Luella Keeley, wealth management adviser for West Midlands-based Keeley and Co, was speaking at the Global Life Planning Conference in London hosted by the Kinder Institute of Life Planning. She said IFAs should never put their clients in a stressful situation when it came to fees.
Ms Keeley said: “Fee arrangement is always a hectic problem to IFAs but it is not a black-and-white problem.
“We usually start serving our clients with life planning and financial modeling, and they always come back to us again to manage their wealth. If our clients are happy with us, why would they go to someone else?”
Nigel Barker-Smith, director of West Yorkshire-based NBS Financial Planning, said that IFAs needed to help clients to understand that the priority was to help them with their life planning.
He said: “One of the biggest problems facing IFAs is the pricing issue, but there is a process with financial life planning which can help us run the business effectively.
“We separate clients’ benefits from our own by asking their needs and avoiding negotiating money arrangements at first.The segregation of the two steps gives clients a positive impression that we are not just helping them for the money.”
Kevin Chalk, senior financial planner for West Midlands-based Provest Financial Management, said financial planners needed to focus on getting clients to talk about themselves.
He added: “You think you know your clients but if you sit down and listen to their needs, you will be surprised at how blind you were.
“In the past I just sent someone to do a customer survey for me but now my business has been going through radical changes and I have refined the proposition because I have realised the importance of getting to know my clients by chatting to them myself.
“This also helps our clients understand the value of our services and we can transfer our life planning concept to them.”
George Kinder, chairman of the conference and president of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning, said the retail distribution review would be a good opportunity for IFAs to consolidate their client base.
He added: “Life planning is all about listening to your clients and letting them know you care about them.”
