Lonsdale defines value of advice

Dealer group Lonsdale is trying to develop different concepts of what the value of advice means for their financial planners to use when engaging with clients.

Lonsdale chief executive Mario Modica (pictured) said that his company’s financial planners were finding it difficult to articulate to clients what their value of advice was and their marketing department was trying to develop several different concepts for their planning firms to choose from.

Those concepts would be inserted throughout all Lonsdale’s key advice documents to help their advisers display a clear consistent message of what their value proposition was, Modica said.

While it was too early to able to explain exactly what the different concepts would be, Modica admitted they were currently looking at three advice key messages, one of which included understanding what a client’s short, medium and long-term goals were.

They would not be proscriptive about the concepts they chose, Modica said.

They were working closely with one of their planning practices that had been independently developing its own value of advice for over two years to develop the concepts, he said. 

“[Financial planners] do some wonderful things for clients, but if you sit them down and get them to respond to that question you’ll get different answers from everybody,” Modica said.

“It’s just making sure that every time we speak to client, we’re bringing them back to these three key messages, every time we report to them, or we have a meeting with them,” he said.