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For just about any practitioner to lose 56% of their clients in a year would be a disaster. It is enough to jeopardise a practice entirely of course, but even in a best case scenario it will hurt horribly, and for quite a long time.
It is a very real possibility too, especially if you are dealing at the top end of the market, because there is one area where they have a rapidly shifting expectation. The high net worth or affluent who are most discerning and who have the most options are ready to walk away if expectations are not met, and their expectations in digital engagement are very high.
The 56% I am referring to is the result of some research done by Capgemini and summarised in their World Wealth Report 2016. While the report is itself a wealth of useful information for practitioners there were 2 numbers which kept standing out: 56%, and 100% .
The first (56%) was the proportion of clients who say they will leave their wealth management adviser/firm if they become digitally dissatisfied.
The second is a more alarming number: 100% of those who say they will leave do actually leave.
For those practitioners who may be reading thus far and who are not in the wealth management space…hang in there, because I believe this applies to your clients just as much as any financial planners’. The thing we should remember about the High Net Worth clients who are far more likely to engage a holistic planner on a pure fee basis is that they are the “early adopters”. They are the leading edge that the rest of consumer-land seeks to emulate and follow. More often than not what we see the affluent clients do becomes the very behaviour that most other clients who are not quite so well off end up doing in time too.
So we should be worried, regardless of our advice discipline or current business model about ensuring that our clients do not become "digitally dissatisfied" .
What is “digitally dissatisfied” though? It is the client-driven demand for technology to add speed and convenience to their professional relationships. It is more than a nice facebook page. It is state of the art (fast!) equipment and software that enables them to access information, you, your firm and anything else which is part of the service package. Fast, convenient, able to be accessed from multiple portable devices on their part….and secure.
Fail to deliver in any of these areas and those high end consumers today become “digitally dissatisfied”. And 56% of them said if that happened they would leave their advisory firm. 100% of those who said they would, have done so.
This can happen to any practitioner too in the next couple of years, even if wealth management services to the High Net Worth are not the target market. Think of this segment of the consumers who seek professional advice as a “leading indicator” of future consumer preferences. They will be followed by others who don’t have the same wealth, but who do have the same lifestyle, net worth and service expectations.
These people expect professional practices to be connected and savvy users of technology. That means things move at light speed, and our service or advice is constantly accessible via whatever equipment and whatever platform is leading edge.
Be warned: Digital Dissatisfaction on the part of your target market or existing clients could be disastrous.