MANY people will seldom pay a second thought to those people in their lives who provide a fundamental service but yet remain relatively unknown to them.
Such service providers will include people who deliver the mail and collect the garbage. However, among this group, many clients of financial intermediaries may be tempted to add their adviser.
This is a harsh thing to say about an industry that is constantly striving, according to its supporters, to provide world class financial advice using some of the best products available, but the service some planners offer is on par with that of garbage collectors.
That is not to say that financial planners provide poor advice but rather that the overall importance of the job is not seen as such and while the planner’s role remains important, as does the garbage collector, clients still regard it as being on the periphery of their lives. To put it bluntly, clients don’t see planners as being central to their lives because planners don’t sell themselves as such.
This can occur through minimal or sporadic contact with clients, which is not so much as building the adviser/client relationship, but maintaining a tenuous link with them because you have their money.
But it is no longer sufficient for planners to believe that if clients don’t make the steps to maintain the relationship that they should not act either.
Most clients are busy with their own lives and work and don’t have time to pursue the planner for information and advice. It is this lack of time and knowledge combined with a need for advice that has driven the industry in the first place.
This means providers of advice need to be more proactive than ever before to ensure the needs of their clients remain not only at the front of their minds but also of the clients’, and that the role of the planner in dealing with those is paramount.
In this edition,Money Managementhas asked the question of whether planners, and funds management staff, are worth the money they are paid.
The cynics would say that planners and funds management staff are overpaid and should be paid less, unless they can prove they do indeed provide value to the end user. This is unlikely to happen, but the point is still the same: are you worth the money you get?
There is an obvious way to test this. Ask yourself who would be missed the most if you and the garbage man were both to stop providing services on the same day.
