Failure to plan for the future is taking a toll on advisors’ business today, according to DeVoe, who reiterates that more than 60 percent of advisors do not have a succession plan.
“When I started in this industry 14 years ago, around 20 percent of advisors had succession plans,” DeVoe says. “Today, only about 30 percent have a plan. Years ago the plan for most advisors was ‘I’ll die with my boots on.’ Yet we know that if advisors are getting older, and they don’t have a succession plan or next-generation plan in place, their clients are going to be less likely to make referrals -- recall that around 44 percent of new clients are coming from those referrals.”