Advisors know the value of having a holistic view into client assets, and almost 80% of their clients agree. Sometimes it’s in the best interests of those clients to have their advisor manage the entirety of their assets, and sometimes those assets should be left alone, but either way — a conversation about outside assets is always worth it.
When you can pull in outside assets easily, you can promise comprehensive planning and really mean it.
Nitrogen makes it simple to find those held-away assets and build them into the advice you give clients. When you demonstrate that additional value, you may even get a chance to manage them.
Here’s how it’s done.
See the Big Picture with Retirement Maps
Planning is all about taking the long view, and Retirement Maps is purpose-built to give your clients a simple, visual way to see if they’re on track to making their goals a reality or not.
It’s a lot like a stoplight—if the Retirement Map is in the green, the plan (and your client’s risk capacity) is good to go.
If the plan doesn’t quite look like it’s on target, and your client needs to boost their probability of success, then Retirement Maps can offer helpful suggestions for how to improve the odds.
One common suggestion might be to increase the amount invested—and lots of times, that question can remind a client about an abandoned 401(k) from a previous job that they never rolled over.
It’s that simple. Now you’ve added value in the conversation by offering them advice to make their existing money work smarter, and you may even get the opportunity to advise on that money movement.
Discuss Personal Details with Risk Assessments
You know and love the Risk Number® because it makes conversations about risk easy to start and simple to quantify. But conversations about a client’s Risk Number will only be informative if the data you’re basing that information on is complete.
Here’s the beauty about risk tolerance: it can only be accurately measured with assessments that use real dollar amounts that are relevant to that investor. Your client can’t just find their own Risk Number by playing around with Warren Buffet’s money. Our risk assessment methodology was built upon a Nobel Prize-winning framework and then validated by third party academics — and clients want to do it the right way. That’s why though a screen that prompts them to enter a dollar amount may look simple, it’s a powerful way to host a conversation about the entirety of a client’s investable assets. If their total investable amount figure looks different than the sum of their accounts, you’ve got something to talk about.
Start Conversations with Portfolio Analytics
Some clients are analytical in nature and love to talk about statistics, and it’s important for them to be educated about their portfolio and the work you’re doing to help them reach their goals.
When you use Detailed Portfolio Stats, you’ve got a perfect opportunity to catch them on their account performance, diversification, and exposure—in a way that’s intuitive and visual.
You also have the perfect opportunity to show them how all their accounts feed into their portfolio-level analysis—and use that to probe a little deeper to make sure you’re including all the accounts they want to see in their complete analysis.
Make It All About the Client
Even if you don’t end up managing the outside accounts you find, it’s important to know about each of them if you’re offering comprehensive planning as a core service.
Not only is it good for you to be able to deliver the best advice possible, it’s also a process that puts the best interest of your clients first.
Financial advice professionals are in a tremendous place to succeed with consumers as changes in the economy have more people looking for financial guidance, and comprehensive, risk-based planning can be the key to opening up current and future client relationships.
If you use Nitrogen Elite, you can pull up Outside Asset Sync to have clients enter their login credentials for thousands of supported financial institutions.
In a matter of minutes, their holdings will sync to Nitrogen and you can get back to doing what you do best—offering personal and relevant advice.
Want to get a closer look at Nitrogen? Click here to watch a product tour.
