Leading Minds Academy has challenged advisers to consider what will be required to meet their clients’ expectations in a post FoFA world.
This challenge is based on a report the Academy has published that looks at the Top Ten Traits of Financial Advisers. While the report is from the United States, Leading Minds sees the client feedback as still offering useful information for advisers in the Australian market.
Interestingly, ‘technical knowledge’ is the attribute that tops the list of what clients seek from their adviser, ahead of character traits such as trustworthiness and honesty.
This feedback is based on a survey of 1,000 middle-class American clients of financial planners, where the top ten attributes these clients look for in their advisers are:
- Technical knowledge (75%)
- Trustworthiness (74%)
- Honesty (70%)
- Many years of experience (59%)
- Willingness to listen (52%)
- Positive word of mouth referral (51%)
- Confidence (48%)
- Personal relationship with the adviser (46%)
- Understanding (44%)
- Patience (34%)
The challenge to advisers by Leading Minds is to ask whether the adviser and his/her team ‘measure up’ to these attributes or whether there may exist a gap between what they are offering to the client and the services their clients expect from them, both now and post the implementation of the forthcoming FoFA reforms.
