Pandemic Has Changed Advisor–Client Communications for the Long Haul

Changes in the ways financial advisors and clients communicate with one another as a result of the coronavirus outbreak are likely to remain in place well after the pandemic subsides, Broadridge Financial Solutions reported this week.

Fifty-seven percent of investors in a recent survey reported that communications with their advisor had undergone some change because of stay-at-home mandates, and 62% of these said they would entirely or partially maintain their new methods after the pandemic ends.

These are the ways survey respondents said they communicated with their advisor during the pandemic:

• Phone calls – 58%, especially preferred by Gen Xers and baby boomers
• Emails – 46%,
• Video chat – 36%, including 59% of millennials

Only 9% of investors said they preferred video chat to all other methods. Other ways advisors and clients were communicating were text, in-person (interestingly, more than one-third of Gen Z subscribed to this method), mobile app, social media and letter in the mail.

“We are seeing an accelerated adoption of digitalization and personalization from investors, financial advisors and wealth firms as a result of the pandemic,” Michael Alexander, president of wealth management at Broadridge, said in a statement.

“These behaviors are broadening, deepening and changing the client-advisor relationship. As a result, investors don’t want a return to the past. They largely prefer this new normal.”

Engine, a market research firm, fielded the survey in June among 1,000 individuals in the U.S. and Canada who currently use a financial advisor.

Customized Advisor Communications

The survey found that investors wanted personalized and individualized communications from their advisors.