Human nature never ceases to amaze me as the majority like to learn the hard way and be reactive rather than proactive. We all learned what this reactive behavior could do to one’s mental and financial health during the pandemic. Sure, we are all told to have an emergency fund with X amount of months’ worth of expenses to cover basic needs, but this pandemic has taught us that we must go beyond this. Death and illness came knocking very close to home for so many, leaving the vast majority of family members or those closest to having the misfortune of being personally affected by the inevitable far too soon, completely caught like a deer in headlights.
For Financial Professionals, Financial Advisors, Independent Broker-Dealers, RIAs, Community Banks, Credit Unions and Banks:
So what can we do as professional service providers such as financial advisors or banks? Offering the service to your clients that will help them capture anything and everything that may be important to their lives is one of the greatest services you can offer. It is timeless for the client and their family, and the peace of mind component it can provide indefinitely. Let’s face it we know as financial advisors that investments are a commodity these days. We must retain clients, and the only way to do this is to provide service that allows us to be held in our client’s eyes as nonreplaceable. Your client has hired you because they trust you and use your current technology stack because they are used to it.
Bringing the digital vault experience alive by adding or integrating it into your existing tech stack will keep the clients on your platform engaged in a unique way and keep them with you, the person they have grown to trust for advice. You have them; don’t lose them in these turbulent market conditions.
Show up differently; show up with 2ndVault (but white labeled as your own). Our digital legacy is alive and real. Let’s tap into it with our clients and speak the language that has evolved since we began serving clients. Let us fit into our client’s agenda rather than focusing on what solution we can sell them next, which eventually will be seen as self-serving.
Advice for our Clients:
Become better financial stewards in our everyday lives but always prepare for the unknown and know what we have and where we can find it when we need it when something unexpected comes up. We typically have one “point person” in each household who manages most of our finances or takes responsibility for paying the bills and managing the basics. The other may have somewhat of a clue but not much. It’s normal. But moving forward, we can’t have this be the norm. Instead, keep a digital vault with anything important to you and where it can be found rather than being caught with our pants down when the unexpected hits.
For example, what medication or allergies you may have to a favorite cookbook to where you bank. The list is long, and getting this done can seem taxing. Oh, but it’s not because a new tech company has solved this and created an unbelievable user-guided experience through yes or no questions to remove the thinking for you on where to begin and what to consider capturing. It’s non-intrusive and allows you to provide the breadcrumbs to prevent searching for them in a time of grief or panic. It creates efficiency in your life today by allowing you to pull PDF documents on the information you entered to meet the requested information needs that may come up, such as filling out school forms for your child or applying for a mortgage. Let’s become more mindful of the important vs. urgent and not just deal with what is urgent today.
I believe we have been taught a valuable lesson that, eventually, the important will become urgent at some point, and it is a horrible feeling when you are not prepared. Preventing panic is much less costly than treating it under pressure.
