“We realized that to take our vision to the next level, we needed a more advanced way to help our audience make complex financial decisions that are best informed by professional help,” says SmartAsset chief executive Michael Carvin. “Through our tools, content and calculators, we provide advice on retirement, taxes, life insurance and home ownership, among many other topics, to more than 60 million people each month. Our SmartAdvisor matching platform enables those consumers, searching for financial advice, to get connected directly to financial advisors.”
A point made by virtually every advisor matching service is the value of professional advice. “All the studies and analysis show that you’ll do much better with an advisor than without,” Stuller says.
The SmartAdvisor site points out two widely published industry findings: Investors with a financial plan grew their assets 110% more than clients who didn’t. And individuals using an advisor are twice as likely to report that they are on track to meet their retirement goals.
This data should certainly coax investors into the belief that a good financial advisor is worth having. But what is the attraction of advisors to these sites?
Since many matching services charge advisors to list on their sites, is it worth the price of admission (which can often run into the thousands of dollars)?
SmartAsset’s Carvin says his site facilitated more than 5,000 meetings between investors and advisors in the month of June 2019 alone.
The financial services industry has a high cost per lead. In a recent ranking by HubSpot, the financial services industry came in third at $272 per lead in a survey of sectors. IT was the highest at $380 per lead, while health care came in second at $286 per lead.
Matching services charge anywhere from a $1,000 flat fee per month to less than $100 per lead. In either case, it’s seemingly a good value for advisors—that is, if the leads come in and indeed turn into clients.
Planet of Finance is taking the matching service global. It targets high-net-worth individuals and charges advisors $99 per month (with the first month free) to list on the platform. It rewards those high-net-worth clients who participate with points.
“To reward all our members for their trust and data, we offer them the opportunity to become shareholders of our platform,” says Planet of Finance’s chief executive Olivier Collombin. “When they register, they instantly receive POF points in the equivalent of the value of their profile. Each action taken on our platform rewards them with more POF points that can later be converted into Planet of Finance shares.” He says the site is successful because of its focus on next-generation wealth owners. By example, Collombin says more than $1 billion in portfolio assets has been registered on the site over the past three years. Planet of Finance, run out of Monaco, was launched in 2015.