How do you show the value of advice?

With regulation increasing, the cost of compliance on the up and a corresponding rise in fees, financial advisers need to be able to communicate the worth of advice to new prospects who might be sceptical of its high price.

“You’re telling a prospect ‘I have to charge that fee because we’ve just been through a royal commission and now my costs have gone up to service you’ – they don’t care,” APAC Atlas Wealth adviser James Ridley told ifa.

Mr Ridley suggested that providing a comprehensive breakdown of services provided so that new clients have a better understanding of the work going on behind the scenes.

“You can break it down to all the man hours that go into producing that first document they get, that statement of advice. Usually it’s going to be 25 plus hours, it’s probably going to be four, five plus staff touching that document,” he said.

Other advisers noted the difficulty in introducing Millennial clients to the nature of financial advice.

“Our clients don’t understand why it takes five days to get an authority on their superfund,” Fox and Hare financial adviser Jessica Brady told ifa.

Mr Ridley stressed the importance of using technology to streamline the process of getting advice.

He uses Loom, a video recording app, to record instructional videos that take new clients through their services and software.

“They can log in to that anytime in the future. They now know where to go to access reports, cash transactions, see how the account is performing.”

Ms Brady echoed the importance of using digital technologies to streamline the client experience.

“Our clients are digitally native,” she said. “They expect to interact with us like they do with any other service provider.”