McDonald’s has it. Coke’s got it, too. Kellogg and Levi’s have it down pat, as well. A customer of any of these companies knows what kind of an experience he’ll have when he buys their products or services.
Branding may be marketing jargon, but it represents a concept in which any financial services company wants to take part. The problem is: it’s a tough slog.
Winnipeg-based Assante Corp. is a work in progress in many ways, not the least of which is in developing its own name brand. Investment Executive surveyed planners at 13 firms for its debut Planners’ Report Card, but that number could be winnowed down to nine. Planners with the three firms under the Assante umbrella can see the day when their current names take second billing to their parent’s brand.
‘You’re going to see Assante as a recognizable name,’ says a Guelph, Ont.-based planner with THE Financial Planning Group, one of the firms Assante acquired in its recent two-year buying spree. ‘Eventually, we’ll be known by the Assante name. And I don’t have a problem with that.’
Assante’s recent moves to brand are common in an industry in the throes of transformation, and planners know it. The costs of regulation, technology, research and back-office systems are too daunting in the long term. The competition is fierce. Even when the big banks, brokerages and insurers talk about ‘wealth management,’ they mean financial planning. Planners everywhere recognize the alternative for those who are not into branding is to stay small and dissolve, or be swallowed up later by U.S. firms that make their way to Canada.
Assante has no plans to see its name become the overriding brand of the dozen or so firms it’s acquired, says Michael Nairne, president and chief executive of Assante Advisory Services Inc. in Toronto. The company has hired Interbrand of New York to get its name out as an ‘endorser brand,’ somewhat like ‘Otis’ does for elevator technology providers. ‘Clients want a competent local advisor backed by a deep-pocketed large institution,’ he says.
It’s not only the retail customer who understands what a company does simply by knowing the name; it’s the planner as well. A planner at Radville, Sask.-based TWC Financial Corp. says his firm is not necessarily trying to establish a name recognizable to a retail client, but rather to its own agents.
‘They do not strive to be a brand name for the man on the street,’ the veteran planner says. ‘We do our own advertising.’
To that end, planners under the Assante corporate umbrella look forward to the creation of an ‘Assante Academy’ for continuing education, an expensive undertaking that only a larger firm can afford. Assante – which recently went public – has also been hunting for a trust company to start the ball rolling with the consolidation of its insurance service.
‘It’s the right plan but it has to be executed properly,’ Nairne says. ‘It’s important to build meaning and quality.’
The upside of a big firm realizing operating efficiencies within its organization is the high profile when – or if – it all works out. The end game is clearly desirable, at least as far as planners are concerned. Winnipeg-based Investors Group Inc. ranked tops in terms of marketing support at 8.8 in the report card. Mike Miller, executive vice president of products and distribution at Investors, calls its name ‘probably our most important asset.’
It’s taken not only a focused, costly and constant marketing effort, but also 70 years to develop, Miller says. Clients and agents alike equate Investors with ‘financial planning,’ as opposed to other wealth management services. One rookie planner, who arrived at Investors from a major bank joined the firm because, he says, they’re ‘miles ahead of what a bank may offer.’
By contrast, one planner at Kitchener, Ont.-based Ross Dixon Financial Services Ltd. laments his firm’s efforts with the investing public and other planners. ‘It’s a joke in the company that we are the industry’s best-kept secret,’ he says, crystallizing the thoughts of planners at Dixon, who tagged their firm with a five for marketing support. Planners at smaller firms generally pay for their own advertising and seminars, and sometimes they wish they had some help. Planners at Ottawa-based Balanced Planning Financial Group, for example, rated their firm a 4.4 for marketing support.
Agents of Waterloo, Ont.’s Regal Capital Planners Ltd. pegged their firm with a 7.5 for marketing. But one Winnipeg-based Regal planner was skeptical of the marketing game. Long-term clients come to him from referrals he’s earned. ‘It tells me this business is built on personal relationships,’ he says. ‘If you expect someone else to build your business, you’ll be disappointed.’
That’s the flip side. The transformation into a monolithic, brand-name corporation means the client’s relationship with the independent planner can suffer. ‘My experience is the retail client deals with the person, not the firm,’ a TWC planner notes.
But when things go wrong, it can be disastrous. Planners at Toronto’s Fortune Financial Corp. know their name is mud. ‘The firm has been a mess,’ notes a Toronto planner who has been with the firm through its problems with regulators. Dundee Bancorp Inc. in Toronto is awaiting regulatory approval to buy Fortune.