3 Ways Financial Advisors Can Grow in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Rather than waiting for the crisis to be over, now is the time to pursue growth. In fact, more than half of Fortune 500 companies were founded during a financial crisis or bear market.¹ Here are just a few examples:²

• General Electric – Founded during the Baring sovereign debt crisis in 1892
• Hyatt Hotel Corporation and Trader Joe’s – Founded during the Eisenhower Recession of 1958
• Microsoft – Founded in the midst of the 1970s energy crisis
• Google – Founded right before the dot-com bubble burst in the mid-1990s
• AirBNB and Uber – Founded in the midst of the 2008-2009 Great Recession

The innovative leaders behind these companies saw the opportunities in the challenges that existed at the time and came out the other side of the crisis better and stronger. What are the opportunities that exist in your practice, so you can grow today, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic?

At LPL Financial, we’re enabling advisors to grow, despite the many tailwinds that exist right now. Here are three ways you can grow now.
 

Growth Opportunity #1: Create Repeatable Income Streams for Appropriate Clients

If you have clients currently paying you a commission, now may be a good time to consider transitioning them into a fee-based relationship, if it’s appropriate for their situation and goals.

By doing so, you can deepen your relationships with clients and provide a more in-depth, long-term strategy. At the same time, you’ll have the flexibility to more easily respond to market volatility and gain a repeatable income stream.

If you’re already doing a lot of advisory, now may be the time to take a look at the platforms you’re using to determine if you’re getting the support you need.

How LPL supports advisory

At LPL, we have multiple advisory platforms so it’s easy to find one that fits with your and your clients’ needs. Some of these options include:

• ClientWorks, our open architecture platform that allows you to customize a portfolio from the ground up and add whichever investment types you and your clients prefer
• Centrally managed platforms with strategies from a robust lineup of the most popular and experienced money managers, including portfolios from our experienced, in-house team, LPL Research
• A new tool within our centrally managed platform that allows you to build custom models yourself while outsourcing trading and rebalancing to our in-house trading and operations teams
• A hybrid robo platform, MWP, designed for digitally savvy clients as an online investment experience with your guidance

And these are just a few. We have others, including some specifically for higher-net-worth clients.

Christopher Neubert, CFP®, an LPL advisor in Fairfield, CT, says of our platforms: “I joined LPL for one reason: I believe they were the leaders in fee-based asset management at the time, and nothing has changed.  I still feel LPL is still a leader in fee-based platforms. The platforms have been a tremendous growth tool for us, and combined with the fantastic support from LPL’s team, we’ve been able to accomplish our growth goals.”
 

Growth Opportunity #2: Create a Models-Based Practice

One of the best ways to open the door to growth is by building a models-based practice. Using models helps you create capacity in your practice, so you have more time to focus on clients and prospecting. When using models, you set the strategy, but outsource the time-consuming operational activities to another party. As a result, you can gain hours upon hours back to focus on growth. In fact, in a recent survey by Broadridge, advisors said that using portfolio models enables more efficient business growth.³

How LPL supports a models-based practice

LPL’s Advisor Sleeve enables you to easily run a models-based practice. In the tool, you can build up to 15 models in a few minutes. As you add or remove investments and change the weight percentage of each, you can see how it impacts the overall risk tolerance of the portfolio, making it easy to build models that match a client’s risk score.

Plus, when you’re done with the model, you can deliver it to LPL for management. You make the trading decisions, and we execute them for you. As a result, you get hours of time back to focus on clients and growth.

“Advisor Sleeve allows me to truly run a models-based practice,” said LPL advisor Kevin Kersten, who’s from Perrysburg, OH. “It checks the percentages and buys or sells the proper funds based on the model. I can also move every single piece of our book of business in less than a minute, which used to take most of the day. It’s absolutely awesome.”
 

Growth Opportunity #3: Incorporate More Financial Planning

Today’s clients want and need more than a diversified portfolio. More than ever before, investors are seeking out long-term financial plans that address every area of their finances.

By focusing your value proposition on planning, you can provide more comprehensive service to clients. Planning also may give you the opportunity to attract new client types and potentially uncover new revenue streams within your own practice.

How LPL supports planning

At LPL, we have a Financial Planning team that can help you either get started with planning or expand your planning practice. Plus, we’re building new technology to support you in planning:

• Client Goals – This free tool allows you to offer clients a goals-based strategy, which they can view in their personalized app. If the client doesn’t need a full-blown financial plan, or if you’re new to planning, this is the ideal tool to use.
• AdvicePay – We recently partnered with this popular industry vendor to offer advisors the chance to charge their clients for planning services online.
• Integrated financial planning tools – We’ve integrated popular financial planning technology like MoneyGuide and eMoney with our internal systems, so client information is pulled in, making it easy to start financial plans.

Advisor Mike Doherty from Uncasville, CT, was an early adopter of Client Goals at LPL. “The Client Goals tool benefits everybody because it enables you to have a great conversation with your client about where they are today, where they want to be, and what they need to do to get there,” says Doherty. “The short process of inputting a client’s goals and assets makes it easy for the advisor, and the resulting page summary strengthens the discussion with clients and leads to a more meaningful dialogue over time.”

Use Tailwinds to Push You Forward—with LPL’s Help

Due to COVID-19 and the resulting economic strife, today’s tailwinds are fierce. But if you take the time to look for opportunities in your practice and potentially shift your business model, they may drive you to levels of growth you never knew possible—especially with LPL’s help.

At LPL, we’re constantly reevaluating our approach, tools, and technology to ensure we’re supporting advisors in growth, so we can be the best partner possible. “At the end of the day, you couldn’t pick a better firm to be affiliated with,” said advisor Christopher Neubert. “I don’t even take calls from other broker/dealers anymore, because we have everything we need with LPL. It’s hard for me to believe that any other group could have something that LPL doesn’t offer. If I were to do it all over again, I would still pick LPL.”