JConnelly Insights

Top 5 Insights on Financial Advisors

By on December 17, 2014 · December 17, 2014

JCPR recently reviewed the findings of a valuable study conducted by Erdos & Morgan on financial advisors and their media habits. We thought some of the key insights and implications would be of interest to you.

The study, titled “2013 Financial Advisor Media Outlook & Usage” and presented by CNBC, contains a plethora of statistics on the thought process and preferences of FAs in the professional investment community.

Here are the top five insights we gathered from the report, which surveyed 1,587 respondents representing the entire national universe of 340,000 registered FAs:

1. Approximately 71% of advisors manage more than 500 clients; the majority of them do so with teams of 10 or less.

IMPLICATION: Even with the advent of technology and practice management efficiencies, advisors are short on quality time—so financial services marketers—make your messages short, to the point and clearly identify upfront why they should care!

2. Two-thirds of financial advisors have been in the financial services industry for over 10 years.

IMPLICATION: Advisors are maturing along with the general population. This creates many unique challenges and opportunities including intergenerational wealth transfer, legacy planning, etc.

3. Over a third of companies have at least $100 million in assets under management

• Mean assets under management: $143.3 million

•
Median assets under management: $73 million

IMPLICATION: Great growth ahead for these advisors. Provide services to help empower them to grow their practices.

4. The top 3 factors when recommending investment products to clients aside from fee structure and performance of funds are:

• Reputation of fund family (92%)

• Company is a firm I know and trust (92%)

• Company’s approach to managing volatility (91%)
IMPLICATION: In addition to what I term “table stakes” including fees and performance, reputation management is key and points to the need to incorporate public relations and brand messaging.

5. Financial advisors have a broad focus. The most commonly offered types of financial advice are:

• Retirement planning (92%)

• Portfolio management (90%)

• Asset allocation (88%)

• Investment strategies (87%)

• Financial planning (86%)
IMPLICATION: These categories echo the general needs of the core audience—baby boomers with Generation Y quickly coming up behind them. Having a comfortable retirement keeps most investors up at night. Luckily, there are a number of new and exciting retirement related products and services that help investors build and protect their retirement reserved assets.

Find these factoids as interesting as we do? Share them on your social channels using the buttons below! To find out more about the marketing and communication implications of these findings contact Andrea at atrachtenberg@jcprinc.com.

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