How does your schedule stack up against a typical advisor?

The term financial advisor doesn’t really come close to describing the wide – and expanding – range of tasks that those who hold that title do.

Client meetings, investment management, financial planning, business development, administrative work, and more are packed into an advisors’ working week, but how much time is given to each?

For the typical advisor, client meetings takes the largest share of time (22%) according to a new report from FUSE Research Network, followed by client service (18%), and investment management (15%).

Core financial planning – everything from budgeting to retirement planning and basic tax risk management - takes up 9% while specialized financial planning including estate/legacy planning, charitable giving, and advanced tax planning takes up another 4%.

But how do these tasks fit into advisors’ own perceptions of their value proposition?

Advisors who took part in the research said that 46% of their value proposition comes from their financial planning services (31% of this is core, 15% specialized) while investment management makes up 36%, which is far higher than the time spent on this by the typical advisor.  

“The role of the financial advisor is increasingly that of planner and financial coach, with investment management being a part of that larger package. This is good for advisors, as client service and financial planning are areas where the advisor has more control over the outcome than financial markets,” said Loren Fox, Director of Research at FUSE Research Network.

INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT

The time spent on investment management (15%) varies by type of firm, with advisors at RIAs spending 19% and those at independent broker-dealers spending 14%. But an average of 25% of client assets are outsourced to third-party or home office models, TAMPs, outsourced chief investment officer services, or other investment solutions.

“It’s significant that advisors perceive investment management to be responsible for more than one third of their value proposition, yet they only spend 15% of their time focused on it,” said FUSE Research’s Fox. “To deliver the investment expertise that clients expect while freeing up time for other services such as planning and coaching, advisors increasingly outsource some or all of their investment management.”

Separate FUSE research has found that more than half of advisors used model portfolios built by in-house teams or third parties.