into their retire­ment thinking.

Finan­cial pri­or­i­ties in retirement

Hav­ing worked hard for finan­cial secu­rity and free­dom, afflu­ent Amer­i­cans now want to be able to travel and focus on relationships.

The top pri­or­i­ties for using their money among afflu­ent Americans:

1. Finan­cial security

2. Finan­cial freedom

3. Travel

4. Improv­ing rela­tion­ships with fam­ily and friends

“Leav­ing an inher­i­tance” was in fifth place; tied for sixth were “hav­ing fun” and “mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact on society.”

Key take­away:

The impor­tance of travel cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity for advi­sors look­ing to deepen client rela­tion­ships. Con­sider explor­ing a rela­tion­ship with a travel agent who spe­cial­izes in travel for active seniors — of note, the kind of travel most retired boomers have in mind is very dif­fer­ent than the bus tours of Europe their par­ents went on. Some advi­sors have seen a great response to quar­terly pre­sen­ta­tions on inter­est­ing and unusual travel des­ti­na­tions — and in some cases have estab­lished refer­ral rela­tion­ships with travel agents spe­cial­iz­ing in high end travel. (Note that high end trips for seniors is one of the fastest grow­ing niches in the travel industry.)

As part of this, be sure to inform your­self about out of coun­try health insur­ance options for seniors — health insur­ance while abroad is a big con­cern for many retirees inter­ested in travelling.

Insuf­fi­cient estate plans

Many afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have only basic finan­cial and estate plans:

• While 88 per­cent of the wealthy have an estate plan in place, nearly four in 10 say their estate plans are not comprehensive.
• Almost half indi­cate that there are gaps in their under­stand­ing of some aspect of their estate plan.

• Most estate plans con­tain basic ele­ments such as a will and ben­e­fi­ciary des­ig­na­tions for insur­ance and retire­ment sav­ings, but more sophis­ti­cated tools such as revo­ca­ble trusts, irrev­o­ca­ble trusts, life insur­ance trusts and char­ity trusts are only uti­lized in 10% to 50% of cases.
• Fifty-six per­cent have not doc­u­mented per­sonal prop­erty and assets, and half (51 per­cent) have not doc­u­mented instruc­tions about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of per­sonal pos­ses­sions among heirs, often a source of fam­ily con­flict and heartache in the set­tle­ment of estates.
• Only 30% have a power of attorney.
• Four in 10 do not have a finan­cial plan that fac­tors in the impact of long-term care and/or end-of-life health­care costs on fam­ily wealth.
• Aston­ish­ingly, only 3 per­cent of wealthy busi­ness own­ers have a busi­ness suc­ces­sion plan in place.

Key take­away:

This sur­vey points to huge defi­cien­cies in estate plans of many wealthy investors — just the 97% of busi­ness own­ers with­out a suc­ces­sion plan should set alarm bells off.

This research report could be a cat­a­lyst in talk­ing to clients about their estate plans. When set­ting up the next meet­ing with afflu­ent clients, con­sider say­ing “A recent sur­vey of afflu­ent investors indi­cated that many had sig­nif­i­cant gaps in their estate plans around things like doc­u­men­ta­tion of assets, pow­ers of attor­ney and the use of dif­fer­ent kinds of trusts. I won­der whether this is some­thing we should review at our next meeting.”

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps with spouses

Almost all afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have dis­cussed some aspect of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion with their spouses — 90% have talked about taxes and almost 80% have dis­cussed invest­ment deci­sions, risk tol­er­ance and con­ver­sa­tions with their finan­cial advisor.

More dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions are less likely to take place:

• 30% haven’t dis­cussed income needs in retirement.
• One third haven’t talked about each other’s debts and obligations
• Four in ten haven’t shared the details of their estate plan
• Almost half haven’t dis­cussed plans for long term care

Note that these are over­all aver­ages — in every case, men are less likely to have talked about these issues with their wives.

Key take­away:

Ensur­ing that both mem­bers of a cou­ple fully under­stand where they stand finan­cially isn’t just the right thing to do, fail­ing to do so could expose advi­sors to lit­i­ga­tion after the “dom­i­nant client” passes away. Rec­og­niz­ing that this can be a sen­si­tive topic, you can offer to help break the silence. In cases where you nor­mally deal with only one mem­ber of a cou­ple, sug­gest facil­i­tat­ing a joint con­ver­sa­tion with their spouse about unan­swered ques­tions on where the cou­ple stands on their finances. Worst case, you can always blame your com­pli­ance depart­ment for insist­ing that you have this conversation.

Con­cerns about chil­dren and wealth

Even among par­ents plan­ning to leave an inher­i­tance, many are con­cerned about whether their chil­dren will be pre­pared to han­dle it. Among wealthy par­ents surveyed:

• Only about one in three strongly agree that their chil­dren will be able to han­dle the inher­i­tance they plan to leave them
• Two thirds say their heirs don’t fully under­stand their wishes on how to divide per­sonal property
• Nearly half do not believe their chil­dren will reach a level of finan­cial matu­rity to han­dle the fam­ily money they will inherit until they are at least 35 years old.
• Half of par­ents have not fully dis­closed their wealth to their chil­dren, and 15 per­cent have dis­closed noth­ing about the fam­ily wealth. Key rea­sons for avoid­ing a dis­cus­sion about their wealth were fear that their chil­dren would become lazy (24 per­cent); would make poor deci­sions (20 per­cent); would squan­der money (20 per­cent); or would be taken advan­tage of by other peo­ple (13 percent).

Key take­away:

Some­times help­ing clients get what they want from their money can be tricky. There are instances where clients have made a con­scious deci­sion not to share some aspects of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion with chil­dren — in those cases advi­sors can make sug­ges­tions but need to draw the line at becom­ing intrusive.

Where clients are resis­tant to hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions with their chil­dren, con­sider start­ing with eas­ier con­ver­sa­tions on things like divid­ing per­sonal prop­erty (although some­times this in and of itself can be tricky) before get­ting into more sen­si­tive areas like over­all fam­ily wealth. If your client has a trusted lawyer or accoun­tant, another option is to include them in a con­ver­sa­tion about how to close the com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap with children.

Gaps in con­ver­sa­tions with advisors

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps don’t just exist with spouses and chil­dren — they also exist with their finan­cial advisors.

• Even though 84 per­cent of par­ents think their chil­dren would ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with a finan­cial pro­fes­sional, six in 10 have never intro­duced their chil­dren to the pro­fes­sion­als man­ag­ing their finan­cial affairs.
• One in four have never dis­cussed inter­gen­er­a­tional wealth trans­fer with their advi­sor, and one in three respon­dents has never dis­cussed the expec­ta­tions of next-generation heirs.
• Half have never dis­cussed ways of teach­ing chil­dren to han­dle wealth responsibly.
• Four in ten haven’t dis­cussed legacy goals or their phil­an­thropic strategy.
• Wealthy Amer­i­cans are more inter­ested in see­ing the impact of their giv­ing now, rather than leav­ing a legacy when they pass away. Despite this, four in 10 have never sought pro­fes­sional advice about legacy plan­ning or phil­an­thropic strate­gies.

Key take­away:

These find­ings point to some very big red flags for advi­sors. I’ve talked to advi­sors who’ve seen arti­cles or research reports such as this one, said to them­selves “that’s inter­est­ing” and then returned to busi­ness as usual. To get value from the time you’ve spent read­ing this, write down the one thing you’re going to do dif­fer­ently as a result of the insights from this arti­cle — and then share this with your team and make act­ing on this a pri­or­ity in the next 30 days.

Click here to see the full report:
http://​www​.ustrust​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​s​h​/​u​s​t​_​0​7​2​2​1​0​/​U​S​T​S​u​r​v​e​y​/​p​d​f​s​/​D​e​c​k​-​F​u​l​l​.​pdf

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Affluent Clients, Assets, Bank Of America, Boomers, Charity, Communication Gaps, Deficiencies, Exc, Financial Affairs, Financial Goals, Generations, Having Fun, Inheritance, Investments, Leaving A Legacy, Preconceptions, Red Flags, Research Findings, Trust Division, Wealthy Parents
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

Red Flags for Advisors — “Communication Gaps with Affluent Clients”

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Red flags for advi­sors — “com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps with afflu­ent clients”

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

When hard facts come to light that con­tra­dict your pre­con­cep­tions, it’s time to sit back and reassess you think­ing. That’s exactly what advi­sors should do fol­low­ing a new research study of Amer­i­cans with at least $3 mil­lion in investments.

Released last week, the study points to alarm­ing defi­cien­cies in estate plan­ning and gap­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps between many wealthy Amer­i­cans and their spouses and chil­dren, as well as their advisors.

For instance:

• Even though 84 per­cent of par­ents think their chil­dren would ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with a finan­cial pro­fes­sional, six in 10 have never intro­duced their chil­dren to the pro­fes­sion­als man­ag­ing their finan­cial affairs.

• Wealthy Amer­i­cans are increas­ingly inter­ested in see­ing the impact of their giv­ing now, rather than leav­ing a legacy when they pass away. Despite this, four in 10 have never sought advice about legacy plan­ning or phil­an­thropic strategies.

Fur­ther, few afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have well-developed plans to pre­serve and pass on their assets to either their chil­dren or char­ity. When it comes to finan­cial goals, less than half of wealthy par­ents put leav­ing an inher­i­tance to chil­dren as a pri­or­ity; this was fifth on the things they want to do with their money, just ahead of “hav­ing fun”.

This is despite the fact that many afflu­ent Amer­i­cans con­sider the suc­cess of their chil­dren to be one of the most impor­tant mea­sures of their own suc­cess. This points to a dra­matic divide between the pri­or­ity that pre­vi­ous wealthy gen­er­a­tions gave to trans­fer­ring wealth to chil­dren com­pared to the impor­tance placed on this by many afflu­ent boomers.

Even if your clients don’t have invest­ments of $3 mil­lion, there are still impor­tant lessons from this research, con­ducted ear­lier this year among almost 500 afflu­ent Amer­i­cans and was com­mis­sioned by the U.S. Trust divi­sion of Bank of America.

Selected research find­ings and excerpts from the press release follow:

Boomer plans for retirement

Many of today’s afflu­ent baby boomers are self-made, first-generation wealthy who are just begin­ning to enter retire­ment but show no signs of slow­ing down.

• The top activ­ity in retire­ment is expected to be vol­un­teer activ­ity, listed by 55% of boomers.

• Almost half said they will con­tinue work­ing in retire­ment, many plan­ning to start a sec­ond career or new busi­ness. Notably 21% said they will never retire.

Key take­away:

Many boomers look­ing to con­sult, teach or vol­un­teer on boards of local char­i­ties are in for an unpleas­ant sur­prise — when they say they want to work or vol­un­teer, few are think­ing of being a greeter at Wal­mart or vol­un­teer­ing at a food bank.

The num­ber of boomers seek­ing high income jobs and pres­ti­gious vol­un­teer roles is already out­weigh­ing the num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties — many uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges have seen a glut of inquiries about teach­ing from retired exec­u­tives, well beyond the demand for these posi­tions. One impor­tant role for advi­sors is to pro­vide a real­ity check for boomers who are incor­po­rat­ing sig­nif­i­cant income from part-time work, con­sult­ing or teach­ing into their retire­ment thinking.

Finan­cial pri­or­i­ties in retirement

Hav­ing worked hard for finan­cial secu­rity and free­dom, afflu­ent Amer­i­cans now want to be able to travel and focus on relationships.

The top pri­or­i­ties for using their money among afflu­ent Americans:

1. Finan­cial security

2. Finan­cial freedom

3. Travel

4. Improv­ing rela­tion­ships with fam­ily and friends

“Leav­ing an inher­i­tance” was in fifth place; tied for sixth were “hav­ing fun” and “mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact on society.”

Key take­away:

The impor­tance of travel cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity for advi­sors look­ing to deepen client rela­tion­ships. Con­sider explor­ing a rela­tion­ship with a travel agent who spe­cial­izes in travel for active seniors — of note, the kind of travel most retired boomers have in mind is very dif­fer­ent than the bus tours of Europe their par­ents went on. Some advi­sors have seen a great response to quar­terly pre­sen­ta­tions on inter­est­ing and unusual travel des­ti­na­tions — and in some cases have estab­lished refer­ral rela­tion­ships with travel agents spe­cial­iz­ing in high end travel. (Note that high end trips for seniors is one of the fastest grow­ing niches in the travel industry.)

As part of this, be sure to inform your­self about out of coun­try health insur­ance options for seniors — health insur­ance while abroad is a big con­cern for many retirees inter­ested in travelling.

Insuf­fi­cient estate plans

Many afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have only basic finan­cial and estate plans:

• While 88 per­cent of the wealthy have an estate plan in place, nearly four in 10 say their estate plans are not comprehensive.
• Almost half indi­cate that there are gaps in their under­stand­ing of some aspect of their estate plan.

• Most estate plans con­tain basic ele­ments such as a will and ben­e­fi­ciary des­ig­na­tions for insur­ance and retire­ment sav­ings, but more sophis­ti­cated tools such as revo­ca­ble trusts, irrev­o­ca­ble trusts, life insur­ance trusts and char­ity trusts are only uti­lized in 10% to 50% of cases.
• Fifty-six per­cent have not doc­u­mented per­sonal prop­erty and assets, and half (51 per­cent) have not doc­u­mented instruc­tions about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of per­sonal pos­ses­sions among heirs, often a source of fam­ily con­flict and heartache in the set­tle­ment of estates.
• Only 30% have a power of attorney.
• Four in 10 do not have a finan­cial plan that fac­tors in the impact of long-term care and/or end-of-life health­care costs on fam­ily wealth.
• Aston­ish­ingly, only 3 per­cent of wealthy busi­ness own­ers have a busi­ness suc­ces­sion plan in place.

Key take­away:

This sur­vey points to huge defi­cien­cies in estate plans of many wealthy investors — just the 97% of busi­ness own­ers with­out a suc­ces­sion plan should set alarm bells off.

This research report could be a cat­a­lyst in talk­ing to clients about their estate plans. When set­ting up the next meet­ing with afflu­ent clients, con­sider say­ing “A recent sur­vey of afflu­ent investors indi­cated that many had sig­nif­i­cant gaps in their estate plans around things like doc­u­men­ta­tion of assets, pow­ers of attor­ney and the use of dif­fer­ent kinds of trusts. I won­der whether this is some­thing we should review at our next meeting.”

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps with spouses

Almost all afflu­ent Amer­i­cans have dis­cussed some aspect of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion with their spouses — 90% have talked about taxes and almost 80% have dis­cussed invest­ment deci­sions, risk tol­er­ance and con­ver­sa­tions with their finan­cial advisor.

More dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions are less likely to take place:

• 30% haven’t dis­cussed income needs in retirement.
• One third haven’t talked about each other’s debts and obligations
• Four in ten haven’t shared the details of their estate plan
• Almost half haven’t dis­cussed plans for long term care

Note that these are over­all aver­ages — in every case, men are less likely to have talked about these issues with their wives.

Key take­away:

Ensur­ing that both mem­bers of a cou­ple fully under­stand where they stand finan­cially isn’t just the right thing to do, fail­ing to do so could expose advi­sors to lit­i­ga­tion after the “dom­i­nant client” passes away. Rec­og­niz­ing that this can be a sen­si­tive topic, you can offer to help break the silence. In cases where you nor­mally deal with only one mem­ber of a cou­ple, sug­gest facil­i­tat­ing a joint con­ver­sa­tion with their spouse about unan­swered ques­tions on where the cou­ple stands on their finances. Worst case, you can always blame your com­pli­ance depart­ment for insist­ing that you have this conversation.

Con­cerns about chil­dren and wealth

Even among par­ents plan­ning to leave an inher­i­tance, many are con­cerned about whether their chil­dren will be pre­pared to han­dle it. Among wealthy par­ents surveyed:

• Only about one in three strongly agree that their chil­dren will be able to han­dle the inher­i­tance they plan to leave them
• Two thirds say their heirs don’t fully under­stand their wishes on how to divide per­sonal property
• Nearly half do not believe their chil­dren will reach a level of finan­cial matu­rity to han­dle the fam­ily money they will inherit until they are at least 35 years old.
• Half of par­ents have not fully dis­closed their wealth to their chil­dren, and 15 per­cent have dis­closed noth­ing about the fam­ily wealth. Key rea­sons for avoid­ing a dis­cus­sion about their wealth were fear that their chil­dren would become lazy (24 per­cent); would make poor deci­sions (20 per­cent); would squan­der money (20 per­cent); or would be taken advan­tage of by other peo­ple (13 percent).

Key take­away:

Some­times help­ing clients get what they want from their money can be tricky. There are instances where clients have made a con­scious deci­sion not to share some aspects of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion with chil­dren — in those cases advi­sors can make sug­ges­tions but need to draw the line at becom­ing intrusive.

Where clients are resis­tant to hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions with their chil­dren, con­sider start­ing with eas­ier con­ver­sa­tions on things like divid­ing per­sonal prop­erty (although some­times this in and of itself can be tricky) before get­ting into more sen­si­tive areas like over­all fam­ily wealth. If your client has a trusted lawyer or accoun­tant, another option is to include them in a con­ver­sa­tion about how to close the com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap with children.

Gaps in con­ver­sa­tions with advisors

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps don’t just exist with spouses and chil­dren — they also exist with their finan­cial advisors.

• Even though 84 per­cent of par­ents think their chil­dren would ben­e­fit from dis­cus­sions with a finan­cial pro­fes­sional, six in 10 have never intro­duced their chil­dren to the pro­fes­sion­als man­ag­ing their finan­cial affairs.
• One in four have never dis­cussed inter­gen­er­a­tional wealth trans­fer with their advi­sor, and one in three respon­dents has never dis­cussed the expec­ta­tions of next-generation heirs.
• Half have never dis­cussed ways of teach­ing chil­dren to han­dle wealth responsibly.
• Four in ten haven’t dis­cussed legacy goals or their phil­an­thropic strategy.
• Wealthy Amer­i­cans are more inter­ested in see­ing the impact of their giv­ing now, rather than leav­ing a legacy when they pass away. Despite this, four in 10 have never sought pro­fes­sional advice about legacy plan­ning or phil­an­thropic strate­gies.

Key take­away:

These find­ings point to some very big red flags for advi­sors. I’ve talked to advi­sors who’ve seen arti­cles or research reports such as this one, said to them­selves “that’s inter­est­ing” and then returned to busi­ness as usual. To get value from the time you’ve spent read­ing this, write down the one thing you’re going to do dif­fer­ently as a result of the insights from this arti­cle — and then share this with your team and make act­ing on this a pri­or­ity in the next 30 days.

Click here to see the full report:
http://​www​.ustrust​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​s​h​/​u​s​t​_​0​7​2​2​1​0​/​U​S​T​S​u​r​v​e​y​/​p​d​f​s​/​D​e​c​k​-​F​u​l​l​.​pdf

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Affluent Clients, Assets, Bank Of America, Boomers, Charity, Communication Gaps, Deficiencies, Financial Affairs, Financial Goals, Generations, Having Fun, Inheritance, Investments, Leaving A Legacy, Measures, Preconceptions, Priority, Red Flags, Trust Division, Wealthy Parents
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

How to Consolidate Client Assets

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

In recent work­shops, I’ve talked about the need to focus on one pri­mary busi­ness goal for each key client you work with.When I ask advi­sors for exam­ples of pos­si­ble objec­tives, the one that comes up first most often is “con­sol­i­dat­ing accounts held elsewhere.”

Want­ing to do this is a good start …. The key ques­tion is how best to go about this.

Becom­ing the exclu­sive finan­cial advi­sor for key clients has always been a pri­or­ity for advi­sors … but these days, this is even more impor­tant. Partly that because advi­sors are look­ing to regain some of the assets lost in last year’s mar­ket decline — and in part it’s because of the recog­ni­tion of the risk that if you don’t act, another advi­sor you share a client with might.

Here’s what I’ve learned from talk­ing to clients who have more than one advisor.

Investors who have accounts with mul­ti­ple finan­cial advi­sors and finan­cial insti­tu­tions fall into two cat­e­gories — the first group is those who have made a con­scious deci­sion to spread their rela­tion­ships around, the sec­ond cat­e­gory is those for whom this is more of a his­tor­i­cal accident.

The first group will be a tougher sell when it comes to cen­tral­iz­ing their finan­cial affairs. In some cases, they have long stand­ing rela­tion­ships with other advi­sors that they don’t want to aban­don. Other times, they have sought out dif­fer­ent advi­sors for spe­cific exper­tise (work­ing with one advi­sor for invest­ments and another for insur­ance is a com­mon example.)

And in other instances, investors are con­cerned about con­trol or con­fi­den­tial­ity if one advi­sor has all their money — con­fi­den­tial­ity is a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in smaller communities.

Then there’s the sec­ond group — who work with more than one advi­sor either because no one has ever sug­gested bring­ing all their finances under one umbrella or if one of their advi­sors did bring this up failed to give them a good rea­son to do so.

Regard­less of which cat­e­gory your client falls into, con­sider a three pronged approach to a con­ver­sa­tion about con­sol­i­dat­ing a client’s finan­cial affairs.

Start by point­ing out the advan­tages. Depend­ing on the client, these might include bet­ter con­structed port­fo­lios by elim­i­nat­ing dupli­cated posi­tions, more effi­cient tax man­age­ment and lower bills for tax prepa­ra­tion, less paper­work to keep track of and gen­er­ally sim­pli­fy­ing their lives.

The sec­ond prong is to make mov­ing as sim­ple as pos­si­ble, by tak­ing on as much of the paper­work and fol­low up as you can. When­ever you ask a client to do some­thing, they mea­sure the gain ver­sus the pain. It’s not enough to talk about increas­ing gain — you also have to focus on reduc­ing pain.

The third prong is your fall­back strategy.

Even if a client declines your offer to bring all of their finan­cial affairs under one roof, keep the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open. One way to do this is by offer­ing to help them sum­ma­rize their invest­ment reports — sim­ply by hav­ing your assis­tant call them once a quar­ter to arrange to get all of their state­ments and prepar­ing a con­sol­i­dated ver­sion. Not only will you be doing your client a ser­vice, but you’ll elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity that another advi­sor your client is work­ing with will beat you to the punch.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advertisement, Business Goal, Client Assets, Confidentiality, Conscious Decision, Financial Advisors, Financial Affairs, Financial Institutions, Focus, Good Reason, Instances, Insurance, Investments, Investors, Market Decline, Money, Priority, Relationships, Risk, S Market, Second Group, Umbrella
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

How do your clients refer to you (when you’re not around)?

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Matt Oech­sli writes in Reg­is­tered Rep that sud­denly afflu­ent clients trust finan­cial advi­sors, and asks, “how are you posi­tioned to take advan­tage of that?”

• new norms have already changed the afflu­ent client/financial advi­sor relationship
• the afflu­ent do not blame their advi­sors for what has hap­pened the last 12 months
• fewer afflu­ent clients trust stock­bro­kers and insur­ance agents
• the finan­cial cri­sis has forced finan­cial advi­sors to dra­mat­i­cally increase their lev­els of knowl­edge based com­mu­ni­ca­tions with afflu­ent clients
• for the first time, afflu­ent clients rank their finan­cial advi­sors higher than accoun­tants and finan­cial plan­ners (unprecedented)
  • Two impor­tant ques­tions to ask yourself:
    • How do your clients refer to you (when you are not around) to their fam­i­lies and associates?
    • How are you posi­tioned in the minds of your afflu­ent clients?
• you bet­ter not be posi­tioned as a bro­ker or insur­ance agent
• you bet­ter walk the walk, and be knowl­edge­able in all facets of per­sonal finances and have the resources to fully coor­di­nate the var­i­ous com­po­nents of your clients’ finan­cial affairs.
• Accord­ing to a recent study, only 5% of all advi­sors had excel­lent skills at pen­e­trat­ing their afflu­ent clients’ cen­tres of influence.
• 9/10 afflu­ent clients would con­sider get­ting a sec­ond opin­ion on their finan­cial health, but NOT from some­one they per­ceive to be a stockbroker.
• This is an oppor­tu­nity for advi­sors who prac­tice com­pre­hen­sive wealth management.
• Trust in finan­cial advi­sors is on the rise — it doesn’t get bet­ter than this.

Matt Oech­sli is author of, How to Build a 21st Cen­tury Finan­cial Prac­tice.

Source: Reg­is­tered Rep, Chang­ing Afflu­ent Norms, Matt Oech­sli, August 1, 2009

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 12 Months, Accountants, Affluent Clients, August 1, Facets, Financial Advisors, Financial Affairs, Financial Crisis, Financial Health, Financial Planners, Insurance Agent, Insurance Agents, Management Trust, Norms, Personal Finances, Registered Rep, Second Opinion, Stockbroker, Stockbrokers, Wealth Management
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off