The Well-Supported Advisor
Financial advisors, like any business leaders, have dreams of what their practice could become over time. You can see the path you’d like to take and how it could accomplish the goals you have set. The problem? Executing your plan. Turning the vision into reality. While we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to staying the course on our goals, many advisors struggle not for lack of vision or even follow through. They struggle for lack of support.
If that’s you today, we’re tackling ways to find the support you need to bridge the gap between where you are and where your vision is taking you.
Looking Outside Your Team for Support
Recently, we wrote about the need for advisors to become better leaders who get the most out of their teams. It addressed a common feeling: that one where you return home from a conference with ideas and goals only to run into a less inspired team. It’s important to note though that this is only one kind of solution for advisor who needs more support to execute their vision. Sometimes the solution is internal, and sometimes, there’s a better alternative.
In-housing all your needs lends itself to challenges like:
- Resource-consuming talent searches and onboarding
- Unpredictable staff turnover, especially in critical moments
- The financial risk of committing to a new hire when you need growth
While some answers are best met with an internal solution, let’s dig into the alternative ways advisors can find support in operating their business and achieving their growth goals.
1. Leveraging Reliable Back Office Support
Back-office operations are one of the chief time-consuming culprits that keep advisors bogged down. As you grow, this role needs to be rock solid to serve your clients well and avoid issues with compliance. As a result, it can always feel like a risk when adding support to cover your operations.
Through WealthPlan Group, we provide advisors with access to a scalable team of back-office support that grows with you. You don’t have to manage team turnover or worry about steep learning curves for new employees. Our team is immersed in these operations and able to be tailored to your unique processes.
2. Partnering with Investment Management That Gives You a Voice
Many advisors have explored the option of outsourcing their investment management, and there’s no shortage of options to choose from. They remove the practices of researching and managing all trading yourself. Better yet, the decision entrusts it to people and teams that specialize in trading, allowing you to remain focused on building financial plans and growing your business.
Still, a common concern rises from advisors considering this move: how much control do I have to give up over my clients’ investments? It’s a good question. It doesn’t provide much peace to know that the team and methodology you choose today will continue to align with your investment philosophy for your clients.
This is another area where WealthPlan Group has developed an innovative model to meet your need for specialized support without removing your voice from decisions. All of our Outsourced CIO advisors are invited to join our investment committee meetings, and better yet, you have a wide range of control over the manner in which your clients’ money is invested.
3. Utilizing a Turnkey Asset Management Platform
If financial planning was only a matter of talking about the plan, your life would be much easier! The truth is that executing financial plans is a far more involved, time-intensive process. To make the most of your time, find a turnkey asset management platform (TAMP) to help streamline your process with a mix of automation and project management assistance.
At WealthPlan Group, our solution helps manage the entire process seen below.
- Portfolio Construction
- Investment Selection
- Proposal Creation
- New Account Paperwork
- Risk Tolerance
- Ongoing Portfolio Management & Rebalancing
4. Outsourcing Your Marketing Tasks
When advisors are looking for ways to free up bandwidth for their operations, we often recommend they find some of that bandwidth in their marketing activities. While marketing is not a back-burner priority, it is one area that may be easier to find qualified support.
In addition, there are many resources already available to advisors that can help take the heavy lifting off of your team’s plate like FMG Suite: an easy-to-use website builder and content library. With a little bit of time given to customizing their pre-written content and distributing it, you can have a simple but active marketing strategy.
If you’re looking to get more aggressive with your business growth, we recommend finding a marketing partner who specializes in helping you differentiate your brand. For advisors, it’s important that your marketing focuses more on your own brand and expertise to help develop a sense of connection with your clients and your prospects.
The Well-Supported Advisor
If you’re currently in a wirehouse setting or are independent but struggling to find support, we invite you to connect with a member of our team. Your dream of being a well-supported advisor may be closer than you think, and WealthPlan Group may be the right partner to make that happen.
WealthPlan Group is a DBA for WealthPlan Investment Management, LLC, which is a registered investment advisor, providing financial planning and investment management services to retail and institutional clientele.
*The Morningstar Rating™ for funds, or “star rating”, is calculated for managed products (including mutual funds, variable annuity and variable life subaccounts, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, and separate accounts) with at least a three-year history. Exchange-traded funds and open-ended mutual funds are considered a single population for comparative purposes. It is calculated based on a Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return measure that accounts for variation in a managed product’s monthly excess performance, placing more emphasis on downward variations and rewarding consistent performance. The Morningstar Rating does not include any adjustment for sales loads. The top 10% of products in each product category receive 5 stars, the next 22.5% receive 4 stars, the next 35% receive 3 stars, the next 22.5% receive 2 stars, and the bottom 10% receive 1 star. The Overall Morningstar Rating for a managed product is derived from a weighted average of the performance figures associated with its three-, five-, and 10-year (if applicable) Morningstar Rating metrics. The weights are: 100% three-year rating for 36-59 months of total returns, 60% five-year rating/40% three-year rating for 60-119 months of total returns, and 50% 10-year rating/30% five-year rating/20% three-year rating for 120 or more months of total returns. While the 10-year overall star rating formula seems to give the most weight to the 10- year period, the most recent three-year period actually has the greatest impact because it is included in all three rating periods.