Are clients too focused on returns?

By Staff | November 22, 2017 | Last updated on November 22, 2017
2 min read

Clients increasingly say their advisors improve their return on investment (ROI), reveals a Pollara report commissioned by IFIC.

Read: Can you deliver investors’ return expectations?

The proportion of clients who strongly agree with this statement increased to 47% in 2017 from 39% last year.

Read: How to increase returns by 1.5%

The question is, do you want clients to see you this way?

In contrast, the proportion of investors who “strongly agree” that their advisors improve their saving and investing habits has remained stable (37% versus 38% last year), finds the report. That is despite research that shows advisors impose discipline on households’ financial behaviour, thereby increasing those households’ assets.

Still, investments remain top of mind for clients.

The report finds that advisors are mostly used for investment planning, followed by financial planning. Retirement planning, in third place, dropped to 49% from 53% a year ago.

CRM2 confusion

Overall, the Pollara report focuses on investors’ perceptions of mutual funds.

The report indicates that CRM2 has been somewhat successful: awareness of advisor compensation increased among those who purchased a mutual fund through an advisor in the past year, jumping to 85% in 2017 from 72% in 2015. Awareness by all mutual fund investors rose to 78% in 2017 from 69% in 2015.

Read: How to avoid losing a client’s trust

However, only 16% report being very confident in knowledge of fees paid.

Read: Investor education initiatives to leverage

In fact, few feel that recent statements clearly show the fees paid to dealers—the very portion of MER that CRM2 aims to disclose. More than half of respondents said their most recent statements provided them with the same amount of information on fees paid to dealers as in previous years, while another 11% said they felt they received less information on dealer fees.

Read the full report for more details, including investors’ desire to use brokerages and robo-advisors.

About the Pollara report: Between July 11 and July 25, 2017, 1,000 telephone interviews were conducted with mutual fund holders, 18 years of age or older, who make all or some of the decisions for mutual fund purchases in their households.

Advisor.ca staff

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.