By: Rachel Dalloo, Financial Advisor IQ, featuring Vincent Birardi, CFP®, AIF®, Wealth Advisor at Halbert Hargrove
Financial advisors are leveling up their offerings for multigenerational clients seeking tailored financial planning and other personalized services as their wealth grows.
As high-net-worth clients grow their wealth and encounter greater complexity in their lives, they are increasingly demanding more from their financial advisors.
Affluent clients are typically looking for more than basic financial planning, often needing assistance with estate and tax planning, for instance. Wealth management firms are rolling out new platforms and partnerships to ensure that their advisors can offer tailored services and products to meet those needs, but these clients are also likely to expect intangibles, such as to feel heard by their advisor regarding every concern or a “personal” touch in the advice and services they’re receiving, advisors and industry consultants say.
Roughly 35% of high-net-worth individuals said that they started a relationship with a financial advisor because they were in search of specific services or an enhanced client experience being offered, according to a 2023 Cerulli Associates study.
High-net-worth investors are individuals who have at least $5 million, and as much as $25 million, in investable assets, per the study.
“[Clients] want to go to [an advisor] who understands their needs, listens very closely to them, and comes up with personalized and customized solutions to make [financial planning] easy,” said Terri Kallsen, managing partner and senior operating advisor at Rise Growth Partners.
Although affluent clients already tend to have a “holistic” perspective of their life, Kallsen said that advisors must understand that these clients are looking for risk management techniques that will allow them to “optimize the upside but manage the downside” of their wealth — and for generations beyond their own.
There are also high-net-worth clients with exceptions or complications that might call for a more tailored approach to their financial planning, such as divorcees, athletes, doctors or young investors who are starting to gain more control over assets that have been passed down through previous generations.
Advisors need to provide “truly integrated” financial planning across multiple areas of their clients’ financial lives, said Vincent Birardi, wealth advisor at Long Beach, California–based Halbert Hargrove.
“Include them in your client conversations,” said Birardi.
“Make it a primary focus to communicate and instill good general financial planning habits and have a very clear and actionable set of objectives for [your clients].”
Birardi added that advisors need to help clients formulate a set of cohesive strategies for utilizing and preserving their assets moving forward.
Halbert Hargrove oversaw more than billion in assets under management for a total of 4,434 accounts as of March 25, according to its latest Form ADV.
