Use Advanced Marketing As A Resource For Upscale Planning
Today's financial services landscape is filled with companies targeting the high net worth. To reach this demographic effectively, organizations are operating as manufacturers of products and services, allowing them to partner with, as opposed to compete against, other wealth management retailers.
These firms place emphasis on the advisor as the client, and provide competitive products wrapped in various "value-added" services for both the advisor and the advisors clients. These services range from various "expected" services such as marketing materials, product education, and sales concepts, to "surprises" such as local market analyses, help in identifying and meeting new high-net-worth clients, and assistance in conducting various client programs.
Products and services from these companies are traditionally delivered through experienced wholesalers who behave like business consultants to their retail advisor partners. The wholesalers are in turn supported by teams of specialized attorneys, often grouped in advanced marketing teams.
This approach is consistently an excellent match-up of talent. The wholesaler comes to the table with technical expertise and a strong relationship with the advisor. The attorneys are experts in matters such as business and estate planning, and know the ins and outs of the tax and legal issues surrounding the use of life insurance, investments, trusts, and annuities.
The end result allows the manufacturer of high net worth products and services to equip advisors with the intellectual capital they need to serve the affluent in today's extremely competitive environment.
Traditionally, advanced marketing, teaming up with wholesalers, has actively supported advisors in their delivery of life insurance products and investment tools. Today, annuities are playing an increasingly vital role in a client's financial planning equation. The effective use of annuities in a client's overall estate plan therefore mandates advisors who can call upon their wholesaler to deliver the support of knowledgeable specialists who understand the complexities and multiple uses of the product.
Calling on Advanced Marketing. Before we address how advanced marketing, through wholesalers, can help advisors make effective use of annuities, it is important to outline in general how advanced marketing supports advisors in meeting the wealth management goals of the affluent, including: their accumulation, preservation, and transfer goals.
When addressing the accumulation needs of a client, the advanced marketing team assists on strategies, services and products that enable the advisor to invest his client's wealth soundly and prudently.
For affluent individuals, this can include offering a full range of mutual funds, managed accounts and other investment advisory services, as well as the professional experience to assist the client in making those choices.
For business owners, it may include business planning that maximizes the value of the business, and/or executive benefits planning that enables the client to structure a package from the business that fully achieves the clients financial goals.
If the financial advisor is focusing on the preservation needs of the affluent client, advanced marketing will assist in their focus on strategies, services and products that enable clients to preserve the wealth that they have accumulated. This includes protecting those assets from the burden of taxes on a decedents estate, or at least providing the liquidity needed to pay those taxes without being subjected to a forced sale of estate assets.
This also includes retirement distribution planning that protects a qualified plan or IRA from being needlessly eroded by taxes or penalties that result from failure to plan properly. The financial advisor should also address the long-term care needs of the client to determine whether those expenses, if necessary, should be covered by appropriate insurance.
