“A second reason why science cannot replace judgment is the behavior of financial markets.” – Martin Feldstein.
This statement sums up the everyday roles and responsibilities of a financial advisor quite well. Each day, they help people and companies survey their financial situations and give them helpful industry techniques on how to best save, invest, and utilize the money.
Of course, there is no such thing as a “typical” day for a financial advisor. Each day is different, and there are many types of financial advisors. There are wirehouse financial advisors, regionals, and super regionals, insurance firm advisors, bank financial advisors, and many others.
Financial advisors also have to wear many hats to do their jobs effectively – they have to be a teacher of their clients, architect of long-term financial plans, navigator of different financial markets, and technician of the products that can support a client’s wealth planning.
With all these duties and obligations, it is only imperative that a budding financial advisor must have the necessary knowledge not only in the area of finance in which they practice, but also in the areas of customer service, sales, and business development.
What Does a Financial Advisor Do in a Day?
Just like other professionals, financial advisors’ average workday starts early in the morning and runs into the evening, depending on the level of their career. Their daily schedule typically includes the following tasks:
1. Prospecting – This task varies greatly upon the circumstances of the advisor. A novice financial advisor often spends at least half of every day getting new clients either by developing their referral network or meeting prospects in person. More seasoned advisors, on the other hand, may focus on sponsoring corporate events to generate leads.
2. Servicing Existing Clients – Financial advisors who already have a significant client base will begin their day by reviewing client portfolios, answering inquiries, and addressing issues before focusing on newly-won clients. Many established advisors support this approach as a more effective way to generate new business. According to a study, financial advisors who spend more time on managing clients add 14 new clients per year compared to just four clients per year for those who don’t.
3. Administrative Tasks – Can include “mundane” recordkeeping tasks such as creating compliance reports, updating client records, managing archived client communications, and processing trade tickets. According to Ameritrade Institutional, advisors spend 41% of their time on administrative tasks and office management, and only 59% of their time on client-facing Such strain is what often pulls many financial advisors away from growing their business and strengthening the relationship with their existing clients.
4. Financial Planning – This is the task where the advisor delivers the core goods and services they ought to provide to their clientele. Areas of financial planning can include everything from making short-term gains through slight market fluctuations to long-term strategies for retirement savings.
5. Continuing Education – Occasionally, financial advisors are out of the office attending week-long seminars covering specialized topics, or undergoing training to continually hone their skills necessary to provide excellent service to their clients.
6. Ensuring Compliance – The last, but one of the most important and challenging daily tasks of a financial advisor is ensuring that all their actions and recommendations are in line with various financial regulations such as FINRA, SEC, Dodd-Frank, MiFID, etc. Such actions that require compliance is the communication with clients, especially via electronic channels such as text messaging.
To lessen this burden, many financial advisors use a secure enterprise text messaging app and mobile archiving platforms to ensure their compliance with various recordkeeping and data privacy regulations, all without compromising their work productivity.
Client Management and Technology: Why Advisors Should Take Advantage of New Mobile Tools
As stated earlier, client management is the most important element of a client’s day-to-day job as it helps them win new clients for their company. However, many financial advisors are still not able to shift their focus to this specific task as administrative chores are already taking so much of their time.
If this is the scenario in your organization, and you fail to give your existing and prospective clients the service they expect, the value of your firm may be at risk. If your advisors’ typical day is significantly dominated by tedious, mundane work and processes, then they are losing time which they could spend interacting with and adding value to your present clients.
Financial advisors could streamline their daily routine, allowing them to spend more time with clients and prospects if they have access to new mobile tools, such as TeleMessage’s secure enterprise messaging system. TeleMessage can be deployed across multiple platforms and can enable advisors to quickly and compliantly send text messages, chats, email, and make voice calls with their clients. Using this platform, financial advisors can also schedule meetings with co-workers and pre-schedule text messages about client reviews automatically.
TeleMessage can also be installed on BYOD or corporate-owned devices, and most importantly, have an archiving feature that allow the firm to capture and retain employee text messages that are trade-related. When implemented properly, a secure enterprise messaging platform enables financial advisors to interact better more with their clients, all without breaching internal and industry recordkeeping regulations such as FINRA, SOX, and SEC.
TeleMessage can help you meet various compliance mandates for managing electronic records, and ultimately improve the productivity of your financial advisors through our Secure Enterprise Messaging Platform and Mobile Archiving solutions. Contact us today to learn more.
