“These shifts point to unique segments of underserved investors seeking personalized advice across a broad set of financial needs, which creates an opportunity for wealth managers to expand their advice offerings beyond managing investments,” Accenture said in its report.
Accenture posits that advisors who don’t change with the times potentially run the risk of seeing the children of their existing older clients take their inheritance money elsewhere after the parents pass away.
One of the report’s findings is that 58% of respondents expect to inherit a significant amount of money from their parents or an estate, and 26% of them said they plan to select a new advisor other than their parents’ advisor to oversee all of their assets upon inheritance. Of those, 51% who had more $10 million in assets indicated they would seek a new advisor to oversee all of their assets.
And 17% of survey respondents said they changed advisors during the past year. Roughly half of those who switched said they went to an advisor they felt offered better technology and better investment products.
That should be a wake-up call to advisors, according to the report. Accenture suggests that advisors can maintain as clients the children of their existing older clients during the intergenerational wealth transfer—and attract new clients beyond that—by providing holistic advice that addresses needs beyond just investments. Furthermore, that advice should be delivered within the right context of a person’s financial, emotional and social goals, and it should be part of a “robust digital and personal engagement model.”
The Accenture study interviewed 1,000 wealth management consumers across race, gender, wealth, education, location, profession and age in the U.S. and Canada. These people work with a financial advisor ranging from an asset manager, bank, RIA or a robo-advisor. The study’s aim was to understand what investors expect from their wealth managers regarding financial advice, products and planning.