Kehrer Group Examines Role of Client Engagement
Households that outsource the preparation of their financial plan to a financial professional are less likely to takes steps to address their insurance and protection needs than households that prepared the plan without an advisor’s help or were engaged with the advisor in creating the plan. That is the disturbing finding in a recent study by Kehrer Group that analyzes consumer data from RFI Global’s MacroMonitor.
This finding recalls earlier Kehrer research that found that only 1.2% of 23,655 MoneyGuide goal plans prepared by 1,366 bank-based advisors incorporated a review of client insurance needs.
That’s not to say that advisor involvement in developing the plan does not result in the household taking action on the plan’s suggestions. When the advisor is involved, the household is more likely to have reviewed or reallocated investments as a result of the plan. So the advisor is helping the client take action, just not action about the client’s risks.
The MacroMonitor is a comprehensive survey of US households conducted every other year since 1978, and offers financial-services providers reliable, validated, single-source research about US economic households’ financial needs, attitudes, and behaviors. The MacroMonitor measures all financial areas: transactions, credit, assets, protection, and information and advice. Each wave of the survey encompasses over 4,000 US households, including an oversample of 2,000 affluent households reweighted to be representative of the US population.
The study, The Importance of Client Engagement in Financial Planning, was presented at the Kehrer Study Group on Developing Holistic Advisors in Chapel Hill December 4-5.