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April 18, 2019 at 10:13 AM
Investors are more likely to understand the cost of advice than they have been historically — causing more advisors to redefine how they add value.
The percentage of investors who either believe that their advice is free or are unsure how they pay for advice has fallen from 65% in 2011 to 42% in 2018.
Advisors also report heightened fee sensitivity from their clients. Close to three-quarters of advisors agree or strongly agree that, compared with five years ago, prospective clients are now more sensitive about fee levels.
These findings and more are from the April 2019 issue of The Cerulli Edge — U.S. Asset and Wealth Management Edition, which explores how advisors are reacting to this increased fee awareness among investors.
“Given that investors are increasingly cognizant of how they pay for advice (and merely, of the fact that they pay for it), financial advisory firms are pushed to justify their fees by expanding their definition of the financial advisor’s value,” the report states.
To remain competitive, according to Cerulli, advisors must evolve their definition of advice to include nonfinancial aspects of the client’s life and curate a meaningful experiential process for their clients.
Ultimately, investors’ fee awareness requires advisors to focus on client experience to capture measurable advantages.
“The client experience is a holistic perspective that encompasses a client-centric mentality (i.e., What is the client’s perspective?), reliability and repeatability (i.e., Is this a consistent process that reliably results in the same experience for clients?), and surpassing expectations (i.e., How can the firm go above and beyond to address latent or unarticulated client needs?),” according to Cerulli.
Cerulli notes that this demands a mindset transformation “from being an investment consultant to a life coach.”
According to Marina Shtyrkov, research analyst at Cerulli, satisfied investors think an advisor’s integrity and the overall relationship outweigh expertise or investment performance.
