Making Managed Programs Do More

Financial advisors are under enormous pressure to keep clients engaged and deliver measurable value, both from a performance and service perspective. The stakes are high. Investors are understandably skittish and unhappy clients are more likely to take their business elsewhere.

The financial industry’s rapidly changing landscape has not made the advisor’s job any easier. Complex markets and a burgeoning regulatory environment translate into more valuable hours being spent on “low-visibility” tasks—like investment research and compliance adherence—that are essential to the business but rarely seen or acknowledged by clients. Finding the time and resources to spend on the high-value, high-impact activities that help strengthen client relationships, showcase the advisor’s value, and build the business is a constant challenge.

Increasingly, advisors find themselves faced with a difficult choice: either focus on the investments or the clients. There are not enough hours in the day to do both.

A Few Ways Advisors Can Deliver Additional Value to Clients

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Reconsider managed programs

Advisors have been outsourcing portfolio management through managed programs for at least two decades in Canada. Though useful for some investment functions, they do have limitations, chief among them the overwhelming focus on product. Given the significance of the challenges facing advisors today, we believe managed programs must move beyond product if they are to deliver more than they have in the past.

That is exactly what Franklin Templeton has done with its flagship managed program, Quotential.

Portfolio management plus practice management

Quotential is a family of sophisticated, diversified, actively managed portfolios constructed to suit a range of investor objectives and risk tolerance levels.  Last year marked the program’s 20^th year in Canada, and it continues to be a popular choice for advisors and clients.

Over the course of 2022, some 10,000 advisors across Canada used Quotential in their client portfolios. Those numbers continue to grow as advisors discover (or rediscover) the program’s unusual fusion of  comprehensive portfolio management services with high value-add practice management capabilities.

Lifecycle turnkey support  

From prospecting, to presenting, to on-boarding and servicing, Quotential supports advisors throughout the entire client lifecycle. Many of the available tools and resources have been built for—and in collaboration with—successful advisors across the country.

One of the program’s more popular tools is the bestfit questionnaire. This online tool helps advisors quickly and easily determine the Quotential portfolio that best aligns with a client’s goals, time horizon and risk appetite.

Advisors can also choose to generate a professional-looking Investment Policy Statement tailored to the individual client, which can be useful for KYP/KYC documentation.

Control the controllable

Geopolitics, inflation, recessionary risks, volatility, lower return expectations, regulatory changes: most or all of these headwinds will almost certainly play a role in the markets this year. These factors are beyond the advisor’s control; but as the 10,000 advisors currently using Quotential have discovered, controlling how they allocate their time increases the value they can provide to their clients and their businesses.

We encourage you to talk to us about how we helped them get started—and how Quotential can help you take back control of your time and your business, starting now.

Important Legal Information

This material is intended to be of general interest only and should not be construed as individual investment advice or a recommendation or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security or to adopt any investment strategy. It does not constitute legal or tax advice.

The views expressed are those of the investment manager and the comments, opinions and analyses are rendered as at publication date and may change without notice. The information provided in this material is not intended as a complete analysis of every material fact regarding any country, region or market.

Data from third party sources may have been used in the preparation of this material and Franklin Templeton (“FT”) has not independently verified, validated or audited such data. FT accepts no liability whatsoever for any loss arising from use of this information and reliance upon the comments opinions and analyses in the material is at the sole discretion of the user.

All investments involve risks, including the possible loss of principal. Investments in foreign securities involve special risks including currency fluctuations, economic instability and political developments. Investments in emerging markets, of which frontier markets are a subset, involve heightened risks related to the same factors, in addition to those associated with these markets’ smaller size, lesser liquidity and lack of established legal, political, business and social frameworks to support securities markets. Because these frameworks are typically even less developed in frontier markets, as well as various factors including the increased potential for extreme price volatility, illiquidity, trade barriers and exchange controls, the risks associated with emerging markets are magnified in frontier markets. Equity and Fixed Income prices fluctuate, sometimes rapidly and dramatically, due to factors affecting individual companies, particular industries or sectors, or general market conditions.

Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, part of Franklin Templeton Canada. Franklin Templeton Canada is a business name used by Franklin Templeton Investments Corp.