Case Study: How Automation Can Help Financial Advisors Maximize Revenue While Balancing Work/Life Balance
Financial advisors typically manage a portfolio of clients, which can range in size from a few dozen to several hundred. They provide their clients with a variety of services, including:
Financial planning: Financial advisors help their clients to develop financial plans that meet their individual needs and goals.
Investment management: Financial advisors select and manage investments for their clients.
Retirement planning: Financial advisors help their clients to plan for retirement and to ensure that they have sufficient income to live comfortably in retirement.
Tax planning: Financial advisors help their clients to minimize their tax liability.
Estate planning: Financial advisors help their clients to plan for the distribution of their assets after death.
In the midst of helping their clients and growing their client bases, many financial advisors often find themselves in the unenviable position of facing multiple pain points related to their own business and time.
Time management: Financial advisors need to balance their time between managing their clients' portfolios, providing financial advice, and marketing their businesses. This can be challenging, especially for financial advisors with a large portfolio of clients.
Compliance: Financial advisors are subject to a number of regulations, which can be complex and time-consuming to comply with.
Client expectations: Financial advisors' clients expect them to be available to answer their questions and provide them with timely advice. This can be challenging, especially for financial advisors with a large portfolio of clients.
How Automation Can Help
Automation can help financial advisors to address their pain points and improve their businesses in a number of ways, including:
Saving time: Automation can save financial advisors time by automating manual tasks, such as data entry, report generation, and client communication. This can free up financial advisors' time to focus on more value-added activities, such as developing client relationships and providing financial advice.
Improving compliance: Automation can help financial advisors to comply with regulations by automating tasks such as risk assessments and KYC/AML checks. This can help financial advisors to avoid costly fines and penalties.
Meeting client expectations: Automation can help financial advisors to meet client expectations by providing them with tools to communicate with clients more effectively and to provide them with timely updates on their portfolios.
Real Stats and Outcomes
A study by McKinsey & Company found that automation could boost productivity in the financial services sector by up to 25%. Additionally, a study by PwC found that 78% of financial services executives believe that automation will play a significant role in their company's strategy in the next five years.
A study by the Financial Planning Association found that financial advisors who use automation are more likely to be profitable and to have higher client satisfaction rates. The study also found that financial advisors who use automation are more likely to spend more time with their clients and to be less stressed.
Case Study
Amanda is a certified financial planner who manages a portfolio of over 200 clients. Prior to implementing automation, Amanda was struggling to keep up with the demands of her business. She was spending long hours working on manual tasks, such as data entry and client communication. This was leaving her with little time to focus on developing client relationships and providing financial advice.
Amanda narrowed her focus through carefully assessing her own process, time allocations and crafting the vision for what she wanted her business to look like. She took the time needed to draft her own growth strategy that revolved around the following questions:
Which tasks were taking up the most time? Amanda identified the tasks that were taking up the most of her time and that were repetitive or routine in nature. These were the tasks that were the most likely to benefit from automation.
Which tasks were critical to her business success? Amanda also identified the tasks that were critical to the success of his business. These were the tasks that she needed to be personally involved in.
Which tasks could be automated without sacrificing quality? Amanda only automated tasks that could be automated without sacrificing quality. She wanted to make sure that her clients continued to receive the same high level of service after automation was implemented.
Once Amanda had identified the tasks that she wanted to automate , she began to research different automation solutions. She chose solutions that were specifically designed for financial advisors and that could be easily integrated with her existing software systems.
Amanda also implemented automation in a phased approach. She started by automating a few key tasks and then gradually added more tasks as she became more comfortable with the automation process. This allowed her to minimize the disruption to her business, armed her with the ability to associate certain specific outcomes with the implementation of specific tools, and to ensure that the automation process was executed successfully.
Here are some specific examples of how Amanda implemented automation in her business:
Data entry: Amanda automated the process of entering client data into her CRM system. This saved her hours of time each week and allowed her to focus on more important tasks.
Lead Qualification: Amanda automated her lead qualification process to ensure she spent her valuable time in front of leads who were ready to receive advice and willing to take action to improve their situations. This saved Amanda not only multiple hours each month hours in meetings and follow up efforts, but also in multiple headaches :)
Client communication: Amanda automated the process of communicating with her clients. This included sending out regular updates on their portfolios and responding to their inquiries. This allowed her to stay in touch with her clients more effectively and to provide them with the best possible service.
By carefully considering her own unique business needs and implementing automation only where it made sense, Amanda was able to use her time more effectively and to focus on more high-value situations. This resulted in a number of benefits for her business, including:
Increased revenue: Amanda’s revenue increased as she was able to spend more time developing client relationships and providing financial advice.
Improved client satisfaction: Amanda's client satisfaction rates increased as she was able to provide her clients with more timely and accurate information and respond to their inquiries more quickly.
Reduced stress: Amanda's stress levels decreased as she was able to offload many of her manual tasks to automation.
Overall, Amanda's experience is a great example of how financial advisors can use automation to improve their businesses and achieve their goals. By carefully considering their business needs and implementing automation only where it makes sense, financial advisors can save time, improve compliance and client service, and focus on more value-added activities.
Automation is a powerful tool that can help financial advisors to improve their businesses and achieve their goals. By creating a growth strategy and integrating automation where it makes sense, advisors are able to grow their business while allowing the time to ensure each client is receiving the advice they need and deserve.
If you are an advisor looking for help to create your growth strategy and implement automation in your practise, we want to hear from you. Apply to become a client today!
