Small Business

Financial Advisors, Find the Right Strategic Partners for Your Practice

Name: Article explaining how financial advisors can identify the right strategic partners for their practices
Brand: Axos Advisor

Jul 06, 2022

Are you offering your clients the full lineup of services they’re seeking from a wealth professional?

In addition to traditional investment management and financial planning services, investors seek banking services, tax planning, insurance advice, loan and credit management, real estate advice, trust services, and more. But many of these services aren’t being provided by their trusted financial services advisors.

This isn’t surprising. Many of these desired services require knowledge that expands beyond common financial advisor certification programs. However, offering these types of services creates a powerful differentiator to attract and retain a greater number of clients and expand your AUM.

You can’t do it all on your own. But with strategic partnerships, you can provide your clients with a seamless experience that demonstrates your care while providing you a holistic view of your clients’ full financial picture.

The success of these partnerships hinge upon identifying the right opportunities for you and your clients.

How to Find the Right Strategic Partners for Your Financial Advisor Practice

If you’re looking to expand your holistic wealth offerings through external strategic partners, here’s a framework you can use as you evaluate potential partners.

1. Seek Similar Values but Different Services

You want to make sure there’s a synergy without the potential for asset poaching. As you identify potential partners, research their core values and the products and services that they offer.

Core values create a clear path for an organization’s employees and customers. If you align with a company whose values are incongruent with your own, it will create a confusing experience for your clients.

Of course, you’ll want to steer clear from companies who offer overlapping products and services with your own. You’ll also want to review their active partnerships and how these are communicated to their customers in case they already partner with another financial advisor or wealth management firm.

For example, some banks or credit unions will actively cross sell wealth management services to their deposit and loan customers. If that’s in play, you could lose AUM. Axos Bank, on the other hand, will never approach an Axos Advisor client to promote wealth management services.

2. Align With Easy-to-Implement Technologies

Unless you want a long lead time on a partnership launch, be sure to seek out partners who offer plug-and-play technology. This removes unnecessary friction so it’s easy for you to provide value-add services to your clients. It also reduces additional work for you and your team – after all, that’s the purpose of teaming with external partners.

When evaluating the partner tech, you’ll want to look beyond the initial onboarding and determine the ongoing lift for you and your clients. You and your clients need a seamless enrollment experience for the partnership to work. It’s especially helpful if you find partners who give you a range of options. For example, Axos Advisor provides its financial advisor partners three options to help minimize the friction for opening client bank accounts. All require minimal tech experience and time commitment.

3. Find Visibility Into Client Actions

Clients look to you for guidance. The best way to provide that guidance is by having a full financial picture. That’s hard to achieve unless you have visibility into all of their services. So, be sure to seek out partners that provide you with a look into your clients’ accounts.

As you evaluate potential partners, ask what you’ll be able to view, what actions you can take on your clients’ behalf, and how you can access this information. For example, Axos Advisor provides an advisor dashboard to make it easy to monitor client cash as part of their financial strategy.

4. Keep Client Experience at the Heart of the Operation

Customer experience is more than just a buzz word. It’s critical to the success of companies. In fact, Broadridge reports consumers are willing to spend more money with companies who offer a good customer experience.

While not part of your business, any service you recommend is an extension of the service that you provide. If your clients receive poor service, it will reflect upon you and your business. This makes it important to align with partners who will treat your clients with the same care as you do. Look for companies like Axos Advisor who offer concierge support and a single point of contact to assist you and your clients.

Finding Support to Become a Holistic Advisor

Expanding your offering to keep pace with industry trends and client expectations doesn’t have to be difficult. Especially when you choose the right partners who meaningfully contribute to your success.

Axos Advisor is here with banking products that combine innovative technology and relationship-based service to help position you as the holistic advisor your clients seek. Our solutions are perfect for a variety of practice models including independent broker-dealers, RIAs, and insurance brokers. Email [email protected] to learn how to add us to your team.