Enhancing the client experience drives operational growth

In the fast-paced world of wealth management, RIAs are constantly seeking ways to streamline their operations and maximize their time with clients.

RIA firms especially, like all other businesses, need to operate efficiently. Failure to do so can seriously impact your growth, sustaining a healthy bottom line, as well as that all important work-life balance.

With a little bit of planning and luck, firms can increase their bottom line. Alison Murray Burkett, executive vice president and senior partner at Snowden Lane Partners, asserts that the biggest thing advisors can do for their firm is “identify where they’re spending the most time and where they feel the highest value they have to their clients,” she says.

“Identifying and walking through your day to day and understanding what your value add is and where you're spending your time, because most often, they don't overlap at all,” she explains. “Most often, financial advisors will understand the value they bring to their clients when they spend their time with them or build the business.”

Burkett will be a featured panelist on this topic at the RIA Activate California event in November. Click here to register.

Through practice management and technology, Snowden Lane is putting put time back into their advisors’ pockets, Burkett says, which can be key drivers for a firm’s operational transformation.

“The client experience drives so much of what we focus in on in, whether it's scalability, putting time back into the advisor's day, or enhancing that client experience,” she explains. “One of the key components for us is, how do you create greater and more efficient touch points with your clients?”

Michael Robinson, a business development consultant at Synchronize, by Lockton Affinity, an affiliate of Lockton Companies, attests that RIAs “can’t afford” to miss any opportunities when it comes to their client offering.

Robinson, who will also be a panelist at the event, emphasizes the importance of being a "one-stop shop" for clients, similar to a "Super Target" or "Super Walmart" that offers everything under one roof.

“The RIAs today want to become a super Walmart for their clients,” says Robinson. “It’s been known through Limra and other organizations that if you have four to five revenue streams with things that you're doing for your clients, they're going to stay with you.”

Burkett believes in marrying the art with the science, acknowledging that advisors are a key component of the client experience.

“There's no way to ever fully replace the unique relationship and that driver of the human side of wealth management,” Burkett says. “That's what's so incredible about our business with technology, it's not possible. How can you give your advisors the greatest tools to enhance the client experience? It’s going to be enhancing the digital client experience.”

This client-centric mindset has led Snowden Lane to invest heavily in enhancing its digital client experience, including performance reporting and client portals.

“What that means is a more educated client coming into their annual meetings with their advisors and a client that can actively go and access the portal for quick questions," she explains.

Despite the “plethora of tools” or technologies that can help with practice management or organic growth, Burkett asserts the greatest tool that an advisor and their team can have is organization,

“Without that, you're not going to leverage the technologies or leverage your resources appropriately.”

For more information on RIA Activate California and to register, click here.