Aon Hewitt is boosting its client engagement strategies to support the take up of advice, as industry changes will result in consumers being up for grabs.
“The consumer is up for grabs in the next two years, through changes to SuperStream, the growing [consumer] savviness in saving for retirement and in markets and investments,” Aon Hewitt Wealth Management Australia managing director Pierre Kraft told InvestorDaily.
“This [requires] actually looking and seeing what we’re doing in terms of how to support that and how to engage.”
The business was looking to ensure its advisers were in front of clients, Kraft said.
“The idea is to look at and [identify] where we believe the gaps are in the market and what are some of the things we can do to then respond to it,” he said.
“We have to be in front of consumers and be able to give them support in the way that they’d like it and advice in the way that they like it.”
As consumers were avoiding full or holistic advice, part of Aon Hewitt’s strategic direction was supporting its advisers and clients in the ability to access scaled or piece-by-piece advice, he said.
“What does scalable advice and also digital advice look like? These are things we’re looking to solve over the next little while,” he said.
This year, the group launched its sales boot camp, female-only peer group and two-year future-proofing programs to help its advisers build and grow their businesses and in turn increase client participation.
In addition, Aon Hewitt Wealth Management launched its internal social media program for its advisers as a foundation they would need to begin implementing into their practices, Kraft said.
“It’s not so much about social media, it’s about what advisers are seeking, so one of the things they’re after in respect of their network is idea sharing,” he said, adding the old network was previously maintained through emails, calls and professional development days.
“Whether they like it or not, a lot of our clients are wealth accumulators, so we need to connect up with them in a way that they want to consume advice [and] in a way that’s actually successful.”
Aon Hewitt Wealth Management’s apprentice program, launched two years ago, had a 90 per cent intake of women this year. It currently has about 330 advisers in its network.
The company would use its Australian business as its platform into the Asian market, after launching its fee-for-service advice business in Singapore this year, Kraft said.
“What we’re seeing is the independent financial adviser market in Singapore of about 3000, which doesn’t have a lot of capital backing behind it and then you have the old agency models,” he said.
“So there was nothing really in the middle that was a hybrid of those. Our vision was to build something around that, which we’ve started, and we’re looking across all north and south Asia to see what the next opportunity is over there as well.”
