IFAs have a huge opportunity in building their own brand.
IFAs often complain that banks take away their clients who they have been servicing for long or take the lion’s share of their client’s wallet. At both ends – the bank and IFA, the client is ultimately interacting with human beings only. Then why is it a banker who is generally of a lower age and with perhaps less experience than an IFA walks away with the client?
Let us evaluate the strengths of a bank vis-à-vis an IFA on some key parameters:
As the table shows, IFA has a huge opportunity in building a strong brand because of the continuity in the relationship, which needs to be leveraged extensively. By adapting technology, the IFA can neutralize the other factor of accessibility. There are many tools available that can help the IFA provide great ease in transaction to his clients regardless of the location.
The most important is continuity of relationship which needs to be leveraged. Good interpersonal skills helps strengthening the relationship. Finally there is evidently a large gap in the entire approach to the processes and customer engagement. A relationship manager of a Bank/large corporate house/National distributor is consistently trained in soft skills, processes and usage of technology and is groomed in that environment. An IFA needs to invest in this area.
A white paper published by Association of Financial Advisers showed that interpersonal skills and customer service are among the top requirements of investors. That means interpersonal skills and effective usage of tools help one in winning a client for life.
An IFA may want to identify the areas of improvement and should invest in those areas.
In
simple words, the need of the hour is to corporatize the business.
Vinayak
Sapre runs Insights, an advisor coaching firm.
The views expressed in this
article are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Cafemutual.
