Who Is Your Advice Business Ignoring? #1
If you have been in the Financial Advice arena long enough, you would have seen a picture that looks like this below:
It is the classic Superannuation Funds Under Management Bell Curve where funds are accumulated until retirement, and then steadily paid out during retirement.
Historically, most financial advisors have sought to engage with clients at the top or towards the top of this chart because those clients typically want the services that a Financial Advisor can provide AND they can pay for them.
But something strange is happening...
Industry Fund advisors are engaging with clients and building relationships with tomorrow's leaders much sooner. As a result, there is a strong chance that the "go-to" non-aligned middle-aged investors that have been the bread and butter of so many advisors will not exist in the future in anything approaching their historical numbers.
So what does that do to the value of your advice practice - and your practice succession plan?
Unless Financial Advisors can find a way to reduce the cost of giving advice in a way that allows them to access their desired clients earlier in their savings/investment journeys, we shall see a fair contraction in the Financial Advice industry over the next few years.
As clients head across to the right, they will not be filled up at the same rate from the left. However an advisor chooses to price their services - fee for service, % of FUM, or % of Income, on all measures, the advisor's income will inevitably fall.
Congratulations For Reading This Far: Now Here's the Good News...
The key to avoiding this fate is to make some hard decisions. The first is to conduct a thorough review around WHAT advice is provided, to whom, and by which means. The second hard decision is to determine WHERE in the market the practice will play - cut price or quality/niche service. The third decision is to thoroughly review HOW the practice will play. What technologies will be used to deliver the advice?
Welcome To SuiteBox - The Online MeetNSign...
Suitebox is a virtual conferencing tool that allows you to:
Conduct face-to-face meetings remotely;
Identify that who you are meeting with matches the appropriate identification documents;
Create, review and collaborate on documents;
Sign those documents – and email the signed copies through to the client immediately;
Record the meeting; and
Review the recorded meeting at a later date.
In addition, if you have a Client Relationship Management (CRM) or practice management system, Suitebox can integrate directly with it to allow you to kick off meetings from within the client record, and store or link to the signed documents and the video record of the meeting back to the client record.
At a charge out rate of $300 per hour, Suitebox becomes worthwhile if it saves you just 10 minutes of uncharged travel time per month. Additionally, because you do not have to wait for documents to go backwards and forwards, it speeds up the document execution process incredibly. The best part about Suitebox is that it can be used across as many clients as you want – for no extra investment per month.
