Client experience
The largest transfer of wealth in history is not a future event, and most firms are positioned to lose their share of it.
The largest transfer of wealth in history is not a future event, and most advisory firms are positioned to lose their share of it. The commonly cited figure is that a substantial majority of heirs change advisor after inheriting, and the reason is usually simple: they had never met you.
Most firms address this with an event. A wealth-transfer seminar, an invitation to a review, a family meeting proposed once and never repeated.
It fails because the adult children are not evaluating your investment process. They are deciding whether you are their parents' advisor or theirs, and one meeting at the end tells them clearly which.
Be present before you are needed. Ask your client's permission to include adult children in one meeting a year — not to sell, to inform. Most parents want this and have never been offered it.
Solve a problem they actually have. Adult children in their thirties and forties are dealing with mortgages, employer plan choices, stock compensation and childcare costs — not estate planning. Being useful on the thing they are worried about now is what earns the conversation about the thing you are worried about later.
Be reachable on their terms. A generation that transacts on their phone will not begin a relationship by scheduling a two-hour office meeting.
Say what happens when. Most heirs have no idea what the process looks like. Explaining it in advance is a service to the parents and a demonstration to the children.
Many clients do not want their children knowing the numbers, and that is a legitimate position. It does not prevent any of the above.
The framing that usually works: I do not need to tell them what you have. I would like them to know who I am and how this will work, so that when it matters they are not dealing with a stranger during the worst month of their life.
Very few clients say no to that.
Not your returns. Whether their parents were well looked after, whether the paperwork was in order, whether the transition after a death was competent, and whether you treated them as adults before they had money.
All four are decided years before anyone inherits anything.
Questions this did not answer? Ask them directly — that is what the twenty minutes is for.
Book 20 minutes with Kyle