Earlier this month, Erinn Ford sat down with Financial Advisor to discuss her new position as head of advisor engagement at Advisor Group. What follows below is the interview.
1. Why has Advisor Group created this new role of head of advisor engagement, and what will you be doing in this position?
I’ve always said that Advisor Group has some of the most driven and talented people in the industry. The creation of our new advisor engagement team elevates our ability to drive greater awareness and adoption of our industry-leading programs and platforms with all our financial advisors.
We’re going to increase collaboration across our existing field-facing teams, with the goal of generating enhanced growth, greater business efficiencies and a richer sense of community for our financial advisors.
For starters, not only does this mean creating an industry-leading feedback mechanism between Advisor Group’s C-suite and our 11,000 financial advisors, but we’re also going to leverage this feedback structure to help our advisors identify, adopt and integrate Advisor Group’s resources and tools within their businesses. It’s about personalized business growth solutions delivered on a scalable basis.
2. The announcement of your new role mentioned that you will be “building a business model segmentation approach” to fulfilling the needs of financial advisors. Can you elaborate on this?
Harnessing consistency and transparency to resources and community is what defines an exceptional service experience for financial advisors and their clients.
We want to mobilize the most effective resources and solutions that align with each advisor’s specific business model—whether we’re talking about a Super-OSJ looking for enhanced recruiting support, a mid-sized practice looking for effective marketing tools, or an ensemble practice looking to drive more operational efficiencies and higher margins.
3. Are there specific solutions or resources at Advisor Group that you believe are insufficiently utilized by its financial advisors, and how would greater adoption of these tools help advisors’ businesses?
No two financial advisor businesses are exactly the same. While we want to use a consistent and transparent framework to support each financial advisor, how we combine and adapt each set of solutions will vary, depending on the strategy, service culture and personnel.
This is where building an extremely interactive and thorough advisor feedback mechanism across our entire network is mission critical.
Beyond simply looking at utilization metrics for specific platforms or solutions, my team and I will be working to ensure that each practice receives the holistic support experience they need to grow and be successful.
4. What are the greatest areas of near-term growth opportunity that you see for independent financial advisors?
It’s all about digitization. There’s no question that the pandemic has been a human tragedy that created significant market volatility and economic uncertainty for individuals and families across the country.
But the pandemic also elevated the crucial role of professional guidance from financial advisors. Our financial advisors more than rose to the challenge of providing hands-on support and a calming voice of reason to their clients, helping them keep a sense of perspective and focus to avoid emotionally driven, financially damaging decisions.