Consumer trust isn’t something to be taken for granted, but reports from the UK, US and here at home are all pointing towards an uplift in trust levels around financial advice, which can only be a welcome development.
There are significant tailwinds behind the financial advice industry at the moment, but some major obstacles are still preventing advice practices from taking advantage of surging demand according to a new study from CFS.
What makes a good financial advice client?
As advisers, we occasionally do a bit of navel-gazing in an effort to understand if we’re being the best adviser we can be. We’re constantly upskilling, training and pushing ourselves to provide our clients with as much value as we can, not only so that they can be in a better position but so that we, as professionals and as people, can feel good about what we do.
But we don’t often flip the equation, and ask if our clients are doing the best they can to get the most out of the relationship. It was actually a client that posed the question recently, which caught me a little off guard; “Am I good client?” they asked. “How can I be better?”
With the daily pressures of financial advice tending to dominate our time on any given day, most advisers can be forgiven for not looking at the bigger picture. While reasonable attention is paid to the ‘ideal’ client for a practice, less so is a focus on what makes a ‘good’ client.
My first response, which is likely a double-edged sword, was a willingness to engage. This means not only being really present in client meetings and an active participant in discussions, but keeping abreast of content that advisers disperse.
Whether it’s a podcast, event, monthly business update, daily market review or quarterly review, there are plenty of opportunities for clients to engage. This is where the double-edged sword part comes in: advice practices need to put the time and effort in to giving clients enough opportunities – ie content channels – so that clients have plenty of talking points to engage on.
Advisers also need to be receptive, and patient, to engagement entreaties from clients. The only way for clients to truly be engaged is via a willingness and confidence to ask questions, smart or dumb, as they arise. Given the tendency for the investment industry to overcomplicate simple matters, advisers must be very aware of this.
Expanding on this is the need to be responsive. Obviously this doesn’t mean advisers should trade stocks according to every client whim, but rather be willing to appreciate the effort and timeliness of any advice being provided and to be responsive, positively or negatively, to any contact. This is particularly relevant around the taxation and administration tasks that arise from time to time when dealing with retirees.
As humans, we all tend to focus on the issues right in front of us, with today’s market volatility a case in point. A ‘good’ client might be one that is one that is able to step back, remember the events of previous crises and look at the bigger picture. Remain calm, in other words. We’ve put together a ‘golden rules’ tool to guide clients in these situations and many other advice practices have done something similar so that the messaging stays consistent.
The biggest obstacle to engaging with clients more is the time incursion for busy advisers, but putting together documents like these can provide clients with an engagement tool that acts as a proxy for this engagement.
