Last updated on June 16th, 2023 at 06:36 pm
For advisors in 2023, achieving true financial success means embracing new and better ways to serve your clientele, like holistic wealth management. With this approach, wealth management and trust go hand in hand, placing your client front and center.
This means gaining a deep understanding of their unique needs, goals, and priorities so that their financial plan can reflect and support their aspirations. By combining this personal approach with your professional expertise, you can create a powerful foundation for building your clients’ financial confidence and security while growing your practice.
To help your clients feel confident you’re the one for the job of managing their wealth, you must first build their trust. While this approach takes time, by focusing on the essential building blocks of trust like credibility, competence, customer service and education, you can accelerate your client relationships to become positive ones.
Understanding holistic wealth management
Holistic wealth management goes beyond growing one’s wealth through vehicles like investing — it also includes protecting, enjoying, and distributing one’s wealth based on your client’s values and goals.
This innovative approach to financial planning aims to create a truly personalized financial roadmap for your clients. By understanding their full financial picture, holistic wealth management can help you guide their decisions on life insurance, home ownership, taxes, and handling major life changes such as the birth of a child or the passing of a loved one. With this comprehensive approach, you will gain the confidence and trust that you need to help them achieve their financial dreams and by extension, your own.
An alarming 60% of aspiring investors in Canada are not confident in their ability to make investment decisions. With that in mind, your role as an advisor cannot only be to manage a client’s money, but to curate an experience that improves their overall financial confidence.
An effective way to accomplish this is through ongoing education and guidance. However, reaching that point requires time, patience, and finding the right resources. As an expert in this field, these challenges fall to you. You’re best positioned to provide the guidance necessary for clients to achieve their financial goals with determination.
Embracing the four building blocks of trust
- Credibility – Finance is a complex topic and clients need to know you’re an expert in the field. Build your credibility by helping them to understand your recommendations more easily using helpful tools like visual aids.
- Competence – There are endless advisors and practices your clients can work with, so it’s essential to demonstrate what sets you apart from the rest. Highlight your credentials, accomplishments and stories about your experience to help them see the value you bring to the table.
- Customer service – Personalized services are everywhere these days, thanks to rapid digital transformation in every industry. Now, clients want this level of care from advisors too. Meet and exceed their expectations by working with clients to understand their holistic financial needs and delivering a service custom-tailored for them. You can also use a wealth management platform to leverage more transparent information and smarter systems to provide better service to clients.
- Education – While you’re already helping clients understand your recommendations, you only have so much time to do so during meetings. It’s important to make sure they feel educated and confident the rest of the time when you’re not around. Continue to build your relationships with clients outside of scheduled appointments. Try sharing things like educational articles and financial news for them to get familiar with in their spare time.
Putting it all together
Simply put, your clients – modern investors – want to see you understand their needs beyond the numbers. You need to show you have a grasp on, and care about, their broader life goals and help them feel comfortable with the plan for the long run.
By adopting a holistic wealth management approach you can establish the ideal level of trust and confidence with your clients, ultimately generating more business and leveling up your practice.
About the author
James Rockwood is a successful entrepreneur and founder of CapIntel, a wealth tech company based in Halifax, NS. While working in accounting and investment banking, he observed the archaic systems and processes used by most people working in financial services. James was disappointed to see the wealth management industry left behind, as other industries saw significant improvement in efficiency and outcomes through the use of technology. That’s why he started CapIntel.
