Financial advisers should be making deeper connections with clients under the age of 30 given they are the future their businesses will come to rely on.
However, findings from an industry survey could mean relationships between advisers and younger clients may prove difficult.
According to the latest Lifeplan ICFS Financial Advice Satisfaction Index the attitudes toward financial advisers of those Australians under the age of 30 are dwindling, compared to other age brackets currently receiving advice.
The survey, conducted by the University of Adelaide, found the perceptions of adviser trust and reliability, technical ability and investment performance took a sharp drop, compared to the previous April survey.
Lifeplan Funds Management head Matt Walsh said the decline in satisfaction should be a major concern for advisers as “the very people who represent the future of their business are finding less value in the relationship than previous surveys have indicated”.
Walsh said the results highlight the struggles that advisers are having in presenting the value of advice and their relationship to younger clients.
“Advisers have got a big challenge because we no longer live in a world of information asymmetry so advisers have to go way beyond just information delivery and education, and beyond finding products and getting risk and asset strategies in place,” he said.
The survey found that younger investors are much more sensitive to fluctuations in the market.
“They’re attributing far too much to performance and not on a lot of other things like insurance, budgeting and the other outcomes of advice,” Walsh said.
“The planning industry could do better to articulate its value proposition to younger clients that disconnects, to some degree, from markets.”
He said advisers should not abandon or turn away from the younger segment as they are the future cohort of profitable clients.
“Unless you invest more heavily now in proactive management of that relationship, and being honest and forthright with them and working more closely with them, then this is an early sign that they may become disenfranchised.”
The survey also found that clients with less than $50,000 to invest and those who had used an adviser for less than two years were also showing a decline in satisfaction.
Clients that had been with their adviser for more than five years had a better perception of their trust and services.
