Fidelity Custody and Clearing announced Tuesday two programs designed to help its advisors with their video creation and production, with the promise of attracting new clients by posting the videos on their own websites or those of a new Fidelity partner, GuideVine.
David Canter, executive vice president of practice management and consulting, said the programs grew out of 2014 Fidelity surveys that found that 58% of emerging affluent investors hold a "significantly more positive impression" of advisors with good websites. Those surveys also found that emerging investors are nearly twice as likely as millionaires to find a new financial advisor through Internet research and more likely than millionaires to find a new advisor through social media. (Fidelity defines emerging affluent investors as being age 21 to 49, with investable assets of between $50,000 and $250,000 and annual income of $100,000 and up.)
Canter said Fidelity believes that advisors "need to engage differently than they have in the past," particularly if they want to attract the emerging affluent, "the millionaires of tomorrow." Canter said those younger investors "don't need a lot; they need a little a lot," so researching an advisor on the Web, then interacting with an advisor through video or other digital offerings that they can return to as they wish fits the bill. Moreover, Canter said that "the story behind the story" is that making a video constitutes a "fantastic practice management technique," since it requires advisors to "prepare, rehearse and refine their stories" prior to the actual shoot. Most advisors, he said, "could use help in articulating their firm's story," including why clients would want to work with them.
The alliance with GuideVine provides Fidelity advisors with discounted access to GuideVine's digital platform, a website designed for investors who are actively looking for advisors, and allows those investors to watch videos of advisors, view firm profiles and interact digitally with those advisors. Users input their zip code and their areas of interest (retirement planning or socially responsible investing, for instance) and their amount of investable assets and are presented with a choice of advisors with whom they can ask questions in their geographic area. (For more targeted search results, users can provide more information about their life stages, income and gender.)
A few test searches revealed a range of advisors geographically and business-model wise on the platform, from fee-only advisors to fairly high-risk investment managers, and useful educational material for users on why it's important to know how an advisor charges for services.
Users can also ask for help from GuideVine's own "concierge."User information is not captured, and contact with advisors or GuideVine is not made unless the user specifically requests it.
