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 Advisers are often in a unique position to provide personal coaching
to clients apart from money issues. Although advisers cannot solve
serious problems, they can use their networks to help clients find
experts for everything from substance abuse treatment to cancer
support.
They can also nudge clients in a better direction during some of
life's rough patches, like career changes.
Karen Higgins, an adviser with Wells Fargo Advisors in Richmond,
Va., stepped into such a role when a recently divorced client lost
her desire to socialize. Higgins asked her every week to join her at
a local women’s club meeting. The client finally agreed, leading to
a better overall social life.
Life-coaching is a natural fit for advisers, since money underpins
much of life, and because the relationship between financial adviser
and client can be so intimate, Higgins said.
To be sure, some clients will always go to friends, rabbis, or
doctors for personal advice and will consult financial advisers
strictly for cost-effective returns. But being aware of
opportunities to provide extra help may set advisers apart in a
field that is now facing more competition from automated investment
services that use algorithms to manage portfolios.
This month, Charles Schwab Corp became the latest firm to launch
such a service, promoting it as being free of advisory fees and
commissions.
Matt Lynch, managing principal of Strategy & Resources, LLC, a
financial services consulting firm in Dayton, Ohio, said it is a
good time for advisers to highlight their caring sides.
Investments and financial planning can be automated, he said. “But
the ability to show empathy, and to give clients confidence to stay
invested and make good decisions, that’s more of an art than a
science.”
Financial planners say life-coaching skills have deepened
relationships and generated referrals.
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Bill Keen, founder of Keen Wealth Advisors in Overland Park, Kansas
enjoys those “ripple effects” after going “way beyond the money, way
beyond the financial side of things” for clients.
Keen looks back on guiding a suddenly-widowed client through a
severe depression as his most rewarding life-coaching experience. He
helped her get professional counseling, sell her home, and find a
retirement community near her children.
Even when the issue isn't serious, careful listening can help an
adviser halt unrealistic expectations, and potentially disastrous
overspending, said Jacob Gold, who heads Jacob Gold and Associates
in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Gold gently recalibrates expectations when a client talks about
out-of-reach retirement plans, such as buying a beach home. But he
also works to understand the client's underlying need, to see if it
might be met more fittingly.
In a world of increased adviser competition, sympathy and insight
are keys to staying valued, Gold added. “It’s no longer an
environment of what stock we should get into when, and when to get
out,” he said.
(Reporting by Hilary Johnson; Editing by Suzanne Barlyn and
Christian Plumb)
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