Most firms within their service propositions offer the client the ability to phone their adviser whenever they need them. And most clients do.
They phone their adviser when they are worried. They phone their adviser when they are looking to withdraw some money from their pensions. They phone their adviser for a multitude of reasons. So think about how your client might behave if they could not pick up the phone or drop you an email.
During the early stages of Covid-19 when we saw the markets fall through the floor, did your clients rely on speaking to their adviser for reassurance and peace of mind? If they did not have that communication, would they have sat tight and not disinvested?
For a big proportion of clients, without an adviser, they would have panicked at that point.
This is vital. Understanding this behaviour is where an advisory firm can really begin to pull out the value-add of their service proposition.
If an advisory firm can show that a client is much more likely to meet their goals and objectives by taking advice (and factoring in the additional cost that comes with that), versus going it alone (and not having the additional cost, but doing things very differently), then you have got a big chunk of your value assessment done.
The latter part is then considering how you compare to your peers from a price perspective, and considering whether your fees are competitive. If you are at the top end of fees then you need to think about why that is, and document it.
So if you are in the camp of not really knowing where to start with a value assessment, the behaviours of your clients with and without advice is going to be a really strong foundation to start on.
Carla Langley is owner and founder of Langley Consultancy
