Over the past few years, it has become clear that clients are increasingly sophisticated and have greater expectations of their financial advisors. This trend is especially apparent for the growing number of affluent middle and upper class clients, often referred to as mass affluent and high-net-worth. These clients have become the managers of their own wealth, and they are aware that the investments comprising their financial portfolio impact one another. However, they have neither the skills nor the time to handle this significant responsibility. Instead, they are relying on an advisor to provide them with the guidance they need.

High-net-worth clients often have multiple people trying to sell them on many investment solutions, all calling themselves “advisors,” yet most do not understand the clients’ unique financial picture. As a result, clients have their investments scattered across a number of brokerage institutions. Often times, the greater the net-worth of a client, the more out of control they are in terms of having a firm grasp on their assets. They have too many accounts to manage and too many “advisors.”

Unfortunately, clients have often been disenchanted because their advisors are unable to deliver on the breadth of service that the clients actually require to maintain their portfolios. The more accounts, the harder it is for the advisor to obtain an accurate portrayal of their clients’ diverse investments, the status of their portfolios, as well as their asset allocations.

By turning to technology, advisors are meeting these evolving needs and allowing themselves to better service and grow their client base. Technology solutions range from account aggregation and customer relationship management to financial planning and transaction platforms. While most of these solutions provide advisors with the pieces of what is needed to manage their client’s wealth, they require a lot of time and effort to use and lack what advisors need most – a comprehensive view of the client’s entire portfolio.

The emergence of holistic wealth management

What advisors need to be successful today are Web-based wealth planning and client management solutions that provide comprehensive financial planning encompassing various aspects of a client’s wealth, including insurance, investments, estate analysis, retirement planning and asset allocation. Gaining access to all aspects of a client’s portfolio gives advisors a thorough understanding of their client’s wealth and enables them to provide more objective advice.

Because they’re providing clients with more objective advice, they are able to charge fees for their services. The client’s perception of the advisor then shifts from product salesman to trusted financial advisor.

Wealth planning solutions should also give advisors the ability to proactively manage their client relationships by identifying strengths and weaknesses in asset allocation, keeping accounts up-to-date, and monitoring significant changes in their clients’ portfolios. Account aggregation and customized reporting capabilities are two additional tools that are essential to look for in a comprehensive wealth management solution. One unique feature that a handful of vendors offer is a secure online storage system, which enables advisors to help their clients keep track of valuable documents, such as wills, insurance policies, and property titles.

Another advantage of a Web-based wealth planning solution is that it can provide the advisor and the client with customized financial Web sites. Clients can better manage and keep track of their assets, as well as view balance statements that are updated nightly. Advisors can manage all of their clients’ accounts and easily track client needs and opportunities proactively.

In addition to fostering better communication between advisors and clients, wealth planning solutions enable financial advisors and clients to easily correspond with other advisors who are closely involved in the financial planning process, such as lawyers and accountants. Through a permissioning tool, these people can be given secure access to a client’s data to better facilitate collaboration between the primary advisor and the client’s other financial planning partners.

A comprehensive Web-based wealth planning solution can serve as an advisor’s competitive differentiator. In an environment where advisors are struggling to grow their business, a holistic wealth planning solution can provide them with the key elements for building and sustaining successful client relationships: trust, communication, objective advice, personalization and security. This new type of tool has the potential to immediately provide the advisor with a return on investment through increased sales, improved efficiencies, stronger advisor-client relationships and increased assets under management. Advisors will be pleasantly surprised to find that a tool like this can actually open up a new revenue stream.