One way to provide better retirement planning could be to work with clients who share your ideas about how retirement planning should work.
Hanna Ogle, an insurance and risk management faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, talked about the value of a good advisor-client fit in a recent email interview.
"What's important to the client?" Ogle asked. "What problem am I needing to solve for this client? It's important to know as quickly as possible when developing a relationship with a new potential client."
What It Means
In the short run, you might have to learn to love the clients you can get.
In the long run, Ogle maintains, you'll likely achieve better results if you get along with a client, share compatible values and are good at solving the kinds of problems the client wants solved.
Hanna Ogle
Ogle has a bachelor's degree from St. Edward's University, and she holds the Certified Insurance Counselor and Certified Risk Manager professional designations.
She got her start in insurance in 1997, as a service and sales agent at Southwest Insurance Center in Austin, Texas. She spent a few months as a territory sales manager for Central Texas at Progressive, then moved to Watkins Insurance Group in Austin in 2005.
Today, she's vice president of personal lines at Watkins.
She began serving as an instructor at the University of Texas Center for Professional Education in 2018. She teaches the Financial Planning Insurance and Risk Management Course for the university's Certified Financial Planner program.
She's also one of the authors of The Tools & Techniques of Insurance Planning and Risk Management, 5th Edition, a book that's part of the NU Resource Center collection.
The Compliance Backdrop
New agents and advisors may feel as if they have little choice about what clients they serve, and that helping the widest possible range of clients with their finances is a noble thing to do.
But state lawmakers, federal regulators and state regulators have given the idea of basic client segmentation a boost.
