Why advisers matter most when markets get noisy

White Rabbit Advisory founder Nicola Beswick says the adviser’s real value is not in overwhelming clients with technical detail, but in helping them understand what matters, what does not, and why they can afford to stay the course.

Market volatility has a way of exposing what clients really want from their adviser. It is rarely a lecture on correlations, factor exposures or the finer points of portfolio construction. More often, it is reassurance, context and a sense that someone is translating a chaotic market into something intelligible. For Nicola Beswick, founder of White Rabbit Advisory, that translation role sits at the centre of good advice.

“I love talking about the client journey,” Beswick says. “For me, whenever I go to industry events, it’s about let’s actually really think about why we’re here. And it’s because we’re helping people navigate this world they don’t understand.”

That framing is important because it cuts against a temptation that can creep into advice and investment circles, particularly during periods of volatility. Markets become more complex, headlines become more frantic and the industry’s response can be to lean even harder into complexity. Beswick’s view is that the better response is often the opposite.

“We can make it really complex, but we want to take away and think, ‘what is the client going to take from this?’ And it’s coming down to that language, coming down to thinking, ‘OK, what’s really important to them?’ ”

Education, not overload

For Beswick, the most important client conversations are often the simplest. Clients want to know whether their money will be OK, whether they will be OK in ten years’ time, and whether their children will be OK, too. Advisers may understand the macro drivers, the market plumbing and the portfolio mechanics, but the real work is distilling those moving parts into a framework the client can hold onto when markets wobble.

That is where education becomes more than a nice extra. In Beswick’s telling, it is one of the profession’s core disciplines. In a recent client meeting, she said a woman who had only recently moved platforms arrived anxious after seeing her balance fall. The market drop looked, to the client, like something had gone wrong. By the end of the meeting, after Beswick had walked back through the purpose of the portfolio and the time horizon attached to it, the client’s concern had eased.

“She was very nervous at the start of the meeting, because all she could see was money going down,” Beswick says. “And then by the end, she was saying, ‘OK, now I understand that’s that longer-term positioning, that bucket kind of piece that we’re trying to do.’ ”

Beswick’s preferred tool for that education is straightforward. She repeatedly returns clients to a ‘bucket’ framework: cash for immediate needs, a more stable sleeve for near-term spending and a growth allocation for longer-term capital appreciation. The point is not just asset allocation. It is helping clients understand what each pool of money is for, and why short-term market moves do not necessarily demand a reaction.

“I find once we re-discuss that, then that nervousness calms down quite a lot,” she says. “A lot of people are very much, ‘OK, now I understand.’ ”

Advisers as behavioural ballast

That matters even more in a market environment Beswick describes as defined by information overload. Clients are now processing volatility through a continuous loop of headlines, social media, AI-generated noise and political theatre. In that environment, market moves can feel more violent and more personal than they used to feel, even when the long-term investment case has not materially changed.

“It’s getting ahead of those really short-term knee-jerk reactions that we’re now seeing,” Beswick says. “The volatility feels a lot more confronting than what it probably used to because of the way that we get our information.”

For advisers, that means the role is part educator, part interpreter, part circuit-breaker. Beswick is blunt about the damage clients can do when left alone with too much confidence and too little perspective. She is already working with one client who sold-out of markets before becoming an advice client, convinced valuations were too high, and still cannot quite bring himself to reinvest even after the sell-off.

“He’s come to me and said, ‘I need advice. I sold out of the market (in 2020) because I thought it was too high (and there would be a further market correction). I don’t know when to get in,’” she says. “And even with the drop that’s happened now, I still can’t get him fully into the market because he’s still really scared. However, by explaining the dollar-cost averaging strategy to him, we are slowly getting back into the market.”

It is a neat illustration of a point many advisers understand intuitively. Technical knowledge matters, but often the higher-value service is stopping clients from doing something irreversible at precisely the wrong moment. Beswick sees that as extending well beyond investments: emotions also distort decision-making around inheritances, retirement timing and intergenerational wealth transfers.

Bespoke means more than portfolio tailoring

The second major theme in Beswick’s approach is that not every client wants the same advice experience. Some want the adviser to handle the complexity and report back in plain English; others want to understand the tax settings, the income profile and the investment options in detail. Beswick argues that good advice means recognising that difference early and responding accordingly.

“That’s your EQ,” she says. “You have to decide, ‘all right, this person does want to talk about customising; this person, they just want to know what does that mean for my children?’”

That translates directly into portfolio design. Beswick has a base framework, but not a one-size-fits-all model. Clients who are still accumulating generally don’t need a more defensive income sleeve. Retirees, on the other hand, can benefit from annuities, particularly when cash flow certainty or Centrelink outcomes are important. Wealthier clients often choose to lock capital away in private equity, since they have sufficient liquidity elsewhere and want exposure to something less conventional.

“I’ve got a few clients that like private equity,” she says. “So I have a few private equity allocations as well. This is my base, and then there’ll be the clients that have got a lot of wealth, they want to go into something interesting, private equity, we look at that.”

That flexibility is not about novelty for its own sake. It is about matching portfolio structure and communication style to the client’s actual preferences and circumstances. Some clients want a concise answer and reassurance that the engine is working; others want the bonnet up, so they can see for themselves. Beswick’s point is that both are legitimate, and both require skill.

“I feel I’m really passionate about bringing it back to their client perspective, client journey, the communication for the person we’re talking to at the other end of the table,” she says, “not necessarily trying to bamboozle them with all the smart little things that we know.”

Trust is built in translation

For advisers, that is a useful reminder at a time when markets are fast-moving and clients are rarely short of content. In theory, information is abundant; in practice, understanding is scarce. The adviser’s role is not simply to know more, it is to convert that knowledge into confidence, structure and action that fits the individual client.

Beswick puts it plainly. “They just want to know that they’re OK,” she says. “That then creates that trust that we’re trying to bring to the general public.”

In that sense, the profession’s value proposition looks both more modest and more important than it is sometimes presented. Advisers are not just selectors of funds or architects of asset allocation. At their best, they are educators, behavioural anchors and designers of highly personal client experiences. In volatile markets, that work can matter as much as any technical decision made inside the portfolio.

You can hear Nicola Beswick and her story during The Inside Network’s Equities & Growth Symposium in Melbourne on Thursday 21^st May. To book your seat register here: https://www.theinside.network/2026-equities-growth-victoria#register-now