Mass affluent are waiting for your text: Fidelity

Financial advisers are bumping into one another trying to win new accounts among affluent investors, but they can add some profitable business from less obvious market segments — one of which is investors who have never had a financial adviser. That means younger, less wealthy investors — the mass affluent — who typically are ignored by most advisers who prefer to deal with bigger fish. Such investors are less likely to use a financial adviser, according to a study Fidelity Investments released recently. But mass-affluent investors, those with between $100,000 and $999,999 to invest, can be profitable for an adviser that caters to that generally younger group's love of high-technology, low-touch business relationships, according to the study. For this group, “saving time is important to them, and finding ways to provide efficiency is a win-win,” Gail Graham, an executive vice president of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, said in an interview. “The trend I see coming on the horizon are more tools so advisers can collaborate on ideas in building a financial plan with their clients and share information back and forth online.” According to Fidelity's study, 24% of these mass-affluent households do not currently work with a broker or adviser but would consider it. The main things holding them back are a dislike of fees, a lack of trust of brokers and advisers, and a desire for more control over their money, and technology can help address all those issues, Ms. Graham said. And if advisers are looking for that proverbial eccentric millionaire who has never used an adviser, he might want to stop looking, according to the study. There are 6 million unadvised investor households with less than $1 million in investible assets: six times as many as unadvised investors with more than $1 million to invest.