We need them to abandon the machine work that has become such a distraction. Oftentimes, smart advisors use less than superior tools to do their darndest to serve their clients and in the meantime have lost human connection. It is time to alter our expectations of financial advisors. We primarily need to expect them to act in human, not machine ways, and in doing so more than earn their fee. What are the human things great advisors do?
1. They pay attention. No computer can look a client in the eye and let them know that their most critical financial secrets are being heard without judgment.
2. They have interpretive wisdom. Advisors can listen to clients’ stories. They can help discover what these moments mean for their long-term decision engine and guide their financial decisions going forward.
3. They can have a conversation. A computer can transcribe every word a client says, but it cannot hear them. It takes an advisor for finances to be liberated by the power of safe relationships.
4. They offer empathy. Maybe we haven’t been exactly where clients are, but human advisors can imagine what it’s like to be in their shoes. A computer can do calculus, but it cannot derive meaning.
But it is not enough to simply want this for our human advisors or for our clients. We must use machines to do what they do best so that advisors can spend the best hours of the day doing what they do best. Let the machines provide speed, accuracy, integrated information, immediate access, platform agnosticism and predictive power. I believe our technology should do four things for advisors, their associates and their firms:
1. Automate: Technology should automate activities best handled digitally rather than personally.
2. Record: Technology should make it incredibly easy to keep reliable records of client activity and communication, and organize those records in a way that is searchable and reportable.
3. Protect: Technology should protect advisors and their firms from the liability caused by memory-dependence and limited data judgment calls.
4. Liberate: Technology should liberate advisors to focus on what only personal relationships can do, while simultaneously supporting those relationships with connectivity, shared data and tools for communication.