Five Ideas to Emphasize Your Humanness

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The key driver of your success will be your humanness, not your technology stack. You will need new technologies to keep pace with your competition and efficiently provide the baseline services expected of a financial advisor. But those technologies will be table stakes. Everyone will have them.

It’s no secret. Technology is rapidly reshaping our industry. The change is happening so quickly it’s hard to keep up. Every aspect of your business that can be automated will be automated.

In the future, you will sit in a tech-driven cockpit that will put the tools of your trade at your fingertips. The cockpit will look different for every firm. Its size and shape will be determined by the needs and preferences of each firm and its clients.

The new technology will certainly make you more efficient and give you capabilities you didn’t have before. But it will also change how and where you add value.

Activities that formed the cornerstone of your value proposition will no longer do so. Services like investment management, financial planning, rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting are being automated and offered online at low prices. Their perceived value is shrinking.

If you continue to offer only the services you offer today, it will be difficult to survive. To differentiate your firm from others, and to maintain your current revenue stream and profitability, your business will need to evolve.

In a world where everything that can be automated is automated, you will need to develop additional services that are highly dependent on personal interaction with your clients. You will also need to create a more personalized experience for your clients and establish an emotional connection with them.

Here are five ideas to build your humanness.