The next competitive advantage in financial advice is not what you might expect.
While investment performance matters, speed and an ability to respond thoughtfully to clients' questions will increasingly separate advisors from the competition.
Interestingly, speed is becoming a way for clients to measure trust, although that speed must be coupled with intelligent answers to clients’ queries. That may be because clients are less apt to benchmark the service they experience from their advisor with other wealth management firms but are more often referencing how that service compares to the rest of their digital lives.
At our recent An Advice Engagement event, where dozens of industry leaders gathered to explore the future of advice delivery, this theme of speed-as-trust emerged as a defining insight.
Chirag Gandhi, co-founder and CEO of Mili, captured this shift perfectly.
"Quarterly reviews feel like mailing DVDs when clients expect Netflix," Gandhi said. "Streaming, always-on, hyper-personalized advice. Family office service at every wealth level."
With product deliveries same or next day throughout the country, waiting days or even until end of day for a response feels glacially slow in comparison.
Advisors who can demonstrate frequent advice readiness — meaning they’re prepared to give meaningful and relevant guidance quickly and seemingly all the time — will encourage more referrals and be more apt to be appreciated by prospects. As George Nichols of The American College of Financial Services noted, "Growth stops when your referrals do."
Time as Currency and a Constraint
While time is increasingly becoming the currency and value that advisors deliver, they need their tech stack to help create that space and time in addition to providing invaluable information to enable quick and quality responses. Fintech, then, must remove tedious and time-consuming tasks while also keeping your brain trained on clients' individual questions or concerns.
Let's be honest, though — most firms weren't built for speed. And this is where artificial intelligence can augment existing systems and close those gaps between integrations that aren't truly integrated. In turn, this will help reach the responsiveness that clients are clamoring for.
Getting Back to Basics
While AI will have its role in achieving this speed and readiness, don't neglect tried-and-true tech — the phone. When used intentionally, this humble instrument is a quick and direct channel to human connection and efficiency.
To optimize it, firms need to prioritize secure text messaging and efficient phone use in their communication strategy. Even with technology ever-advancing, clients crave a connection that assures them that advisors understand their financial life and can provide appropriate solutions for it.
The next decade of financial advice will belong to firms that operationalize speed while also maintaining a great degree of smart substance. Technology should eliminate latency, not humanity.
Advice readiness isn't just about having the right data — it's about being able to act on it almost instantaneously. Advisors that master this balance will redefine what it means to be trusted in an age of instant everything.
H. Adam Holt is founder and CEO of Asset-Map, which works with financial advisors to transform data into visual stories for millions of clients.
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