Taking relationships to a deeper level: Why authenticity matters

The RIA industry has been through immense growth and change in recent years, with new RIAs forming regularly and many established RIAs drawn to larger entities to gain scale. Consolidation is happening and will continue for some time, with advisors considering a range of duelling business models based on their operational preferences, cultural needs and long-term objectives.

However, as our industry matures, the focus is starting to shift from “who’s going where and why” to what really matters: How the advisor/client relationship itself can, and should, evolve.

At its best, wealth management is as much about tending to clients’ emotional, physical and overall balance and well-being as it is about their investment portfolios, and it is becoming more so as demographics shift.

Given this fast-changing landscape, advisors need to look beyond the portfolio to become active participants in their clients’ overall well-being. How we support advisors in that effort will determine not only the future of our businesses, but also how clients navigate their lives and their families’ futures.

Getting real

For advisors, being a trusted confidante means having the emotional focus, tools, and time to serve clients through all of life’s ups and downs. Advisors won’t come across this type of empathy training studying for their professional certifications: It comes from being part of a culture that nurtures and promotes authenticity, inclusivity, and purpose.

At our recent Advisor Summit in Nashville, we added an important agenda item to help our advisors understand exactly what this means, and how to develop it. Keshia Hannam of Dear World, which helps organisations build cultures of authenticity and meaning, led Hightower advisors in a personal exploration where they were asked to identify a significant moment in their lives and write it down, first in a few sentences, and then crystallised into a few words and documented in a portrait.

By encouraging advisors to dig deep to find meaning in a pivotal moment or life-changing event, the session inspired them get in touch with an essential truth about themselves.

The Dear World exercise included writing participants’ truth on their bodies – a “brain tattoo” – to preserve their stories

Why did we conduct this exercise? It’s about personal storytelling, which is a foundational part of gaining a sense of self, finding peace and satisfaction. We believe working with advisors on how to achieve this will empower them to help clients tell their own stories. By tapping into their own joy and vulnerabilities, advisors can better support clients with whatever life has in store for them.

Another way we’re fostering intimacy in our client relationships is to think carefully about interpersonal interactions. We’re providing our team with intensive training on connecting with and serving clients in creative ways that most businesses can’t imagine, much less implement.

As wealth management becomes more impersonal, we believe that this focus on humanness will set advisors apart and allow them to deepen and extend their relationships.

Resources close at hand

To become one of the most important support resources in a client’s life, from a practical standpoint, advisors must become the focal point for guidance on all things wealth related. They need to become a sounding board that can help their clients handle all matters, not simply preparing for retirement.

Clients with complex needs generally do not want to juggle multiple providers – for instance, their advisory firm, trust company, estate planning attorney, tax specialist, business manager or corporate advisor. Having easy-to-access services in house makes clients’ lives less complicated and keeps them close.

To address this growing trend, earlier this year Hightower announced the launch of the Hightower National Trust Company, a new resource for advisors and their clients. In the last year, we’ve also taken steps to invest in, and partner with, a high-profile Los Angeles-based business management firm for personal CFO services and an estate, tax, philanthropic and legacy planning firm.

For business-owner clients who are preparing to undertake a merger, acquisition, sale or capital raise, we have a range of valuation and banking resources through our Business Owner Succession Services (BOSS).

Affluent clients want the comfort of knowing that they, their children and grandchildren will always have access to sophisticated services and counsel from professionals who know them intimately and understand their entire financial picture.

Like many things, wealth management is becoming commoditised, in great part because investment management and other core services have become so streamlined.

The higher calling in the advisory profession is about so much more than finances, it’s about the totality of a client’s life planning and management.

Listening to clients to learn their stories and showing them that we understand them in an open, honest and multifaceted way is what will set us apart as wealth management professionals. In a world that has become increasingly more automated—with algorithms trying to anticipate our needs and desires—this is a refreshing concept indeed.

Find out more about national wealth management firm Hightower here >>

Securities offered through Hightower Securities, LLC member FINRA/SIPC. Hightower Advisors, LLC is a SEC registered investment advisor.