Three posts from the last two weeks.
The industry continues presenting year in review / year forward type blog posts. Overall, this trend is good for advisors; more trend posts enables easier scanning for liked-minded ideas and concepts. For this week, we chose two posts outside this trend.
After two consecutive one-post weeks, best blogs found a large set to share.
No denying the importance of municipal bonds. I attended a media relations lunch event for one of our clients last week and multiple reporters touched on muni bonds. Here are three solid and slightly different views on the topic:
While there were quite a few posts related to Japan this week, none stood out as potentially valuable. Instead we have two posts: one from the most commonly cited firm and another from a firm new to the Best list (besties?).
A guy walks into my favorite Manhattan coffee shop and demands an iced espresso with hot milk poured directly into the plastic iced-beverage cup. The cashier, very politely, declines. She says they don’t make a drink like that. As an alternative he can have hot espresso poured into cold milk in a plastic cup.
He smirks and says something unpleasant to her. She asks the barista/manager to help. He comes over and tells him that the cup will melt a bit, also the milk will taste terrible. “We won’t make that,” says the barista.
The patron goes on to throw an adult fit (you know the act – talking to all three baristas at once, saying things under his breath, etc.). Finally he drops the classic line: “why won’t you give the customer what he wants?”
Creating a sense of closure, the manager looks at him and says, “What you’re asking for isn’t safe and it is not a correctly made coffee.”
Observing this interaction made me think about what a customer “wants” versus what is “safe.” There’s a parallel for financial advisors here.
For advisors with a fiduciary duty, they can talk an insistent client down with the “this isn’t a safe investment for you.” But for the remaining advisors with only a suitability requirement, what do they do? It must be a tricky situation. Asset managers could assist.
Asset managers who survey investors could add this topic into the survey. From Natixis to Fidelity (just one of many instances), many asset managers survey investors frequently. Consider questions such as:
Insights from these surveys help advisors during those discussions with examples and data they may not have access to. Surveyed effectively, there may be areas to support this topic in the client on-boarding process. Topics like this are rarely covered but may be fertile ground to support online practice management modules and wholesaler support material.
