Best Practice Advice Archives - Page 4 of 10

Compliance Can Be Torture For Consumers

by Tony Vidler Compliance has a lot to answer for. Compliance can be torture for consumers, and that is not good for them or the industry. One of the truly negative consequences of evolving best practice advice standards is the trend to torture clients with excessive paperwork. Now torture is a rather harsh word, and […]

How to create a MORE effective client report

by Tony Vidler The typical financial planning report or statement of advice produced for clients is ineffective. An effective report gets the key points across as quickly and as simply as possible, so that the reader understands them, and is then able to make decisions relatively quickly and easily. It will engage, motivate and rapidly […]

What do Life Insurance customers want?

by Tony Vidler One of the questions that continually vexes professionals is “what do customers want?“ In the life insurance area of financial services the answer is even tougher to find than usual, because insurance for virtually all consumers is an absolute grudge purchase. When we think about it logically every person who buys […]

A Good Financial Planner MUST Consider Risk Management

by Tony Vidler Financial planners who do not tackle risk management issues thoroughly for clients do the clients a disservice. A good financial planner must be factoring personal risk management into their planning for clients. Perhaps that is a little challenging to some, however too many financial planners simply do not include risk […]

The missing ingredient in professional development: SKILLS

by Tony Vidler We are awash with recommendations on how to “improve the advice business” and enhance professional developement. Regulators, politicians, consumer groups, product manufacturers…competing business models that look to bypass advice entirely….all of them are making a lot of noise about how advice delivery can be improved and where professionals involved in the […]

Why settle for average Adviser performance when you could be outstanding?

by Tony Vidler Advisers frequently settle for being average, and it is definitely not because they want to be average but because they don’t really know what it takes to elevate their performance exponentially. Average adviser performance can be turned into outstanding adviser performance by making the changes that make the difference. The […]

To fix repeated problems, you need a process!

by Tony Vidler For financial advisory firms the word “process” has become synonymous with “best practice advice”, but good process is so much more than just a compliant and well-documented series of advice documents. Process cures problems. Process is what builds franchise businesses. Process is what creates turnkey operations that are highly valued […]

Written Advice: Should it be Clear? or Concise? Or Effective?

by Tony Vidler When it comes to delivering our written advice to clients there is a tendency to be guided by the words used by the regulators, or law, in how that advice is framed or written. The written advice, be it financial plans or Statements Of Advice being delivered to clients, are however […]

The 4 Step Ethical Test for Financial Professionals

by Tony Vidler I attended a Rotary function as a guest and ‘discovered’ the best ethical test I’ve ever heard. When I say ‘discovered’, I personally didn’t discover anything at all…but I was introduced to The Rotary Philosophy which was a discovery for me. It is hardly new, having been written in 1932, however amidst […]

If It Is Not Simple, You Are Not Working Hard Enough

by Tony Vidler It takes a lot of work to make complex advice simple and succinct, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the creation of a financial plan or Statements of Advice. Those 40 page plans, or worse those 80 page plans and pieces of written advice, are barriers to consumer engagement […]

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