Wealth management firms often cite time scarcity as the chief obstacle to organic growth and a new report aims to help leaders and advisors shift the dial.
Fidelity’s report argues that reassigning just five extra hours per week toward client and prospect work could generate as much as $270,000 in additional annual revenue per advisor.
Despite organic growth remaining a top priority, many firms struggle to translate intent into execution because advisors feel overwhelmed by competing demands. The report says that just 27% of advisors believe they allocate their time to high-value tasks, while only 41% of their workday is spent on client or prospect interactions.
“Protecting your time starts with defining your value,” says Tobias Donath, head of Go-To-Market and Strategy for Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management Services, “Flipping the phrase, ‘I don’t have time for that,’ to ‘That’s not a priority’ can help you be more strategic with your time and puts a new lens on defining higher-value work.”
The report recommends that firms and their leadership teams work with advisors to rethink where and how time is spent:
Administrative, compliance, and operational tasks occupy 59% of advisors’ working hours. By leaning on technology or outsourcing for repeatable chores, advisors can redirect more attention to complex client needs, especially for high-net-worth clients seeking holistic and bespoke advice.
With three-quarters of high-net-worth investors preferring to engage in financial conversations with their adult children, and half wanting advisors to facilitate those dialogues, many firms lack formal structures to support multigenerational engagement. Leaders can close that gap by making family planning part of the advisory process.
Advisors who report higher job satisfaction tend to spend more time on premium work (50% vs. 23%). Fidelity finds that firms having a written business plan enjoy 50% higher organic growth rates compared with those without one. By encouraging clear planning and helping advisors operate up the “Advice Value Stack,” leadership can embed sustainable behaviors.
In practice, this means auditing non-client burdens and reallocating them via automation or delegation; institutionalizing family engagement as a criterion in client onboarding; ensuring every advisor has a written, actionable plan tied to growth priorities; and coaching advisors to build a mindset that treats “not a priority” as a conscious decision, not a conceding of time.
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