The latest article from Meghaan Lurtz, senior research associate at Kitces.com, discusses how advice engagement tools can be used to create a more dynamic VIP (visualization, interaction, and process) planning experience.
According to Lurtz: “giving clients a “VIP” experience really does increase their [client] engagement not only with the advisor, creating a deeper client-advisor relationship, but also with the financial planning process itself, making both client and advisor more successful in the long run!”
We couldn’t agree more.
By expanding “The Plan” beyond being a comprehensive document outlining a client’s financial strategy to one that defines their best life, including their values and non-financial goals, advisors can create more opportunities to demonstrate their value throughout the year.
This, in turn, will help increase: referrals - by helping clients have more productive conversations about their futures; revenue - by identifying more opportunities to serve the client and dynamically adjust their plan throughout the year; and retention - by proving value time and again beyond the balance in their bank accounts.
So - how do we do this at Lumiant? Let me walk you through it using Lurtz's PIV methodology (This method prioritizes establishing a robust Process first, followed by fostering meaningful Interaction, and culminating with impactful Visualization).
A process designed to define, co-create and guide clients towards living their best lives.
Wealth accumulation is no longer the singular metric defining whether we live a rich life. Today, living rich means achieving fulfillment across eight dimensions of well-being.
But engaging with clients about life can be tricky. We’re moving away from being the most intelligent person in the room and towards being the most emotionally intelligent, engaging with clients on non-financial matters and supporting them more holistically.
So, we’ve created a robust financial planning process that starts by helping clients define and articulate their best life. We do this through a series of assessments and experiences that have the client tell you about the transformation they want to achieve - all you have to do is sit back, listen, and probe where required.
Next, we use a series of modules to co-create the plan with the client. Taking all the qualitative information from the discovery phase and transforming it into quantifiable outcomes (more on that soon).
Once we have compiled a complete picture of their profile - their best life - our platform provides tools to support you in guiding your clients for a more dynamic ongoing financial planning experience.
However, we understand that clients may be at different stages in their journey or use other tools to create your bespoke client process and experience. So, our platform takes a modular approach, which means you can pick and choose what modules you want to use within your process to design your own experience.
To further support advisors in defining their process, we have also launched The Lumiant Advice Experience course in our Academy. The course explains our best practice process and how each module helps augment the experience.
Interactive experiences that empower you to have more productive conversations
Throughout the Lumiant process, we use a series of assessments and experiences that empower you to have more informed and productive conversations with clients about their lives.
We believe the conversations you have with clients about their lives, values, and longevity determine the strength of the advisor-client relationship.
But knowing how to have these conversations is tricky and can often feel more like being a psychologist or “life coach” than a financial advisor.
So, we’ve designed interactive experiences that help you and your clients talk about their lives holistically.
For example, Your Values has clients select their top five values from a series of 16 statements related to different dimensions of well-being. Our experience then provides you with questions to ask your clients to understand why those values statements are important to them.
HALO also helps advisors have often challenging conversations around longevity. Through an engaging assessment that helps understand a client’s lifestyle, demographic, and hereditary health factors, we can determine their longevity and go beyond using average life expectancy. Then, using estimated care costs and their personalized timeline, advisors can have more informed and productive conversations about how this can impact their financial plan.
These in-depth conversations about their lives, values, and longevity help advisors further personalize and enhance clients' financial plans. All while developing strong advisor-client relationships by discussing their finances in relation to their clients' lives.
Now, it's time to bring it to life.
Visualizations that bring your financial plan to life
The final step of the PIV model that helps to bring your VIP experience to life is how you visualize your process and interactions with clients. Visualizations that make abstract financial concepts tangible, understandable, and relatable to the client.
How do we do this?
The Lumiant platform has been designed to capture all your qualitative conversations and translate them into quantifiable outcomes for clients. The Lumiant process links everything together to showcase the value of advice, from your conversation about life and values all the way through to the Key Advice Areas needed for clients to achieve their goals.
Our Best Life module maps out their different scenarios against their longevity for clients to easily see and understand if they are on track, overfunded, or underfunded. Progress can then be tracked, with clients updating their details, goals, and tasks as they complete them.
This information all ladders up to the major metric that matters - their well-being score, which shows how your financial plan and guidance improve their overall well-being.
All this information is captured in a highly visual client portal, which clients can access at any time online. Helpful nudges and notifications help clients keep on top of their tasks, while their values provide a reminder of the decision framework they have put in place when it comes to making significant financial choices.
Advisors that use Lumiant have often found that clients are more engaged in the financial planning process, more likely to take action, and more likely to refer you to friends and family due to your deeply personal connection with them.
As our friend Dennis Moseley-Williams says:
“Your client experience is the best marketing you can invest in because experiences become stories. Stories that we share.”
So invest in a Lumiant VIP experience and embrace the technological advancements that step into a future of highly personalized, memorable, measurable, and dynamic advice experiences.
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