Building bridges with the next generation (Part 1)

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This is the first instalment in a two-part article about expanding your client base into the next generation of younger clients, by accessing the children of your clients. In this first piece, we consider the challenge of gaining access to the children of clients. Next month we’ll look at how you make this work within your business.

For many established advisers who have been offering financial advice and solutions to their clients for many years, their challenge is that their clients belong to the same generation as themselves. These clients are moving towards retirement age, at which stage they will stop accumulating further assets, and in fact will start de-cumulating, through living off their ARFs and other investments built up during their working lives. And as their assets reduce, so does the remuneration of many advisers whose charges are based solely on asset values.

But an even bigger problem arises when these clients die. In the United States, it is estimated that children do not retain their parent’s adviser in 90% – 95% of cases after their parent’s death. This results in the adviser’s remuneration going immediately to zero. Is the figure likely to be significantly different in Ireland?

This is a shocking figure! Shocking because of the sheer size of the figure, but on the other hand the good news is that there is a lot that you can do to build solid relationships with the adult children of your clients.

 

Get to know them

First of all, make sure that your client’s children know who you are. Seek permission from your client to introduce yourself to them – not to hound them for business, but simply positioned so that their children have a recognised and friendly face in the event of the death of the parent. Your client will want their finances handled efficiently and as per their instructions. To assist in this, at this stage you are suggesting that their children should know,

  • Who you are
  • Where and how to contact you
  • The broad areas where you are helping their parents (obviously with the parent’s permission).

Should a death occur in the family, at least now you are a friendly face who has some chance of working collaboratively with the children of your deceased client, rather than some faceless organisation that the client doesn’t know, doesn’t trust and will be generally wary of dealing with.

 

Demonstrate your value from afar

Then when you are introduced to your client’s children, take the relationship very slowly. Look to add value by adding them to your ongoing communications networks, after first of all finding out which communication channels they want you to use. – depending on their preferences, look to add them to your email newsletter, connect with them on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter etc. If you are hosting a relevant seminar, you should even consider suggesting to your clients that they bring one of their adult children along to it.

Now you have an opportunity to remind these adult children regularly of the value that you add to your clients (and their parents), and how in time you could also add value to them. Carefully chosen messages of the value that you add just might get them to contact you as a financial need arises in their own lives.

 

Include them (as appropriate) in their parent’s financial plans

This is obviously an area in which you need to tread carefully, but there may well be areas of a parent’s financial planning in which it makes sense to involve their adult children. As parents move towards the later stages of their lives, wealth transfer, estate planning and legacy building tend to become important areas for consideration.

While parents may not want to share every small detail of their financial situation with their children, some planning will make lives easier down the road.

Talk to your clients (and their adult children) about the importance of having a will. Talk all of them through the benefits of putting an enduring power of attorney in place. Build a partnership with a good solicitor who can put these in place for them.

Ensure your clients and their adult children understand the structure and implications of making gifts from a parent to a child and of Capital Acquisitions Tax. Make sure they are aware of the annual exemptions available so that they can avail of these exemptions whenever possible.

 

At the end of the day, you want the opportunity to demonstrate to the adult children of your clients that you really care about your clients, that their interests are paramount in everything that you do. They will see you a valuable, trusted adviser to their parents. And they will also see that you can carry out the same role for them too. And how you do this last piece will be covered in a follow-up piece next month.

Are you providing enough value for your trail commission?

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I’m fortunate to be dealing with several of the best and most progressive financial planning businesses in the Irish market. A common trait among these firms is their constant challenge and revision of their own proposition, ensuring they can deliver ongoing value to their clients consistently and through every interaction.

Another trait that they seem to have in common is that they all enjoy very little push-back from clients about their own charges, whether these are paid by flat fees or trail commission. They each have very simple and transparent charging structures, and never try to duck a conversation about their charges, having enough confidence in what they do and the value they provide.

These firms have all moved way beyond sending out a 10-page report with a template economic summary and a schedule of current investment and pension values. They recognise that there is little value added there and that clients rightly expect more for the trail commission that is being deducted from their hard-earned funds. There is never a half-hearted offer of a review meeting…

So, what should you do to provide value and justify your trail commission?

 

An important step is to make sure the review meetings happen – whether these are annually, half-yearly or quarterly. A client not wanting a meeting is never time saved and a victory. It is a missed opportunity for the client, and a lost chance for you to add value and further justify your ongoing charges.  If a client is questioning the need to meet because they are too busy, offer easy alternatives such a one-hour remote review meetings. Have a clear agenda and send this to the client in advance, setting out the importance of the review. Agenda items might include the likes of the following,

  • Revisiting their life goals: This is all about the client. Have their circumstances changed and/or have their hopes, dreams and ambitions for the future changed? Are you and the client still looking in the same direction, focused on the same goals and destination to achieve?
  • Revisiting the cost of their goals: How do their changed ambitions and goals affect the plan, if at all? Do they need to spend more, or less? Do they need to save more, or less? Can they retire earlier or is their wealth transfer plan affected? It is so important that you review the impacts of all changes to goals within your client’s future cashflow plan.
  • Demonstrate how their plan is still the right plan: You can give the client comfort that previous decisions still hold true, or they need to be tweaked to reflect changes in the client’s life or in relation to their future ambitions. As you know, doing nothing is very often the optimal strategy.
  • Review choices and assumptions made: Things change, outside of the lives of your client and outside of your control, whether it be in the economy, the personal finance market or the taxation environment etc. Sometimes action is needed, often it is not. Review and restate the choices and assumptions made.
  • Show that your recommended solutions remain the most suitable: Or change them if not…
  • Shut out the noise: Deal with your client’s concerns about what they read in the weekend papers or heard in the news that morning. Gently (but firmly) remind them of the long-term planning approach that you have taken together and the folly of them reacting to the news. Remind them of the dangers of attempting market timing, thinking short term and changing their investments based on fads or using the rear-view mirror.
  • Be a leader: This will follow from all of the above. If your client sees you as their voice of reason and valued guiding hand, they will seek out your advice at every turn in relation to their personal finances. And they will recognise that this is a highly valuable service and worth paying for.
  • Stay in touch: Outside of your meetings, stay in touch with your clients. Keep your clients engaged and educated through a regular, thought-provoking newsletter. Enhance this further with a number of topical webinars throughout the year, bringing in external, expert speakers to add real value to your clients.

 

Do all of these well and you will have no issues in justifying your trail commission. You won’t be looking to hide your commission levels away somewhere on your website, instead you will want to discuss them with your clients, proudly taking the opportunity to demonstrate to them the incredible value you deliver each year.