Advisers slammed for lack of referrals

advisers/financial-planning-business/FPA/

2 October 2003
| By Craig Phillips |

Financialadvisers have been criticised for failing to recommend client businesses, with calls for advisers to make the notion of referrals a two-way affair.

Invescohead of sales and marketing Peter Hodgson, speaking at theFinancial Planning Association’s (FPA) Victorian State Conference recently, told delegates that while advisers want referrals from clients, they rarely in turn provide referrals recommending a client’s business.

“It’s interesting that advisers are very poor at giving referrals regarding a client’s business,” Hodgson says.

Hodgson says advisers are also very reluctant to ask for business from people they encounter.

“The ultimate question is to ask for the business. I have only been approached three times in 10 years,” he says.

According toPerpetualVictorian state manager Brett Mennie, his group has conducted research to understand the needs of a financial planning business and client perception of it.

The research found 80 per cent of those surveyed believed financial planning was very important.

“The client is looking at how the adviser demonstrates their expertise and their honesty. This involves telling the client about negative returns, which means the adviser becomes believable,” Mennie says.

“The client also wants reliability, which means the adviser should complete the promise and pay attention to simple things, like returning phone calls.”

The survey also found younger advisers were perceived to be more up-to-date with what was happening in the industry, while older advisers were seen to have more experience, having worked through a number of downturns. However, the fact that they would retire soon, probably before the client, was seen as a negative.

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

2 months ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

2 months 1 week ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

4 months 1 week ago

A Sydney financial adviser has been permanently banned from providing any financial services, with the regulator deriding his “lack of integrity, trustworthiness and prof...

3 weeks 3 days ago

Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, has provided further information about the second tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms....

2 weeks 1 day ago

One licensee has lost 27 advisers in the past week, now sitting at zero, according to the latest Wealth Data figures....

3 weeks 2 days ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS