The end of the year is an ideal time to check in with clients to gauge their financial and emotional wellbeing. Especially in the current environment, your clients may want reassurance that they’ll be okay.
What Your Clients May Be Worried About
According to a CFP Board survey, top concerns cited by clients during the pandemic have been around managing volatility (74 percent), protecting assets (72 percent), and liquidity (35 percent).1 In a recent BlackRock report, 78 percent of advisors said that portfolio risk is proactively brought up by clients.2
With these anxieties firmly top of mind, it’s no surprise that nearly two-thirds of advisors describe the general stress level of their clients as high or very high as a result of the pandemic.1
Prepare For 2021 In A Way That Addresses Client Concerns
Given their concerns, investors are seeking personalized, proactive guidance and support from their advisors. In fact, 75 percent of investors in the CFP Board survey agreed that it’s important for their advisors to anticipate questions they may have and proactively reach out.1 Further, 66 percent of investors who are infrequently contacted felt that more frequent and personalized communication would give them more confidence in their financial plans.3
Having a conversation centered on sharing a greater level of detail and transparency can deepen your relationship with your clients. Working to address their anxieties and goals in a very specific and personalized way demonstrates empathy and concern for their unique situations.
It’s important that preparing for these conversations is seamless, so that you can efficiently connect with all of your clients. However, it’s equally important that the information you share is communicated in a way that your clients can comprehend, that catches their eye, and that clearly showcases unique insights based on their own financial pictures. Using analyses that are simple, quick-to-run, and – maybe most importantly – easy for clients to understand can be a huge help in reinforcing the decisions you’re trying to help them make.
A Client-Friendly Report From BlackRock
BlackRock’s Advisor Center, available to subscribers, can provide you with comprehensive analyses at the click of a button, in a client-friendly format. With minimal preparation, you can run analyses and print reports that highlight portfolio holdings, analytics, insights, and more. In turn, you can share these reports with your clients to facilitate critical conversations, provide reassurance, and discuss difficult topics like risk in a way they can understand.
These reports can help make financial conversations more tangible for your clients. This can lead to more conceptual conversations about their broader financial plans as you help them consider the challenges and opportunities ahead.
To learn more about how you can leverage our unified advice platform, including subscription offerings like Advisor Center, contact your Envestnet sales team at 855-769-0806. Visit our BlackRock Resource Center to learn more about the tools you can leverage to help your clients on the journey to financial wellness.
Sources:
- CFP Board, “Pulse Survey: The Impact of COVID-19 On CFP Professionals And Their Clients,” April 21, 2020.
- “Tech in business,” BlackRock, last accessed May 20, 2020. A total of 510 U.S. advisors with at least $25M in AUM participated in the BlackRock survey.
- YCharts, “How Can Advisors Better Communicate With Clients,” December 2019.
The information, analysis and opinions expressed herein are for informational purposes only and do not necessarily reflect the views of Envestnet. These views reflect the judgment of the author as of the date of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this piece is intended to constitute legal, tax, accounting, securities, or investment advice, nor an opinion regarding the appropriateness of any investment, nor a solicitation of any type.
Tools on BlackRock’s Advisor Center are offered exclusively for financial professionals. Certain tools allow for the generation of client reports.
IMPORTANT: The projections or other information generated by certain Advisor Center tools regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results. Results may vary with each use and over time.
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