Coaching is Future of Financial Advice

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Financial advisers should consider broadening their services to become a financial lifestyle coach while also adopting new technology to meet regulatory requirements, a new whitepaper has claimed.

Zurich's Head of Marketing and Communications, Life and Investments, Richard Dunkerley... more fundamental shits afoot than the LIF changes...
Zurich Life & Investments Head of Marketing and Communications, Richard Dunkerley

The BusinessFIT: Navigating toward the advice practice of tomorrow whitepaper, released by Zurich, also stated the business systems of advisers need to become flexible and scalable to deal with ‘roaming’ clients who accessed advice via mobile devices.

In releasing the paper, Zurich stated that by adopting these changes financial advisers could make themselves as relevant to their clients as other lifestyle professionals with the changes set to become the fundamental characteristics of a prosperous advice practices over the next three to eight years.

In recommending advisers shift from being a technical specialist to a financial lifestyle coach the paper said this transition would become more important as the values of target clients changed.

The transition would also require advisers to “…shift in their role from a technical specialist…to a more holistic ‘financial lifestyle coach’…”

The transition would also require advisers to “…shift in their role from a technical specialist who views their role as helping clients achieve a particular financial goal by selling a product, to a more holistic ‘financial lifestyle coach’, who truly gets to understand their clients’ lifestyles, dreams and motivations”.

The paper also recommended advisers adopt automated technology in the advice process and in their back office to improve their technical expertise and that the uptake of technology would be driven by the need to comply with increasing regulatory requirements and demands for transparency.

The development of the themes in the whitepaper were based on the input of six leading advice industry professionals, including Jessica Brady from BT Financial Group, David Clark from Koda Capital, Tim Deamer from Crosbie Wealth, Peita Diamantidis from Caboodle Financial Services, Matt Heine from NetWealth, and Adrian Patty from AP Financial Services, along with futurist Anders Sörman-Nilsson.

Zurich Life & Investments Head of Marketing and Communications, Richard Dunkerley said the working group and the paper found new avenues for advice to service the current and next generation of clients and “…what became clear – in considering changing lifestyles and demographics – was that people still value money and wealth, but as an enabler to reaching other goals, and this provides an opportunity for advisers”.