It’s no small task to roll out a training program for 4,400 financial advisors, especially to build one with a quantifiable return on investment.
But Sarah A. Vita had a vision for how both those goals could be achieved, and the numbers are irrefutable: She has trained 300 advisors in two years in her program at Equitable Advisors, where she is chief talent officer. Those advisors now manage on average 22% more in client assets than their colleagues who have not taken the training, according to internal Equitable studies.
Vita’s vision came from her own experience as a graduate of Columbia University’s Center for Coaching Excellence, she said (the center is housed at Teachers College and headed by Dr. Terrence E. Maltbia).
“It was such a fantastic program, and so applicable to this industry,” she said. “I asked if we could take their coaching credential, put it together with financial planning and make something unique.”
The result of her work is the “Holistic Financial Coach” credential, which is available to those who take a 40-hour-plus certification course with the Ivy League school. In this it’s similar to Equitable’s partnership with the Wharton School, which yielded a 50-hour course for a Certificate in Retirement Planning credential.
The Holistic Financial Coach credential instead focuses on improving advisors’ listening and coaching skills so they can build stronger relationships with their clients.
“When clients place more trust in their advisor, often that shows up in three ways: more clients overall, greater assets under management, and improved client satisfaction surveys,” Vita said. “For our graduates, we’re seeing a lift in all three.”
Vita said that by year’s end, a total of 500 Equitable advisors will have received the training, either through one of two annual in-person events held at Columbia in New York City, or through virtual programs that are rolling out regionally across the country. With the virtual option, advisors film themselves coaching a client three times throughout the program, and they receive feedback on their performance.
The program, which has a waiting list for admittance, is an immersive experience for the advisor that takes about six weeks to complete. It’s a curriculum designed to bring clarity to both the way the advisor thinks and listens and how a client thinks and reacts.
At a recent in-person, two-day workshop, participants learned about their own listening styles first, and then how to accommodate styles different from their own. Uncovering client values—and tapping into their memories about money and its meaning—round out the agenda.
At its conclusion, Vita said participants will be better able to inspire clients to change their financial behaviors in a way that puts their goals and dreams at the center of their financial lives.
Most of the training advisors get is focused on left-brain improvement (such as the training in the Wharton program). But the coaching program, Vita said, brings the right side of the brain to the table.
“Our goal with the Holistic Financial Coach program was to invest in our advisors’ emotional intelligence as much as we do their IQ,” she said. “We really believe the future of financial planning is just as much about helping people make positive changes as it is about finances.”
Mark A. Mitchell, an Equitable advisor in San Clemente, Calif., went through the program as a trainee and now teaches part of the virtual curriculum. He called the program “one of the most rewarding things that I’ve done in the 43 years that I’ve been a practitioner.”
“As an advisor, the more that I can understand why you do the things that you do, the better our relationship can be and the more effective I’m going to be in helping you accomplish the things that you want but may not be able to verbalize,” he said. “And that’s going to be more meaningful to both of us.”
Mitchell said that of the 11 team members at his firm, many of whom are fully credentialed as CFPs or chartered financial consultants, all but three have gone through the program. He encourages any advisor sitting on the fence about coaching to jump off.
“I’ve continued to grow my firm year over year by focusing on the qualitative,” he said. “The quantitative takes care of itself.”