Advisors: Are You Listening to Your Senior Clients?
May 7, 2012 by Daniel Williams
May 2, 2012 •
Are you listening to your clients? I mean, really listening to their biggest concerns? In a recent survey, we reached out to senior consumers to get an idea of how they feel their financial advisors are listening to them. Highlights of their responses are posted below. If you have insight on listening to your clients, please add them to the comments section.
Do you feel your concerns are heard by your financial advisor?
Sure, he listens. He’s real interested in knowing what our expectations are. He always takes time to ask us what our plans for the future are. And he always asks us if we feel comfortable before he makes any changes to our portfolio. So, yes, I feel like he’s very concerned about making sure we’re heard.
Claude, 76
Mercer Island, Wash.
No, not really. He sort of just does what he wants to do and then informs us of it later. But, when we set up our financial plan, he asked us how involved we wanted to be, and we told him we were paying him to worry about it so that we wouldn’t have to. So, I can’t really fault him for not running every sale by us. That’s not what we wanted.
Paul, 80
New Canaan, Conn.
Hmmm. I would have to say that he listens to my husband more than me. The few times that I spoke up and asked a question, he seemed to kind of brush me off. I don’t know if it’s because they were really stupid questions or just because I’m an old lady … It certainly made me not want to ask any more questions, though. Now, if there something I want to know, I just ask my husband.
Shirley, 75
Morristown, N.J.
Yes, I do. Our advisor—he’s pretty young, about 40 or so—he does this thing with all of his clients: After he’s done with the meeting and all of the details of our plan have been discussed and such, he has what he calls a “rap session.” He puts all the folders away, and we spend 15 or 20 minutes just chatting. He asks us about our kids, our health, anything we want to talk about. It’s great. And it really helped us a few years back when we told him our daughter was expecting her third child. When we told him that, he suggested we beef up our contributions to the college account we opened for them. It was perfect timing; it’s grown a lot.
Dorothy, 70
Raleigh, N.C.
About the Author
Daniel Williams
Daniel Williams is an award-winning journalist and business editor with extensive experience in print, online and trade shows.
Prior to joining Senior Market Advisor, Daniel was editor of Real Estate Southern California magazine and West Coast South Bureau Chief of GlobeSt.com, both are divisions of Real Estate Media. Previously, he covered the commercial real estate beat for the Orange County Business Journal. While there, he received a certificate of merit from SABEW (the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Inc.) for a story on “OCs Cash Economy.” A native of the Deep South, Daniel relocated from Los Angeles to Denver with his wife and daughter.
