Many financial advisors would be more than willing to serve clients with smaller account balances, but unfortunately, it's often not possible for them to do so, because running a business is so costly.
But at a time when the advisor-client relationship is so important, and there's such a large number of clients with smaller balances who also need financial planning advice from professionals that they can trust, advisors must be able to reach out to those clients, says Dean Cook, president of FTJ FundChoice, and develop relationships with them.
FTJ FundChoice specializes in helping advisors service the "99%" by making these smaller, non-high-net-worth accounts profitable. The company handles all back-office work for advisors such as performance reporting, monthly fee billing, trade reconciliation and more, so that advisors can focus on growing their businesses and better servicing their clients. FTJ offers a platform with more than 1,700 investment products for advisors who like to run their own portfolio models, and access to top-notch third-party institutional asset managers for those who prefer to outsource portfolio allocation decisions.
By leveraging infrastructure and technology, FTJ provides a cost-efficient way of handling these accounts, which encourages advisors to take in the business that they would normally turn down.
"It's very hard to build your business around smaller size accounts, there's no denying that, and so many advisors have to turn away clients with smaller account balances even if they want to work with them, they don't have efficient means to do so," says Cook. "It's one thing to have upfront meetings with clients, but then advisors have to manage the assets, the billing, the performance reporting, etc., and it all adds up."