2. Advisors with the most “digital real estate” will win.
“Advisors with the best digital footprint are really going to win clients in the future,” said Christensen. “This is now often your first impression of any business you’re thinking about working with. Now more than ever the way advisors present themselves on web properties matters. It’s their primary interaction.”
Advisors should expect to be judged on how they compose e-mails, create videos and interact in video conferences. If they offer clients and prospects a painful digital experience, the prospects will likely look elsewhere, he said.
Advisors with the biggest and best digital footprints are creating content across all available media, offering streamlined client onboarding experience, and are adding automation and self-service to their digital capabilities.
“It then goes all the way to the back office,’ said Christensen. “Those who have great integrations with their CRM are going to have more efficient practices, and will be able to grow faster.”
Through digital engagement, clients and prospects will also be able to research how their advisors interact with others and work within their communities, he said. “If all you have is a resume, that’s maybe going to lead me not to take the next action with you,” he said.
Advisors also need to be aware of their professional and their personal social media presence, said Christensen, because clients and prospects are watching and doing research.
3. Regulators are catching up to new technology.
As the pace of technological change has quickened, regulators have lagged behind. Until recently, this hasn’t been an urgent issue because most of the financial industry has also lagged in adopting new technologies.
Covid-19 has changed that, said Christensen, but as the volume of digital communications has increased, firms have struggled to keep up with the compliance demand. To compensate, firms are creating more content for advisors at the enterprise level.
“Doing that takes some of the burden off of their compliance team,” he said. “We’re seeing firms creating entire webinars, landing pages, introductory e-mails and power-point presentations for their advisors, so that there’s everything ready to go. Because they built it, it doesn’t have to go through a lengthy process with their compliance team. They’re getting ahead of everyone trying to do their own thing and overloading compliance.”
But in the rush to create digital content, many firms have posted videos to platforms like YouTube and Vimeo without retaining the original hard-copy version of the content—usually an mp4 file, said Christensen. Moving forward, that practice “isn’t going to fly with regulators,” he said.
4. M&A, a wave of retirements and professional poaching will accelerate changes in the industry.
Through its internal analytics, FMG Suite has detected an increasing pace of industry consolidation, Christensen said.
“If we’re building websites, most companies have us put their team members on their website, and we track that information—so we know how many team members are parts of a given firm,” he said. “We can also map out the locations among the service professionals we work with, and we can look at movements when companies call in and say I’ve become acquired, merge my account with this other company. Starting in March and April, we saw a significant uptick in individual advisor practices deciding to join other firms.”