In a “scissors economy” that threatens to chop out the middleman, financial advisors must become even more innovative, a former director of economic policy at the U.S. White House said this morning.

Todd Buchholz, speaking at the Million Dollar Roundtable annual meeting in Toronto, said that, along with travel agents, technology can send financials advisors the way of the Dodo bird — unless they adapt to the hyper competition around them.

“This is a question you have to face up to or get snipped out,” says Buchholz. “Because, in a scissors economy, we are all middle people.”

He says a rising number of clients, and potential clients, are asking themselves, “Why do I need you? You get a fee, you get a commission, why can’t I travel to my lap top, press (delete) and cut you out of the loop?”

Luckily, Buchholz says, advisors have the ability to adapt to aggressive, competitive times by being better at what they do, and by demonstrating that innovation and expertise to their clients.

“You can say to your client, ‘Yes, you can buy financial products without me, but I know you. I know your family. I care about you, your lap top doesn’t,’” Bucholz explains.

Buchholz says the “perfect storm” of demographic change and financial meltdown that advisors find themselves in today is an opportunity for them to build their expertise and strengthen personal relationships with their clients.

“This is still our chance to make a better life for our friends, our families, our neighbours, our clients and our respective countries,” he says.

Also speaking at this morning’s meeting was MDRT member David Buckwald, whose had more than 30 clients perish in the Sept. 11 attacks.

On the morning of the attacks, Buckwald was on his way to meet a client in New Jersey, when he heard about the attacks on the radio.

“I kept thinking, ‘please let it not be the North Tower (of the World Trade Center). I had 51 clients there, 51 people whose dreams I knew about,’” he says.

In the days following the attack, Buckwald distributed more than 30 cheques for the families of those killed. “We are the ones that go to a grieving widow and say, ‘You are going to be OK.’

He told the audience about how, seven years ago, he learned that a financial plan without a strong life insurance policy at its core is exactly that: just a plan.

“Insurance policies (for the Sept. 11 widows) meant they didn’t have to move to a one or two bedroom apartment and send their children to a school they’ve never seen with kids they never met,” he explains. “I saw how life insurance provided money so they didn’t have to go to Red Cross to cover their children’s tuition or borrow money from a father-in-law, a father-in-law still raging from the loss of his son.”

“This is what we do. This is what we’re paid to do and that’s why it matters,” he says.