Like old cassette tape players, newspaper subscriptions and telephone landlines, the regular in-person client meeting is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Advisors say many clients are too busy and too dispersed to come into the office regularly. That fact, together with technology that makes it easy to communicate remotely, is making the traditional quarterly update meeting a rarity.

That’s not to say some clients no longer come in for regular reviews. Some do, especially older clients who have grown up with the practice. And advisors say meeting in the flesh with new clients is invaluable.

But for many clients, it’s just not practical or necessary anymore to come into their advisors’ offices for updates.

“Meeting in person almost seems pedestrian,” said Brian Kasal, chief executive of FourStar Wealth Advisors LLC in Chicago.

“People come into my office hardly at all,” Kasal said. “But we talk all the time on the phone.” About 40 percent of his clients live outside of the Chicago area, and Kasal travels to meet with many of them.

“Even with clients where we have great relationships, they don’t necessarily  want to come in for reviews as much as they used to,” said Brad Dillon, founder of Dillon Wealth Management in Vincennes, Ind.

Dillon last year asked his client advisory group about the need for meetings. The conclusion was that in-person appointments were no longer so important.

“They felt communication is much better” with modern technology, Dillon said.

Like other advisors, Robert Kargenian, founder of TABR Capital Management LLC in Orange, Calif., regularly travels to meet clients—especially new clients. Some have never been to TABR’s office.

“For a couple in South [Orange] County [California] who both work--it’s hard for them to get out of their offices and come up here,” Kargenian said. “They’re probably looking at three hours” total time for a meeting and travel in traffic-clogged Southern California.

For his high-end clients who receive family-office services, Jay Healy likes to schedule in-person meetings twice a year with all the family members to review planning and portfolio issues.

But smaller clients don’t always need a meeting, said Healy, president of
Century Wealth Management LLC in Memphis, Tenn. “Some like to come in once a year for a formal update, but if we do a good job, we probably touch them 20 times a year” with regular contacts. “They feel like they’ve been well communicated with, even without a formal sit-down.”

Dick Power, a principal at Power Plans in Walpole, Mass., also has fewer client meetings than in past years.

And that’s OK because Power feels that using remote-meeting technology, like GoToMeeting, actually improves communication to some degree.

“We can see each other but [clients] focus on my computer screen” with fewer distractions than in-person meetings, he said.

Plus, remote meetings save time. An in-office annual review meeting takes at least one-and-a-half hours, Power said, but doing it online takes 30 to 40 minutes because clients are more focused “and less chatty.”

Cutting meeting time could have a big impact on efficiency. Advisors spend 25 percent of their time in meetings with current clients, and 15 percent in new-client acquisition, according to Cerulli Associate’s Advisor Metrics 2014 report.
 
But some worry that client relationships can be weakened without in-person contact.

“We may be in danger of losing the impact of face-to-face meetings,” said David  Lawrence, a consultant and founder of EfficientPractice.com, who is nevertheless a big advocate of using communications technology.

Too much reliance on online contacts, lockboxes to deliver documents and other tools to cut back on in-person meetings can weaken relationships, Lawrence said.

“Out of sight out of mind,” said Kargenian about the risk from too few in-person contacts. “We prefer to [meet] in person, but we can’t always have them come in.”

Remote communications “shouldn’t replace face-to-face relationship building, but should enhance it,” Dillon said.

Power isn’t worried about losing clients he doesn’t see in person since those relationships are well-established.

Still, “my strong preference is to start with a face-to-face” contact, Power said. “It’s tough to develop the same kind of relationship via electronic means, but I have clients who much prefer that.”