The Enduring Advisory Firm

Chapter 3 A New Paradigm for Relating and Growing Relationships

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

—Seneca

Seneca reminds us that we make our own luck—and today’s financial services industry offers many favorable conditions to create positive outcomes for our businesses and our clients’ lives. Two demographics in particular—investors under 45 and women—are quickly becoming our country’s fastest wealth creators while simultaneously poised to receive the bulk of a $40 trillion wealth transfer that actually ends up in the hands of inheritors.¹

Headlines and platitudes everywhere acknowledge the importance of these two groups, but studies continue to show that systematic, successful engagement and high satisfaction among them remains rare.

Investors under 40 and women continually report the highest levels of dissatisfaction and trust in their experience with financial services.

It is puzzling why more advisors have not yet adapted their business models to more thoughtfully serve these clients. It is especially puzzling when you consider how challenged the typical advisory firm is to achieve its growth goals. The 2015 Investment News Compensation and Staffing Study² confirmed that this is a great business to be in with the industry overall doubling in size in the past five years.

It also found that advisory firms plan to keep this momentum with the majority aiming to grow their firm’s assets under management by at least 10 percent from new business development ...