How to Break the Mold and Differentiate Your Practice
Differentiate Your Practice
In a world where nearly anyone can call themselves an insurance or financial advisor, it is more important than ever to stand out from the crowd in the eyes of prospective (and current) clients.
Showing your prospects a customized prediction that is based on their ancestors’ health histories is one way to create a truly personalized plan that highlights the likelihood of needing long-term care – as well as the associated costs – versus simply relying on averages. This can be easily accomplished by using the Lumiant HALO process.
What is HALO?
Lumiant's HALO Planner (Health Analysis & Longevity Optimizer) is the convergence of science and financial planning to create personalized projections about clients’ longevity, health, and elder care needs and costs.
HALO is an engaging client experience that is easy and fast to complete in just a few minutes. The results are presented in a comprehensive and personalized client report that provides the advisor will all of the key projections they need to protect their clients' plans from health and elder care costs.
Built by trusted experts with backgrounds in computational genetics, data science, and health IT, HALO pinpoints a client’s risk so the advisor can help the client plan for it.
Its guided or self-guided assessment process creates the opportunity to engage clients with an entirely new conversation about their financial future while capturing key data to better understand and target the needs and concerns of their ideal audience.
For the first time, clients are able to better understand their priorities and needs with more accurate planning for future costs. Specifically, HALO helps advisors and clients:
Plan for your client's most active and healthy years in retirement.
Determine how many years of eldercare (in-home care/ care facilities) your client may need and what the estimated costs could be.
Estimate out-of-pocket healthcare costs throughout a client's lifespan and how those costs may change during different life stages.
Covering Specific Insurable Needs with HALO
With HALO, prospects can review a report that is generated specifically for them using real data from their family health history. This data highlights the probability of various health risks and longevity, along with the projected need for – and the cost of – long-term care.
Showing clients and prospects what their realistic care needs and costs are likely to be is a catalyst for getting them to take notice – and in turn, to do something about it sooner rather than later.
So, how well does the HALO process work for insurance and financial advisors? Just ask Erik Olson, a RIA headquartered in the Chicagoland area.
Since incorporating HALO into his practice, Erik is already in the process of onboarding several new clients by showing individuals and couples the real probability, and out-of-pocket expense, of a long-term care need. This makes the need much more “real” and personal than relying on an average or across-the-board possibility.
For instance, in one case, Erik was working with a couple where the wife had a shorter life expectancy than her husband – which goes against “traditional” financial and longevity statistics.
Because of the more personalized information, this couple was able to gear their insurance and estate planning more towards protecting the husband, given that he is projected to live longer. In this scenario, simply going with the average probabilities could end up putting the husband in a difficult financial bind down the road.
Differentiating Your Practice Using the HALO Process
Just simply using HALO as a value-added won’t necessarily ensure an advisor’s success, though. Rather, the process should ideally follow a series of steps in order to draw a client or prospect in.
For instance, by going through a series of steps, Erik Olson introduces HALO at just the right time during his initial meeting with an individual or a couple.
This, in turn, keeps prospects much more engaged...and more likely to work with Erik, and move forward with his recommendations for covering their specific needs.
By using HALO in connection with Social Security optimization software, Erik is also able to connect a prospect’s life expectancy – not just an average – to uncover other potential vulnerabilities that are specific to the individual.
Because these “hidden” financial dangers are oftentimes hard to detect when using traditional averages, the HALO process can essentially pinpoint exactly where protection is needed, as well as how much coverage to secure.
Further, by showing clients and prospects in “real-time” where they have significant financial “gaps,” it then becomes a much more collaborative process where the next logical step is to work together and implement the solution.
How to Set Your Practice Apart with HALO
Trusted and long-lasting relationships with are typically formed when clients are educated, rather than sold. The HALO process allows insurance and financial advisors to set themselves apart by uncovering individualized needs that are based on actual data – and
then designing the precise solution.
Are you ready to see how incorporating HALO into your practice can position you as the expert and bring more clients in the door?