A growing number of advisers realise that providing a wealth management proposition to their clients is the key to greater success.
But what exactly is wealth management?
Is a self-managed superannuation specialist more of a wealth manager than a stockbroker? Whilst most clients understand the differences between an accountant and, say, a lawyer, do they understand the differences between a wealth manager and a certified financial planner? Does it matter?
In our immature industry, terms such as ‘wealth management’ quickly become buzz-words. Similar to terms such as ‘holistic’, ‘fees for service’ and ‘trails’. All these are as misused and abused as the marketing-driven ‘fat-free’ and ‘lite’ food labelling on our supermarket shelves.
Wealth management is, by definition, a broad approach to understanding and providing solutions to all of the major financial challenges of a client’s financial life. From a client’s perspective, this means having all financial challenges solved. From the perspective of an adviser, it means profitably providing a wide range of products and services in a consultative way.
In my opinion, there are three essential components to true wealth management:
1. A consultative process. An adviser’s wealth management process must be consultative to enable them to gain a detailed understanding of clients’ goals and their most significant financial wants and needs. A proper wealth management process is far more than a compliant recommendation for a financial product. An industrialised wealth management process involves counselling, challenging, educating, advising, and leading clients to better manage their financial circumstances and/or more effectively develop the opportunities in their financial lives. An obvious consequence is the development of close and trusted relationships with clients, who then rely upon a firm over time as their financial lives evolve.
2. Customised choices and solutions. Wealth management advisers offer their clients solutions designed to fit the full range of each client’s needs. These services might include several of the following: investment management, insurance, estate planning, taxation, cash flow management, debt management, leasing, stock brokering, superannuation, mortgages, banking, charitable giving, financial structuring, gearing and specialist products.
3. Delivery in close consultation with your clients. Wealth managers provide their services by working closely with clients on an ongoing basis to identify their specific needs and how those needs change over time, and design solutions around those needs. True wealth managers continue to help their clients make smart decisions regarding their money over a period of time.
If, like many, you have been focusing on investment management, you can see that you need to expand the scope of your offerings if you want to be a wealth manager. In its simplest terms, wealth management can be summed up using a single, all-encompassing formula:
Wealth management = investment consulting + advanced planning + relationship management (or WM = IC + AP + RM)
- Investment consulting is the core offering for many wealth managers, and the foundation upon which they begin the client relationship.
- Advanced planning addresses four key areas of financial needs that clients have beyond investments: wealth enhancement, wealth transfer, wealth protection and charitable giving.
- Relationship management focuses on three areas: fully understanding and meeting clients’ critical needs over time; assembling and overseeing a network of financial experts to help you meet client needs; working effectively with your affluent clients’ other professional advisors, such as their lawyers and accountants.
Wealth management breaks the familiar mould in which clients must contract with a range of professionals, each specialising in a single area: the investment advisor managing portfolios, the insurance agent selling life insurance, the accountant handling taxes, and the lawyer taking care of estate planning. As their finances have grown ever more complex, this compartmentalised approach has become less appealing to clients wishing to streamline their affairs.
I have never known a better time than today to be building a wealth management firm where the value delivered to clients is based upon the quality of the advice provided rather than the quantity of the product sold.