Everyone is chasing growth, but advice businesses must ensure the quality of client relationships don’t suffer as a result.
Apt Wealth director Andrew Dunbar says he has seen the detrimental effect on firms who grow rapidly without the right infrastructure in place and the resourcing to handle it.
“We’ve watched other firms in the industry who have grown too quickly and not been able to maintain their culture, their values, their identity and their client care,” he tells Professional Planner.
“It’s led to staff and client upheaval.”
Dunbar explains that his firm has a “20 to 30-year vision” which helps them focus on the areas that will facilitate long term growth and establish an effective system.
“You’re not just worried about the bottom-line next year, you’re actually putting in the work towards the systems and structures you need to be able to grow over the long term,” Dunbar says.
“We’ve always had these centralised teams, operations teams, compliance teams, investment teams and support teams, all in place to make sure that the business runs smoothly while we focus on that growth.”
Dolfinwise director Jason Bragger says his firm established a comprehensive system early on to help effectively support business growth — “we’ve grown every year for 24 years”.
“I built a workflow management system that’s integrated into our main piece of expert software,” Bragger says.
“It’s a comprehensive thread and it ensures that each task is sitting with someone at all times. Therefore, somebody’s got it on their to-do list.”
He explains that his system goes hand-in-hand with the steady growth of the firm as it was built “to handle multiple advisers, paraplanners and customer service people”.
“As the business has scaled up, [the] workflow management process has held us in good stead that we can all seamlessly swap and change into each other’s roles as needed.”
Keeping a focus on maintaining genuine client relationships helps expanding businesses to not lose the quality of client care as they grow.
Dunbar emphasises the importance of regularly checking in with clients to improve the client experience.
“We have a very proactive high touch service with clients,” he says. “That’s kind of what develops the depth of client relationships.”
Having adequate adviser support is as important as an effective system for advice business when it comes to growing in an ethical manner. A lack of support affects the culture of a firm leading to a negative impact on the quality of advice.
If the advisers are snowed under with new clients, the individual relationships with clients will weaken and could result in clients leaving the firm.
Dunbar says his firm has one of the highest levels of support for their advisers, with 2.7 support staff per adviser. This deviates from most firms who mostly outsource for support staff.
“This enables our advisers to focus on what they do best and maintain strong relationships with clients.”
Bragger echoes this sentiment and considers support staff to be “equally as important” in maintaining the quality of client care.
“Advisers who aren’t adequately supported aren’t as efficient and spend too much time doing things that take them away from being able to service the clients.”
While firms should prioritise client care, they should also keep in mind that successful growth creates longevity and inspires confidence in clients.
“A firm that exudes confidence and reliability and success is attractive to people who want to be financially successful themselves,” Bragger says.
