Clients Have So Many Financial Needs. What's an Advisor to Do?

There is no doubt that wealth management professionals in the U.S. are being called upon by their clients to deliver more value and deeper planning services than ever before, with the typical advisor now being called upon to support between 12 and 15 distinct financial needs for any given client.

This is according to Karen McColl, a senior vice president of wealth management at Commonwealth Financial Network who was brought on board in 2021 to help make sure the firm’s advisors have all the tools they need and are taking full advantage of those resources.

Speaking recently with ThinkAdvisor about her tenure at the firm and the launch of the firm’s new virtual paraplanning support service, McColl emphasized how advisors are utilizing a combination of new technology and old-fashioned elbow grease to meet the increasingly complex needs of clients and overcome challenges — including fee compression and growing competition.

As McColl explained, her role is central to shaping the ongoing evolution of Commonwealth’s advisor support model across advanced planning, insurance, annuity research, investment consulting, retirement consulting and more. She said the work has been equal parts rewarding and challenging, and she has enjoyed working alongside Commonwealth’s leadership team as it responds to advisors’ dynamic financial planning and business needs.

As recounted in the interview, Commonwealth-linked advisors who want to get and stay ahead in this environment must take full advantage of the firm’s services, like advanced tax and estate planning, and they must also ensure they are able to communicate their value to clients. Those who fail to do so will likely see their practices falling behind the competition, she warned.

THINKADVISOR: To begin with, how do you see the demands on your financial advisors evolving over time? Do you agree with the suggestion they are being called upon to do more than ever before?

KAREN MCCOLL: Certainly, and to answer your question let me take a step back. Internally, we view our wealth management capabilities and planning services as the extension of each advisor’s practice. We exist to help them attract, retain and grow assets, and we do this successfully by listening closely to our advisors.

So, for some time now, we have been hearing about this big theme of advisors wanting to draw from more resources and access additional expertise. In other words, what we are seeing is that more clients want a real financial plan that connects all the different parts of their financial lives in a holistic way.

At the same time, the simple truth is that clients’ lives are growing more complex. We’re seeing more of a range of needs that covers 12 to 15 different topics, ranging from investment oversight to cash flow management to insurance — thinking about long-term care, life insurance, debt considerations and more. Our advisors increasingly deal with stock options, executive compensation and more.

So yes the environment is clearly more demanding for our advisors.

And this is where the virtual paraplanners are meant to help, right?

Yeah. To sum it up, the virtual paraplanning program is just the latest reflection of everything that we are doing to bolster all the different ways that we support our advisors.

If you think about it, looking across all the planning areas that I just mentioned, it’s going to be really difficult for any one individual advisor to carry all the information in their head all the time. That’s why a team-based approach where you can call on additional expertise is increasingly important, and our virtual paraplanning service should help with that.

Another interesting thing that we see happening in the marketplace is that many of the advanced planning tools we make available to our advisors, whether that’s eMoney or RightCapital, are themselves evolving so fast that it can be hard to keep up. The enhancements are great, but advisors need help keeping it all straight, and that’s something else our paraplanning experts can support.

The paraplanners are digging into this stuff all day long. They are also connected to our advanced planning group within our wealth management segment, so if a client comes to the advisor with a tricky question about something like long-term care planning, the advisor can now get that expertise when the paraplanner taps the insurance team. It should be very powerful for the advisors.