Do you want to reach a younger audience?

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As an important element of the research completed for Brokers Ireland on “The Evolution of the Broker Market 2030”, we identified 12 areas to be considered by Financial Brokers to help prepare your business for the changing market environment.

 

We have considered previously the importance of developing the best proposition and services for different groups of clients and prospects. We now consider the next action identified in the research, which focuses on encouraging younger consumers to engage with Financial Brokers, as this has always been a difficult challenge. However, bringing in younger clients is very important for advice businesses. A balance must be reached between older clients who are currently profitable but may be in or nearing the decumulation phase and having a sufficient number of younger clients who may not be very profitable today but will be in the future.

 

To attract younger clients, the services you offer will need to be scaled down to make them attractive to younger potential clients and viable for you to deliver. This may mean less frequent reviews, working remotely with clients instead of face-to-face and enabling clients to carry out some tasks themselves using technology. Financial planning and product solutions are needed by and can hugely benefit younger people: it is just that their objectives and goals are different.

 

It is widely accepted that a Financial Broker’s client base broadly reflects themselves, particularly in terms of age. If you are now in your 50s or later, are you likely to attract younger clients? If you believe this is unlikely, maybe it is timely to bring a young adviser in to your business. A young adviser can probably engage better with a younger audience and if it is early in their career, it is likely that their earnings expectations may be more realistic and affordable for your business.

 

Social media is not optional if you want to engage a younger generation. For example, Instagram has emerged as a good platform for connecting with younger audiences through mainly educational content.[1] It should be noted that the content required for this platform needs to be very different to that shared with business owners and high net worth individuals on LinkedIn and Twitter. Attempting to engage with younger consumers on Instagram etc. requires carefully developed and bespoke content.

 

However, a further challenge to be considered is that the wealth in Ireland today is in the older generation – these people have property, good pensions and are wealthy in comparison to other generations. But this wealth will be distributed to children and grandchildren in the coming years. Research has found that more than 70% of heirs are likely to fire or change their adviser after receiving an inheritance.[2] This is a significant challenge for Financial Brokers when they consider their ageing clients dying, and their assets / trail commission being reduced as a result.

 

Now is the time to develop a proposition to deal with this challenge. This will include engaging with the children of clients through involving them in appropriate advice conversations around their parents’ wealth (with the permission of parents), inviting them to events and engaging them through content marketing. You need to establish your credibility and value in the eyes of the children, long before the assets move to them. The starting point is actually getting to know the children now.

It’s time to plan for greater numbers of female clients

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As an important element of the research completed for Brokers Ireland on “The Evolution of the Broker Market 2030”, we identified 12 areas to be considered by Financial Brokers to help prepare your business for the changing market environment.

 

We have considered previously the importance of developing the best proposition and services for different groups of clients and prospects. We now consider the next action identified in the research, which focuses on planning for greater numbers of female clients in the future.

 

According to research by the Royal Bank of Canada, women will manage two-thirds of household wealth by 2030 and increase their share of global wealth from about half to 70% within two generations.[1] While women have taken significant strides in the workforce over the last two generations, much of the fortunes of men who pass away will also end up in the control of female spouses, who tend to be younger and live longer.

 

In Ireland, there are more women than men, with the ratio of men to women now at its lowest level since 1871.[2] There are also more women in the workplace today, and so demand for financial advice should increase from them.

 

More generally, it is important that couples are advised on a very collaborative basis, with the full involvement of both partners. The days of just dealing with the main breadwinner are long gone. Both voices must be heard in conversations about household finances and wealth, to engage and leverage the unique perspectives and insights of both partners.

 

Some of the specific challenges faced by women when it comes to financial advice also need to be considered. For reasons such as past inequality in the workforce and women taking breaks in their careers to raise their families, women typically have smaller asset pots than men today. In Ireland, a gender gap in pension income – the percentage by which women’s average pension income is lower than that for men’s – of 35% exists today.[3] The advice and solutions offered by Financial Brokers will play an important role in helping to close this gap.

 

So when it comes to planning to attract greater numbers of female clients, the starting point might be to review your marketing presence to ensure it is appealing to both male and female clients. Carefully review the imagery and text on your website and social media profiles to ensure it is appropriate and appealing to all.

 

The next step is to consider your own advice approach and proposition, and how well it is positioned for both male and female clients. Are you talking to your clients in an unconsciously male oriented way? Are you really tapping into the specific challenges that women are facing and building these in as a core part of your proposition and your messages? Of course as part of this, it is crucial that you have firmly communicated the importance of having both partners in a relationship at the meeting, to ensure that both voices and their unique perspectives are equally heard.

 

Finally there is real value in reviewing your client base, with a view to identifying the gender gap in household incomes. This opens up the opportunity for you to build solutions for this gap as part of your advice recommendations, adding value to both the couple themselves and for your business.

 

The bottom line is though, when you think of your target market you typically look for ways to meet the needs of the largest segment within it. Focusing on females is a sensible place to start.