Mastering technology to serve more clients

Advisers are retiring in droves. Between the pending retirements of Gen Xers and the Baby Boomers’ need for retirement income strategies and estate planning, firms are already stretched thin, and there simply will not be enough advisers to meet the needs of consumers in the future.

Many universities, companies and organizations are feverishly working to train more people for careers in financial planning and wealth management. But based upon the hiring challenges that most firms face, and a lack of desire among recent college graduates to enter our profession, adding a smattering of new professionals will not be enough.

That means you will need to serve more clients.

But that doesn't have to mean an across-the-board increase in workload. There are a couple of ways that advisers can manage more clients without working 60-hour weeks. While one is to simply add additional support staff, the real leverage will come from the integration and mastery of technology.

Most of the people who hire financial advisers do so because they want someone, and perhaps a team, to manage their finances well, communicate when necessary and, most importantly, protect them from making life-altering financial mistakes. They want to know that their adviser is working on their behalf, will manage their finances appropriately and will communicate when something important needs to be said.

Technology has made basic client communications much more efficient. For example, the art of keeping relationships warm with a short text or email is already the norm, and soon you'll be able to utilize AI to simultaneously send 100 emails to clients that will all have the personalization of having been written individually.

Other communications, such as scheduling appointments or confirming meetings, are already much more efficient (and often preferred) when managing calendars.

There is understandably so much buzz and curiosity about AI, and hundreds of companies are working diligently to provide breakthrough business solutions. The real productivity increase will come soon when these landscape-changing tools are readily available for advisers to employ.

Let’s talk portfolio management. Technology has made tremendous strides the past couple of decades in managing client portfolios, but it feels a little as though we’re only just now shifting into a higher gear.

There are tools available that will build the most efficient portfolios for clients given risk tolerances and income needs. Tools that will trade in a tax-efficient manner. Tools that can build personalized indexed portfolios. Tools that can trade thousands of accounts in a second.

The tools necessary to build, monitor and trade portfolios now cannot only be managed with little time commitment but can be handled by someone who's a specialist in portfolio management, and this will take up virtually none of your time.

A couple of decades ago, an adviser might have reached capacity at 100 clients, but today, it’s 250 or 300.

With an adviser shortfall, the only way you will meet the needs of the market is to adapt and rely on technology to free up your time and serve more people.

Scott Hanson is co-founder of Allworth Financial, formerly Hanson McClain Advisors, a fee-based RIA with approximately $16 billion in AUM.