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Human beings are fascinating creatures. We have the motivation to plan, yet we fall down when it comes to implementation. This is no different in the profession of financial planning.
The first meetings with a new client are some of the best. Advisors are in a unique position during these initial sessions to quickly achieve a deeper understanding of the people we’re working with, more so than in any other profession. Our clients open up and tell us what they want to achieve in life, their aspirations, and how they want to support and protect the people they love.
Then we turn those fantastic conversations with clients into risk profiles, performance reports, and various financial documents that have little meaning to clients and their values.
Why? Because their tech stack doesn’t support the advice process or a client-centric experience. Instead, it supports product recommendations, compliance, or financial performance and dresses them up as client outputs that require financial understanding and interest from the client.
Speaking from experience as an advisor, only one person typically reviews these outputs: the spouse.
Being reliant on the spouse as your advocate is a red flag that restricts your referral, retention, and revenue potential. Even more concerning, this “tried and true” process that places financial expertise at the heart of the experience stifles implementation. We don’t buy a car to understand combustion engines or how spark plugs work. We buy a car to get from point A to point B. It’s the same with financial planning. Yes, you need some understanding of how you're going to get to B and how it all works. The advisor should support the client in mastering it – they are the satellite navigation, driving assistance, cameras, etc.
Different people, different motivators
We’re all uniquely different and motivated by distinct forces – whether it’s social, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, occupational, physical, financial, or environmental pursuits.
According to research, those eight dimensions contribute to our overall well-being. This doesn’t mean it’s formulaic – it’s not a binary definition. Think of these dimensions as sliding scales, where we each have our own definition of a dimension’s importance to us.
The trick is to understand what clients find important and value in life, then translate their financial plans into the outcomes derived from understanding what your clients want.
The advice engagement tech gap
If you took a step back and looked at your tech stack, what tools do you have to engage your clients around their lives, values, and the advice needed to support them?
CRM? No, that’s been designed for you to better manage your interactions, information, and workflows with clients.
Complex financial modelling tools? Not really – they are only helpful once you know what your clients want to achieve.
Fact-finding tools? No, this isn’t client-facing. Those tools make your processes more efficient by collecting the required data to put into your financial models or for analysis.
Each of these tools increases engagement for specific functionality but does not increase engagement on a plan towards living a client’s best life.
Where are the tools that capture what your clients value in life and that allow them to see the different trade-offs they can make and how this could impact their plan?
Those are the tools clients need, unlike the existing tools geared toward advisor needs.
Motivate your clients by placing them at the heart of your experience
I ran every client’s life through my tech stack and spat out boring document after boring document, not understanding why my clients weren’t acting on them. After all, I got into the business to help people lead better lives, and my advice was sound. If they followed it, they would live the lives they’d always dreamt about. But they didn’t; for all the reasons above, my client experience was anchored in my financial expertise, not their lives.
We need to bring to life the non-financial aspects of planning – the outcomes clients would want to achieve if they were empowered through sound financial management. Life first, finances second.
Santiago Burridge, co-founder of Lumiant, is passionate about helping the financial advice industry deliver on the promise of advice. A 23-year industry leader, Santiago founded Lumiant to support advisors in delivering an extraordinary and engaging software-supported advice experience. Starting as a financial advisor, Santiago quickly became disillusioned with the product-centricity of the profession. Instead, he wanted to personalize the experience and create a model that placed client preferences at the heart of their financial decisions. In 2010, Santiago co-founded Implemented Portfolios, a technology platform that delivers highly individualized investment experiences, which now has approximately $2 billion in funds under management.
Read more articles by Santiago Burridge