Some of Canada’s major financial services firms are putting greater emphasis on the value of financial planning for clients in an effort to gain more clients and strengthen relationships with existing ones.

In October, Toronto-based Sun Life Financial Inc. launched a new eBook on its website, entitled Sun Days, in an effort to portray real-life stories demonstrating how financial advisors help people solve some of life’s most pressing financial situations.

Meanwhile, Bank of Montreal, also of Toronto, is shining a brighter spotlight on financial planning with both a new research poll highlighting the value of financial planning and new training initiatives for advisors.

Emphasizing the benefits of financial planning has broad advantages. On one hand, the majority of Canadians don’t have a financial plan in place — and financial services firms are promoting financial planning as a way for their clients to weather financial storms with more stability. On the other, this approach can help firms meet more client needs, resulting in strengthened relationships with clients and more cross-selling opportunities for advisors.

In the case of Sun Life, its research revealed consumers felt the financial world was relatively inaccessible. In fact, most survey respondents didn’t even know where to start in the financial planning process — or how to find an advisor to help them get started on their plan in the first place, says Bill Ramsammy, assistant vice president, corporate branding and marketing, with Sun Life:

“We wanted to help clients break out of the inertia,” Ram-sam-my says, “and make the process of finding an advisor easier with this campaign.”

So, the insurer focused its efforts on creating a humorous campaign that takes a two-fold approach to broaching the subject.

In television commercials, Sun Life’s campaign entices consumers to get on the firm’s website to find an advisor. Once on the website, consumers can read through Sun Days to learn more about what advisors actually do and how they help clients with their financial planning issues.

For example, website visitors can click on story entitled “A single mother reassured.” This story is told by Carl, a Sun Life advi-sor who helps a widow create a financial plan that allows her to pay off her mortgage as well as contribute to her RRSP and children’s education savings.

BMO has taken a different approach to bringing more attention to financial planning. The bank recently released the results of a poll it conducted, revealing that only 34% of Canadians have a financial plan in place. Meanwhile, the majority of respondents (57%) said that they recognize having a financial plan in place is crucial to attaining their investment goals.@page_break@Bringing the attention of the masses to financial planning is only part of BMO’s efforts in this area. The bank has also retrained advisors, encouraging them to make sensitive issues, such as death or the loss of a job, as the centre of client conversations; from there, advisors are encouraged to set up financial plans for clients that address these concerns.

It’s when advisors moved financial planning to the centre of their conversations that many misconceptions about what financial planning actually is began to arise, says Tina Di Vito, director of retirement solutions with BMO’s retirement market group: “Most people think, ‘If I don’t have money to invest, then I don’t need a financial plan.’ [But] it’s not just about investments.”

In addition, clients also avoid seeking advice about financial planning because they may find the financial world too complicated to begin with.

“It’s like a kid’s first trip to the dentist,” says Di Vito. “They are not sure what to expect. Often, clients comes out of a meeting with an advisor and see that it’s not as complicated as they had thought.”

Other firms, such as Missis-sauga, Ont.-based Investment Planning Counsel, have taken a more indirect road to focusing clients’ attention on financial planning. The strategy of these companies is to give advi-sors more financial planning tools, such as better software.

For instance, IPC upgraded its financial planning software last month to Lindsey, Ont.-based PlanPlus Inc. ’s PlanPlus Planit, which has been branded internally as Dream Planner.

Dream Planner will enable IPC advisors to map a client’s life goals, such as paying off a mortgage or buying a boat, and then calculate the math behind the scenes. The software also holds advisors accountable to the solutions they suggest to clients through its “plan review” function.

Such software tools help advi-sors to get clients to focus on their life goals and to track the clients’ progress in meeting those goals, which creates more satisfaction in the relationship, says Reggie Alvares, executive vice president of advisor and information services with IPC: “There has been a paradigm shift from product planning to holistic lifestyle planning, and clients want to see how close they are to paying off that mortgage or buying that boat.”

By bringing financial planning to consumers’ attention and broadening their service offering, financial services firms are strengthening their client relationships, says Keith Costello, president and CEO of the Mississauga, Ont.-based Canadian Institute of Financial Planners: “After what’s happened to investors over the past few years, it’s a good time now for companies to broaden their focus and start saying, ‘Hey, let’s promote financial planning’.”

Firms can create lifelong clients this way,” Costello adds, “as it’s unlikely they will start switching their portfolios from firm to firm just because of poor market performance over one or two years.” IE