A Self-Imposed Barrier for Advisors Serving South Asian Clients

There are just two issues that advisors who are interested in serving clients from the South Asian diaspora need to understand: Family and community. They form the bedrock of South Asian life, in the U.S. or any part of the world, and an advisor who can understand their paramount importance to the South Asian life will have no problem gaining clients in the space.

Yet many advisors are still leery of approaching this group. There’s little doubt that one of the most professionally successful immigrant communities in the U.S. is of great interest to advisors, says Rita Cheng, an advisor in Bethesda, Maryland, affiliated with Ameriprise Financial Services, but the general feeling is still one of “I don’t really get these people, I’ll let someone else handle them,” she says.

This, though, is a self-imposed barrier, says Bhupesh Shah, president of ethnicomm inc., a consulting firm providing marketing, sales, and Web strategy services to small- and medium-sized businesses, and advisors need to recognize that. “While there may be a few first-generation South Asians who seek financial advice from professionals who speak the same language, overall, the preference is to deal with someone who understands the cultural nuances that may affect their investment goals,” Shah says.

While South Asians, like any other ethnic community, need to manage their assets and require the planning help needed to pass those assets to the next generation, one thing that has not changed is that they stick to core values, traditions, and culture, says Hemant Singh, principal partner with New York-based K.S. Capital Management and a registered representative of Lincoln Financial Securities Corp. Advisors who seek out these clients must have the background to appreciate their culture, but also the sensitivity to understand the whys and the why nots that are incomprehensible to a non-Asian, he says.

The first step in that process is understanding what exactly South Asia is. Cheng believes that many advisors still do not even know where the region is on the world map. Understanding that South Asia consists of several different countries–India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and The Maldives–where there are many different ethnicities, languages, and religions, is fundamental in making sure that advisors can relate properly to their clients and can guide them toward the kind of investment choices suited to their particular background, she says.

Overall, though, South Asians do share a similar cultural heritage and, due to their colonial past, a comfort transacting business in English, Shah says. For all South Asians, regardless of their ethnic, religious, or linguistic backgrounds, family supersedes individual interests. “Family can range from a couple to an extended or multigenerational family, which may include in-laws and grandparents,” he says. “It is not uncommon for parents to live with their child, or for a single working professional to support their parents or relatives either in America or back home.”

These are the sorts of cultural peculiarities that advisors need to get a handle on if they are to succeed within the South Asian space, says Subha Barry, former managing director and head of diversity and inclusion at Merrill Lynch, who now teaches a course at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Education a Top Priority