More than 20 years ago, my first job at college was as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley. I lasted less than year before smartly transitioning to a career within the investment research world better suited for my skill set. I fully understand the importance of making sure as an advisor that you understand your relative strengths and areas of improvement to support your clients. Being a strong advisor means continuing to set the bar high and looking to improve.
In 2022, Invesco launched the Practice Innovation Index, a diagnostic platform built to benchmark key traits of financial practices in four areas: new business development, wealth management, client service, and practice management. Through a short 20-minute quiz, the platform analyzes where an advisor’s practice ranks among their peers and then offers tools to help.
For example, within the wealth management section, one of the questions asks, “Which of the following describes your practice’s discovery process when boarding a new client?” The answer choices include risk profile and analysis of financial assets, comprehensive goals-based planning questions, values-based planning questions, and multi-generational planning questions. The question links to a deep discovery toolkit.
Meanwhile, in the client services section, a question asks, “Which of the following describes your practice’s client segmentation criteria and CRM integration strategy?" The answer choices include quantitative data only, basic quantitative and qualitative data captured, advanced qualitative data captured, and fully integrated into CRM and service model. The question is connected to a segmentation and service toolkit.
Each answer is benchmarked from data powered by Cerulli and allows advisors to see what areas are strong and what areas could benefit from improvement relative to peers. Basically, it is a quantitative best practices approach to keep you focused.
Invesco will be highlighting the Practice Innovation Index at the Exchange conference next Tuesday morning with me during VettaFi’s “Be a Better Advisor” program, which will include two credits for continuing education. During that program, the conference sessions will include advanced financial planning real world strategies, storytelling for advisors, and your financial psychology playbook. At the Exchange event, we want to support advisors with more than just ETF insights to help them manage client assets.
For those advisors not making the trip to Miami, the Practice Innovation Index might be just what is needed to further improve their practice.
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