The fall of the face-to-face client meeting

For financial advisors, face-to-face client meetings are becoming fewer and farther between.

“I think it’s a combination that we’re all busy and also people are more comfortable with other forms of contact,” Valerie Porter, president of SummitView Financial LLC in Indianapolis, told ThinkAdvisor.

A survey conducted by Peak Advisor Alliance and Cerulli Associates found that 81 percent of survey participants report meeting with clients only once or twice per year. Porter, who also heads the FPA’s Research and Practice Institute, said a report the FPA will be releasing in early July called “Trends in Client Communication” found similar findings.

In lieu of individual client meetings, advisors are hosting more frequent client and social events, getting proactive about email and newsletter distributions, and making regular contact via social media, according to the survey.

“How we communicate is driven by the client,” said Ron Carson, CEO of Carson Wealth Management Group and founder of the Peak Advisor Alliance, in a statement. “We’ve found clients want frequent, targeted communication such as trade notifications that deliver relevant information about their personal investments at the time it is happening. But advisors must listen to their clients to determine when and how they want to communicate.”

Porter added that when clients are asked what type of meeting they want, many won’t choose face to face.

“I am definitely finding clients are opting for the virtual meeting more frequently than they did, but then again I’m offering it more,” said Porter, who finds herself often doing more web-based contact for meetings.

But that’s not to say face-to-face meetings should be entirely done away with.