Appearing on a new episode of the ifa Show podcast, MetLife Australia’s head of customer strategy and propositions, Matt Lippiatt, said recent changes in consumer behaviour and regulation has forced some advisers to re-adjust their value proposition.
“And advisers everywhere are looking for, ‘how can I broaden out my value add to my clients and take advantage of that?’ So rather than seeing it as a threat, seeing it as something positive and an opportunity to grow their business,” Mr Lippiatt said.
“… one of the things I had observed in talking to advisers as I get the opportunity to do get out there in the market, I think one of the things that’s maybe held advisors back from making it a bigger part of their business is perhaps a lack of confidence.
“’Do I have the expertise or the credibility to be taken seriously when it comes to people’s health?’ And really, I think that that’s quite a legitimate concern, but it needn’t be a blocker.”
Mr Lippiatt noted the research MetLife conducted a few years ago which looked to ascertain what would make consumers who had a financial adviser most likely to refer them to. The study found that the common answer for respondents was the frequency of the review cycle and that those who had a review in the last 6 months with their adviser was four times more likely to refer them.
He said this is where incorporating health comes in.
“… when you start to broaden out your conversation or the breadth of the conversation to incorporate people’s health, you’ve got this valid reason, if you will, to be back in front of your client much, much more frequently than perhaps you otherwise would if you didn’t have it as part of your offering,” Mr Lippiatt explained.
“So this is where I see the opportunity. And so I guess that’s where if you’re wanting to find a reason to incorporate this as part of your proposition to customers or your clients, that for me would be one of the standout reasons.”
Listen to the full podcast with Mr Lippiatt here.
ASIC have stated the only thing that counts when dealing with client’s is if it ends up with an SOA or an ROA and they even ran a Royal Commission to highlight this fact. In addition why would I add Health or other services when realistically my mental health has been destroyed by a stupid decision I made 2 decades ago to become a financial planner.
How about the insurance advice industry focus on what they do best rather than ‘broadening our service offering’ into health advice. Leave that to the heath professionals and perhaps we focus on getting our own house in order to become more efficient at advising and servicing people that are crying out for insurance advice? Ridiculous
And the above calculations do not include the cost of licence, PI insurance, software, ASIC levy, etc, etc
Online longevity planning is the simplest way to bring health into the financial advice process, with the added bonus of having a personal time frame for the advice and relationship building time conversations that are easily understood.
Imagine doing a full review (SOA, maybe ROA) for clients $1500 policy, which you get $300 commission. Assuming it would take 10 hours (meeting with client, fact finding, research, SOA, alterations to policy etc), you would be looking at working for less than $30 per hour. Obviously this isn’t commercial. Now we should be pseudo-doctors and nutritionists?
Charge a fee you say? Do you think a client would pay $1,500-$2k (or more) for a review of their $1,500pa policy?
While ASIC (narrow-mindedly, in my opinion) consider the only service delivery of any value to be the annual review, Advisers risk distracting themselves from the only thing that stops a refund to the client of the annual ASF.
ASIC are front and square to blame for this ridiculously narrow definition of service delivery, and it is further evidence (as if it was needed) that they do not understand the relationships that Advisers and Clients have, or what Clients value.
To service my clients twice yearly, I would need to be working 25 hours per day!
Then you either have too many clients or not enough staff. Alternatively you need to segment the client base better and rejig the fees to reflect annual and 6 monthly reviews.
Well Jenny, perhaps an alternative model would be that which I believe is being operated by some product providers – charge members a fee for advice and then only provide advice when a member wants to contribute more FUM, switch investment options (make sure the member does not leave???) etc.
So, reduce the number of clients you are able to service – I would be reasonable confident there is a product provider who is willing and able to provide any client you cant with advice and a product – but I could be wrong.
“help it’s growth”??? yeah nah, try the fact that I am just focussed on trying to survive
I don’t have the time.