With baby boomers aging, insurance advi-sors are finding that having conversations with clients about their wills and estates can lead to opportunities, such as uncovering new assets to manage and the need for insurance products. But to have these discussions, advisors are demanding more from their firms for “support for wills and estate planning” — and the results of this year’s Insurance Advisors’ Report Card show that firms are, indeed, delivering.
Overall, the average performance rating for the support for wills and estate planning category increased to 8.0 from 7.5 in 2009. And a closer inspection of the results reveals that advisors were happier with firms that have given them the resources — such as direct access to accountants and lawyers who can answer questions or host seminars on this topic — to help facilitate those conversations. As an advisor in Ontario with Calgary- and Toronto-based PPI Financial Group Inc. says: “It gives you extra mileage in your relationship [with clients].”
In fact, discussing wills and estate planning with clients is becoming more important for insurance advisors, as many of their investment industry counterparts don’t broach the subject, says Byren Innes, senior vice president and principal of NewLink Group Inc. , a Toronto-based consultancy: “The whole issue of wills and estates really opens up a new discussion with clients, especially since investment advisors focus so much on the accumulation of assets and not so much on the disbursement of assets.”
Direct access to support was the biggest gauge of advisor satisfaction in this category. In fact, the easier it was for an advisor to reach support staff in the wills and estate planning area, the better the firm’s rating. And among the firms that ranked the highest were PPI Financial, at 9.4, and Mississauga, Ont.-based IDC Financial Inc., at 8.8.
Making information on this topic easy and accessible for advisors has always been a priority at PPI Financial, says chairman and CEO Jim Burton: “From the beginning, we have always put in a lot of effort into wills and estate planning, as it gives our agents more access to high-end markets.”
Currently, the firm employs six lawyers, three accountants and six actuaries across Canada on its wills and estate planning team. “We want our advisors to have hands-on resources,” Burton says, “which means having a number of lawyers and accountants available to provide workshops and education.”
@page_break@IDC also has expanded its support for wills and estate planning. In addition to hiring an in-house consultant, whom advisors can call upon to deal with more complicated estate planning cases, the firm also has expanded the number of courses it offers to advisors interested in obtaining their certified financial planner and chartered life underwriter designations.
But beefing up services isn’t what caused the firm’s performance rating in the category to rise to 8.8 from 8.0 in 2009, says Ron Madzia, IDC’s president. Rather, this occurred because advisors are making more use of the support services and, therefore, are more aware of what the unit has to offer, he says: “When advisors get more excited and more focused on the type of business that requires support services, they rank the services higher because they are using them more often.”
Aside from IDC, other firms that saw major year-over-year ratings improvements in the category were Winnipeg-based Great-West Life Assurance Co. to 7.6 from 6.7; and Woodbridge, Ont.-based Hub Financial Inc., to 7.5 from 6.8.
GWL advisors cited easy access to in-house experts as the reason for the higher rating. As an advisor in Ontario puts it: “We have numerous designated accountants and lawyers who are at our beck and call.”
Much like the situation at IDC, greater awareness of the specialized support services that GWL offers advisors is what’s driving the performance ratings increase, says Hugh Moncrieff, senior vice president of GWL’s Gold Key distribution network. The firm has a tax and estates planning group, which supports advisors dealing with the high net-worth market. In the coming year, this group will expand its services by offering a series of workshops that focus on education and marketing for advisors who target high net-worth clients.
At Hub, the improvement in its rating in the category is the cumulative result of the firm’s ongoing focus on giving advisors more education, says John Lutrin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer: “As education in that area gains more traction among advi-sors, there is more appreciation for its existence.”
Advisors with London, Ont.-based Freedom 55 Financial, however, were quite dissatisfied with their firm’s support in this area, as the rating for the category fell to 6.7 from 7.5 in 2009. Some cited the lack of access to support staff as the main reason for their dissatisfaction. Says an advisor in British Columbia: “There is support. But it’s not available, to a large extent, when I have questions or problems.”
As Freedom 55 and sister firm GWL have restructured their joint tax and estates planning group, frustrations have arisen, says Mike Cunneen, senior vice president of Freedom 55 and its tax and estates planning group: “We have directed our tax and estate planning group consultants to focus on larger, more complex cases. And this may be seen as reduced access by some advisors who may have worked with one of these consultants on smaller cases.”
IE