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April 01, 2008 at 04:00 AM
With trillions of dollars in liquid assets coming out of retirement accounts or transferred to the next generation in the coming years, many advisors are trying to get a fix on how to tap into that flow of liquidity. Mark Kaizerman has positioned himself to take advantage of the opportunity through a simple yet ingenious approach: creating a guide, clients can use with their advisors to identify and organize important documents needed for beneficiaries or heirs.
The guide, Beneficiary Directory, is Kaizerman’s passport into the relationship with the client, one which gives him access to the next generation as well. It was, he says, the answer to the question, “How do you become the one advisor that trumps them all?”
Kaizerman, who is also a CPA, formed his eponymous firm in 1994, in Natick, Massachusetts. The “tremendous peace of mind” to the spouse provided by the workbook, and the feeling that the financial advisor is the one go-to person–not the lawyer, not the life insurance agent–in the event of a death “creates a powerful client relationship that doesn’t fluctuate with market conditions,” Kaizerman says.
If you are doing financial planning, you need more than an investment deal to have as a basis for a relationship, he asserts. A tool like the workbook helps cement that relationship. The book, which he says has sold between 6,000 and 7,000 copies, is being used by advisors “as a tool to position themselves in what is the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
The directory points the client toward locating, updating, and cataloguing the location of all important documents such as birth and marriage certificates and military discharge papers that are necessary to transfer benefits when a spouse or parent dies. Sound simple? Kaizerman says that 80% of husbands do not know where their original marriage certificate is, and 90% of wives cannot locate their husband’s military discharge papers, according to a poll conducted by his firm.
