Advisers open doors to $50k clients
Tuesday, 2 September 2008 12:35pm
Advisers are willing to take on clients with funds as little as $50,000 in a bid to win new business amidst tough market conditions, new research shows.
A new survey by Nielson, commissioned by ING Australia, noted that an increasing number of advisers will now consider clients with less than $100,000 and even $50,000 appropriate to receive financial advice.
Ross Barnwell, ING Australia executive director of sales and marketing, said that while advisers are still targeting the top end of the client scale, their expectations have moderated as investors continue to suffer the market downturn.
Around 59 per cent of the 250 advisers surveyed still believe that a client needs at least $100,000 of investable assets to be viable, but the figure is a four per cent drop from last year's 63 per cent.
"[Advisers] are still focused on the $100,000 mark or more, but the survey results show that there's more flexibility down to that next bracket," said Barnwell.
Revenue is an obvious area of concern as advisers receive less from clients with a smaller amount of investable assets.
To counter this, Barnwell said that the answer lies in "efficient interaction and service" for clients, which is driven primarily by the use of online transactions.
"Electronic interaction is a key part of this interaction.
"We've put quite a few different programs together for advisers, including [initiatives] such as our net web cast. And so far the uptake of those have been at record high levels," said Barnwell.
Ruth Liew
This story was found at: http://www.financialstandard.com.au/news/view/23910
Printed: Tuesday, 6 January 2009 2:42pm