Engaging with the next generation of your current clients is a challenge faced by the whole financial advice industry.
To curb this challenge, a key part of our strategy this year has been to help our advisers widen their value proposition through estate planning.
Evolving your offer
Many advisers simply see estate planning as the domain of lawyers that’s centred on a series of ‘one-off’ transactions in preparing a Will or establishing a Power of Attorney.
What we’ve found is that most clients don’t engage with the complexity of these documents and transactions, however they do want to know what to do when faced with crisis: “Dad’s had a stroke, I have a Power of Attorney document, now what?”
It’s actually the Crisis Management Plan that clients really want most – what to do now, who to contact, which questions to ask, what issues are important, what issues can wait.
When you think about the different professionals that a client deals with – who has the most information about their personal goals and their financial position?
Developing an ongoing service proposition centred on estate planning allows advisers to offer support for their clients and their families in times of crisis. Furthermore it engages the next generation by preparing the information record, the documents and the tools they need to act in a time of crisis. The dialog is opened between the adviser and the extended family thereby creating the multi-generational advice opportunity that advisers seek.
Expanding your value proposition
For advisers looking to make estate planning part of their service offering, the main benefits are:
Scalability. It doesn’t matter if your clients have very simple or very complex needs, the same questions apply – how will my family know what to do if I die or have a stroke?
Life is about change, so the estate planning service needs to respond to those changes. True estate planning starts with a conversation and finishes by documenting and addressing the client’s human, legal and financial needs, then reviewing this regularly.
Deeper client relationships. One of our leading proponents of estate planning advice, Gil Gordon from the RI Lower Hunter office, has told us that “estate planning has led to many clients asking if their children can be brought into the conversation.” Making children part of the solution allows you to introduce your services to the next generation, and establishes you as the trusted family adviser.
No bottlenecks. With the right software, support staff, rather than the advisers, can take responsibility for delivering the key outcomes to the client by collecting and updating the data to create detailed records and the Crisis Management Plan.
Ongoing referral opportunities. Widening your value proposition to include estate planning not only helps you to differentiate yourself but can create more referral opportunities for existing or new centres of influence (COIs).
Accountants, solicitors and other professionals understand the importance of estate planning and engaging with the next generation. The client’s best interests are protected and the other professionals understand that the referral will inevitably be reciprocated over time.
The feedback from our advisers has been fantastic and many have incorporated it into their service packages and/or used it to upgrade ongoing revenue streams whilst some have priced it as a ‘stand-alone’ service to diversify their revenue stream.
Darren Whereat is the chief executive of RI Advice Group.
