As a financial advisor, you do your best to serve your clients despite experiencing daily challenges. Many of these challenges can be related to struggles with regular client communication and engagements. Most advisors won’t admit that they struggle with ongoing communication, yet almost all would agree that ongoing communication and advice are the foundation of top-notch advisory services.
To empower you to be the best advisor you can be, we have taken the liberty of presenting the 6th Pillar of Financial Planning - what we call Ongoing Communication and advice. Using this pillar to guide your financial planning practice can help you develop successful planner and client relationships and maintain good practice management.
The main and currently original 5 Pillars of financial planning are:
1. Estate Planning
2. Investment Planning
3. Tax Planning
4. Insurance and Risk Planning
5. Retirement Planning
The 6th Pillar of Financial Planning
Successful financial planning and investing involve much more than listening to popular opinion, understanding the latest market trends and crunching numbers. As much as people need to know about financial markets and investments, they also need to know about themselves. Money is an emotional topic, and so investor behaviour and psychology are important components of investing.
In the financial planning profession, effective communication is about way more than
discussing the money and the insurance. Financial planners need to be
adequately equipped to navigate both the rational and emotional
aspects of financial decisions and behaviours.
The problem with communication
The most common complaint clients make about their financial advisors is a lack of
communication. Ironically, these complaints often occur during times of prosperity and
comparative success. Many advisors seem to think if the numbers are good, what is
there to talk about?
Advisors often feel overwhelmed by their extensive task lists and it becomes challenging to keep their clients in the loop through consistent communication, Personal meetings with clients and reporting (especially without reporting software!) are additional hurdles for the advisor to overcome.
Communication is the heart of excellent service
Communication is an ongoing feature of the client relationships we work so hard to
maintain. Managing your clients’ expectations and appetites for risk is an
ongoing effort, not a once-off transaction. Clients are becoming more demanding,
and they want to experience value-added service from their advisor.
Regular communication will contribute positively to the relationship between the
advisor and the client by enhancing trust and ensuring the advisor’s services
stay top of mind.
How can Seed Analytics make your life easier?
We have processes in place with custom-built fidelity and integrity checks to ensure accurate monthly investment reporting. You will be able to send out bulk statements to all your clients in less than 15 minutes.