Voya Financial President Tom Halloran loves it when a plan comes together—but he likes it even better when it’s ongoing.

Voya, based in New York, is forming an “A-Team” for financial advice with hopes of helping representatives forge closer relationships with their clients through the firm’s Advanced Planning program, designed to help advisors deliver more meaningful plans to their clients and driven by a services team that can dedicate technology and other resources.

Halloran was concerned that broker-dealer representatives weren’t forming long-term, ongoing relationships with their clients.

“My view, based on experience, is that comprehensive planning is not a onetime event but an ongoing dialogue between advisor and client,” Halloran says. “I want that experience to be pedestrian for all our clients at the firm, and that’s why the team is being built.”

Ongoing planning moves representatives’ focus from a service based on product sales to one focused on client relationships. Halloran says the move was also motivated by demand from representatives and end clients for an ongoing planning experience.

Instead of creating a plan with automation designed around rebalancing portfolios or adjusting to market conditions, Voya’s plans now have regular client checkups built in, says Halloran, like visits to a dental hygienist.

“Every client interaction and meeting should have new info, some suggestions and some discussion about what’s new, and it should always be deeper than the call before,” Halloran says. “At the end of the day that’s how we’ll succeed, through deeper relationships and more knowledge on our clients, it will lead to better outcomes for all involved.”

The services team creates a structured process for advisors to follow as they plan with a focus on defining and quantifying the value of the advisor’s role.

“It’s about the experience versus providing an output,” says Michael Berry, a CFP on Voya’s Advanced Planning team. “We’re focused on how to create the continuous experience that’s adapting their plan daily through integrated technology.”

In a three-step process, the advisor first integrates client accounts to get a picture of a client’s financial health. Then, through a series of meetings, advisors and representatives work with clients to put together a comprehensive plan.

“We have nine checkpoints in a comprehensive plan,” Berry says. “It doesn’t make sense to go through everything in one meeting, so we break them up into meaningful pieces. In a series of conversations, the advisor and client set priorities. The advisor presents options to the clients, and then the clients chart their course. Then they begin implementation. The team helps walk the client through as an extension to the advisor’s office.”

The Advanced Planning team uses a web portal to help move clients through these steps.

In recent years, Berry says his team has fielded high-level questions surrounding trusts, health care and Social Security planning. The Advanced Planning program formalizes his team as a resource for advisors and representatives.

“We have a lot of offices with one or two people in them,” Halloran says. “They’re spread all over the country. They suggested they wanted to grow, but they were spending so much time meeting clients that they weren’t sure if they should add an advisor or an assistant to grow. By making Mike’s team available, we were able to instantly give scale to some of these smaller practices.”

The program is designed to complement the firm’s “white glove” service offering, which was launched in 2015 to assist advisors in streamlining their practices and adopting relationship-based business models.

Halloran says that Voya is responding to research that shows that end clients who work with an advisor take more steps to plan for their retirement.

“If you look at reps or advisors in particular, the best will do financial planning and build a stronger relationship with clients than others do,” Halloran says. “These advisors uncover assets hidden away. They uncover opportunities in the form of gaps in coverage or needs that aren’t being met.”

Those gaps might be filled by Voya’s products, Halloran notes.

“These plans hold together, are unique to the client, and deliver a better value proposition than a one-and-done plan,” Halloran says.