It is common for a financial advisor to believe that providing a holistic financial plan to every client is incredibly time-consuming. That line of thinking has cost many advisors dearly in a competitive environment where they need to separate themselves not only from other advisors, but also the increasing number of robo-advisory firms.
Financial planning should be viewed as a way to strengthen and lengthen the relationship between advisors and their clients. The level of trust that must be established for an effective financial plan will lead to additional revenue generated for the advisor.
Providing a holistic financial plan
Effective financial plans require a full financial snapshot of what the client currently has in place, which allows advisors to discover assets they may not currently manage. Discovering these assets, paired with a strong client-advisor relationship, increases the probability of the client deciding to move those assets under their current advisor’s management.
The level of trust that is created between the advisor and client when doing a financial plan will lead to the number one way to increase revenue: referrals of new clients from word of mouth. Advisors that differentiate themselves by offering financial planning will get their clients talking to their friends about the level of service you provided which in turn will establish a want from potential new clients to receive that same level of service.
According to Advicent, advisors who use NaviPlan® see a 20 percent increase in prospect to client conversion rates due to the service provided.
Financial planning has come a long way from its previous label of a time-consuming task that produces no additional revenue to the advisor. With the ability for NaviPlan to integrate and aggregate client information quickly, as well as the ability to generate quick high-level plans with forecaster assessments, financial planning needs to be a service that all clients can expect to be offered.
Generating additional revenue with financial plans
Financial planning allows advisors to be able to recommend additional products as they will have a clear picture of the clients current financial picture, allows advisors to discover held away assets, and will generate additional clients through referrals; all of which will generate additional revenue streams.
Advisors will be able to recommend additional products to their clients with confidence based on how a financial plan is shaping out will lead to a greater acceptance of the product recommendation. The scenario manager in NaviPlan is able to model out the product recommendation in comparison to what they currently have in place to visually represent how the products will affect their financial future.
Being able to give clients a report that compares current and recommended financial pictures strengthens the relationship as clients have a visual of how it will impact them. Fiduciary standards are also easy to uphold within NaviPlan as all product recommendations are being made due to some sort of shortfall in what is currently in place.
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