The coronavirus outbreak is changing the way many Americans work and interact—but the changes are not quite as dramatic for technology-savvy advisors.

In fact, advisors have learned from the 2008 financial crisis, as well as more localized disruptions caused by natural disasters, to build more resilient businesses with tech-driven continuity plans—and the need to maintain communications with their clients.

“Our clients are focused on taking care of their end clients’ concerns and managing communications with those end clients,” says George Tamer, managing director for strategic relationships at TD Ameritrade Institutional. “They’re monitoring how their clients’ investment plans and financial plans are faring in the volatile markets, and they’re planning on staying in close touch with those clients and reminding them that this is the reason they hired an advisor.”

Most advisors can also take comfort that their businesses have been here before, says Tamer, and most have implemented technology that has increased their efficiency, helping to mitigate the market downturn’s impact on their margins. “In 2008, advisor AUM dropped by 18% while the market dropped 37%,” he says. “Advisor revenue dropped 9.5% and owner income dropped by 18%. I think advisors will be able to weather this storm because they have created diversified portfolios for their clients—but it will certainly take a toll on their revenues and their bottom line.”

One of the most important messages advisors can deliver to clients is simply that they remain attentive and able to respond to any client concerns, says Tamer. Clients also need to be reminded that they have a plan in place that is built to operate through disruptions to financial markets.

He says that, ideally, advisors have already consistently been reaching out to their clients with communications, regardless of market activity. “These efforts aren’t things you started doing in the last month as volatility increased—successful advisors hopefully have been communicating this way all along with clients,” Tamer says. “They just ramped up the communication to be proactive around what happens in a bear market. That should help stave off client attrition.”

Clients need to have a touch zone, says Robert Sofia, CEO of Ormond Beach, Fla.-based digital marketing platform Snappy Kraken. Today, more clients are proactively seeking information about what’s happening and what they should do in response—leading them to a lot of generalized advice in the financial media and in online communities.

The urgency to service clients during a downturn is creating a divergence between tech-savvy, high-touch advisors and the rest of the industry, explains Sofia. “On one hand, advisors who have systemized their businesses with layers of client support staff who offer regular education for their clients, whose clients are all very familiar with their plans and the reasons they never need to panic during a downturn, the proactive communicators, they’re not facing a tremendous amount of stress,” says Sofia. “Other advisors, normal proprietors running a practice who are the primary givers of all advice and the handlers of all serious issues for their clients, the takers of all phone calls, because they historically have not been able to be as proactive about communications, for them it’s a bit of a World War III scenario.”

Advisors who aren’t in frequent communication with their clients about such disruptions are vulnerable, says Tamer, which presents an opportunity for their competitors.

But experienced advisors also have the opportunity to tell clients that they’ve been through this before—most advisors were in business during the 2008 and 2009 market declines driven by the global financial crisis.

“We learned from 2008 that if you’re not hearing from your clients, you shouldn’t assume that they don’t want to hear from you,” says Tamer. “They want proactive communication.”

Luckily, since 2008, technology has improved to the point that maintaining client communications from a home office is much easier.

Tamer says the advisors he works with have become adept at using applications like FaceTime and Skype and are able to consult with their co-workers using conferencing tools like WebEx or Zoom—and most of that software was not available during the global financial crisis.

“We’ve also made a lot of great strides in online account opening and being able to do so with electronic signatures,” Tamer says. “We’re at the point now where people can deposit checks with an electronic signature using their phones—so it makes it much easier for advisors to operate without having to see their clients face-to-face.”

Advisors across age groups have warmed to such technology, Tamer says, and so have their clients. In fact, many older clients already use conference software to stay in communication with their children and grandchildren. While some less technology-literate clients may need help completing financial tasks like online check depositing and account opening, most are probably already using the tools they’ll need to access an advisor’s full range of services online.

At St. Louis-based Moneta Group, technology has allowed advisors to continue working “without missing a beat,” says partner Nicole Bailey. “For our clients, it still looks like we’re calling from our office—we’re really at home, but they ask to make sure we’re not flouting the guidelines. We just set up to transfer our office calls to our homes.”

The crisis may normalize the everyday use of technology in advisors’ practices that goes beyond chat and videoconferencing, says Kyle Hiatt, chief revenue officer for Omaha, Neb.-based Orion Advisor Solutions. For example, Orion’s client portal also offers co-browsing, which allows advisors and clients to interact on the same computer desktop during a chat or videoconference. The technology may help clients ask questions more clearly, and enable advisors to more quickly provide answers. Advisors and their clients may even come to embrace technology they were previously hesitant to use.

“Custodians have digitized the account opening process, but those capabilities have so far had a low adoption rate. I would expect to see that increase as well as people become used to the technology,” Hiatt says. “We’re all going to be comfortable with e-signatures and web signatures.”

While cybersecurity remains an issue, Tamer says that technology providers and custodians have emphasized advances that now permit advisors to work in secure settings remotely and on mobile devices. The biggest threat to a practice’s security remains a human one—bad actors impersonating the end client—but the widespread adoption of multiple-factor authentication acts as a safeguard from that vulnerability.

But working from home successfully over long periods of time requires more than videoconferencing capabilities, electronic signatures and strong cybersecurity practices.

“It’s about having the culture and management to motivate employees, but it’s also about having flexibility,” says Tamer. “You have to understand that while you’re on a conference call, someone may come to the door, or the kids might be at home and need supervision or schooling. Firms need to understand that as long as work is getting done and the metrics are being met, there should be flexibility for life to happen.”

Thus far, Bailey says that Moneta has been successful at doing just that.

“As a team, we understand that everyone has their days, and a lot of people are still trying to get into what our new routines look like,” she says. “We have two people on my team who work and have kids at home, and spouses who work. They are planning around each other and their family. As a team you make do—we know that one colleague might need to take a morning shift while they take care of their kids so their spouse can work in the afternoon, and we cover each other where we can. None of us can do this by ourselves.”

Because of that, Tamer says the firms working with him and his team have not had to cut staff or hours yet.

At the very least, the experience of lockdowns and quarantines will change how many firms operate moving forward. While working remotely might not become the norm, it might become more normalized, Tamer says.