The New Advisor for Life
Book

The New Advisor for Life

Become the Indispensable Financial Advisor to Affluent Families

Stephen D. Gresham
Wiley, 2011
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Predicting the future is difficult, especially for financial professionals who are well paid to try to ordain the future while providing guidance to nervous, wealthy investors. Given the wealth destroyed in the 2008 recession, do financial professionals – especially wealth advisers – have more or better answers today than they did before the recession? While thorough and pleasant, this book does not present radically new advisory models, nor is it as critical as it might be of outmoded approaches in the financial advisory profession. Because it treads familiar ground, experienced practitioners may find mostly a refresher in terms of added value here. getAbstract recommends this primarily to new advisers, including career changers, and to clients seeking insight into how their counselors see their work and portfolios.

Summary

Become an Empathetic Adviser

Financial professionals accustomed to advising baby boomers face a new challenge when providing advice to the 125 million people in generations X and Y. Advisers today need new counseling and sales approaches for these more conservative investors, who tend to distrust government, corporate America as well as the media. In contrast to boomers, generation X and Y investors expect their retirement incomes to come primarily from investments, not Social Security.

To serve clients’ long-term interests, advisers must discover their “needs, concerns, dreams, fears, risks and goals.” This will enable you to develop empathy for your clients’ situations. Successful advisers stay informed about their clients; are available to them; show their concern about events that affect their lives; and offer specific, relevant direction and guidance.

Put yourself in your clients’ position. What would you do if your income fell by 50% – which many boomer retirees experienced in the wake of the 2007-2008 recession? Dwindling fortunes shape clients’ tolerance for risk. Some 89% of millionaires report that they are “very concerned” about seeing their fortunes...

About the Author

Stephen D. Gresham, a visiting instructor at the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University and business chair of Brown’s Retirement Readiness Project, is also the author of Advisor for Life and The New Managed Account Solutions Handbook.

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