Key message
- The expert leading this session highlighted the key challenges around productivity particularly as firms grow their advisor numbers. The negative press coverage and the fact that advisors had benefited from a long number of years of positive investment performance; given we haven’t seen a bear market of 30% return for nearly 19 years.
- It was suggested firms look to future proofing and growing revenues based on things such as revenue segmentation.
- Overall in this roundtable we covered- Improved segmentation, identifying revenue generating activities, fee levels relevant to business costs, the proposition for clients and improving efficiency overall.
- Agreement segmentation and moving clients to different proposition when they did not align to segmentation target is happening and it is important to improve productivity and revenues.
- Likewise, referrals are important to get advisers to attract new clients to support this target segmentation.
- Understanding clearly who the key clients were and which were the most important to the business owners is critical. Eg. Top 30 client drive 75% of revenue.
- Also highlighted was the importance of understanding the costs within business and especially activity based costing where possible.
- These days firms do not do enough marketing to drive awareness and attract the right clients.
- It’s also about motivating advisers to know the importance of this and encourage them to help drive the business forward.
- It was acknowledged that is harder to motivate older advisers who are looking to their own retirement; But it was reminding them they have a key role in helping to mentor younger advisers and help drive revenues that way.
- Having metrics was important but also for firms to have SMCR and staff champions to bring different perspectives to the topics within the firm.
- Finally, only way to really drive culture and activity was to establish clear and measurable advisers’ KPIs linked to salary and bonus.
Expert: Nick French, Marlborough Fund Managers
Facilitator: Rod Bryson, Capgemini
