Is A Financial Advisor Essential For Wealth

Is A Financial Advisor Essential For Wealth

Sean: Question from Mitch. Do you think the industry, financial advisory, is already over-saturated?

Toni: I doubt it because the insurance penetration in the Philippines is still quite low. So among the population, we have here in the Philippines, only less than 3 million are actually insured. So I wouldn’t say, no. It isn’t saturated because there are a lot of financial advisors that you know, perhaps, there’s probably one that reaches out to you at least once a year. Right?

But at the end of the day, regardless of what industry it is, like in real estate, in insurance, or in business, what matters is really the quality of the services you offer. So regardless of whether or not it is saturated, you can still stand out in a sense.

Sean: We have a question from Erika. What type of services do financial advisors provide?

Toni: I would say, you know, a common question that’s in line with that is, do people really need us? And that’s a common question that I get, even on TikTok. Come to think of it, today, the most common problem that we see is that people have, you know, there’s a lack of financial education. I mean, you can admit that they don’t really teach personal finance in schools, or at least in my school, they don’t. And number two is that they don’t have a financial game plan. And then number three is they don’t also have their own financial coach or a financial mentor.

So we can all agree that people need guidance when it comes to their finances. And I would say that there are times wherein, you know, a lot of financial advisors, they’re, a number of them just push products. Right? But you know, that should not be the case. And in my team, we’re trained to do it the right way. So what we do basically is, okay, let me visualize it. So there’s this point A which is their financial situation now, and then their point B. So part of our jobs is to know what their goals are. How can they reach from point A to point B? Or how can you bridge their gap?

So when clients approach me, they’re looking for something bigger than what they have now. It’s either insurance, educational planning, or health insurance or retirement funding and all of that. So there’s always a gap. And most of the time they don’t even know it. Like, let’s say for example, when I do a policy review or when I tell someone that, okay, do you have insurance? You’d be like, okay, I have a policy already. But then when you do the calculations, when we do the numbers, you can see that sometimes there’s a gap. They actually need like 3 million coverage for their whole family, but they only have one million.

So in other words, we help clients reach their goals. We help them bridge the gap between point A and point B in a sense, you know, you can see us as financial doctors. So right whenever you go to a doctor, doctors ask questions and then from there on, they make a diagnosis. So it’s the same for us, right? We ask questions and if the clients give us the right data, then we can give the right recommendations. Because our rules at the end of the day are to help them reach their own financial goals and identify those gaps.

Now, to be specific about the services, as I’ve mentioned, we do like insurance planning, we do educational planning, investments, we also do debt management and even tax planning. But there are also other financial advisors that offer more services. So there are financial advisors who are also accountants. Or there are also financial advisors who are lawyers, right? So you can also get extra services from them. And, you know, iit really depends for every financial advisor. So those are the services that financial advisors usually offer.

Sean: And then from Erika. What should I look for in a financial advisor?

Toni: So, okay. The first step that they need to do is to know whether or not they are licensed.  Right?  So that’s the first thing that you can consider. Maybe I could go deeper. So the first thing that we need to do is to look for competence. Right? So go beyond that. We already know that the person is licensed, but go beyond the titles or the designations. Look for credentials, look for their education, their past works, experience, references. Right? And then you can gauge the level of services that that financial advisor can provide to clients. Right?

And then the second thing that you need to look for is charisma. Right? So are you comfortable with him in your first meeting? So normally you can already gauge how compatible the two of you are through the first meeting. And more often than not financial advisors offer free financial planning sessions. So you get to know about them in the first meeting. Right?

And then the third thing that you need to do is to, I would say, judge their character. But maybe not everyone is a good judge of character, but in a sense, you need to care more about the agent that will represent you rather than the insurance company. It’s because, you know, when you’re falling sick, when you get into an accident, or let’s say, knock on wood, you lose a loved one, it can be traumatizing. Right? So it’s good to have someone who actually cares about you or empathizes with your situation and will make the experience more bearable. Right?

So when you pick the right agent, you save yourself from administrative nightmare or you’ll have someone really from the inside to assist with your queries or your claims. Right? And these are definitely intangible benefits that money cannot buy.  So during the crisis, I think we’ve learned that almost everyone else will take money from you. Right? Doctors or lawyers or people who are bats, chasing or asking you to pay off your debt. Right? But you know, only your insurance agent will bring money to you. It’s like that. So it’s very important to choose your financial advisor and don’t overlook those factor points.

Sean: From Mitch. How important is having a social media presence for financial advisors? What platforms have you used to promote yourself as a financial advisor? There you go, that’s for you.

Toni: So maybe the first question, how important is it? Well, even now during the pandemic, you really have no choice, but to build your social media presence, because that really is the only way for people to know what services you offer, what your branding is. And I would say it is super, super important, because this is a way for you to establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry. Like how do you expect people to reach out to you if they don’t know what you do?

And what I do is, of course, I determine what my core competence is. And I’ve always been into making videos and my friends even know this. So I’ve always been filming myself, talking in front of the camera, even if it’s not personal finance related. I even posted a video  on TikTok of me showing how I budgeted my 20 peso bill when I was around 10 years old. Actually, the video is on TikTok. And, you know, you can see that I’ve always had the passion for making videos.

So I did the same and I did it first on YouTube, but I figured that long form content, I guess, is not very good at hooking people’s attention, especially people in the cold market. What gets people’s attention is short form videos that would make people interested. So the good thing about TikTok is it really helps in terms of virality. I don’t think a lot of people are willing to sit down and listen to someone talk about the stock market for one or two hours. Right?

So if you take a look at Nas Daily if you’re familiar with him, his videos got viral because he was able to squeeze all of that information in under 60 seconds. So TikTok is pretty much the same thing. And that’s why I went there because I realized that it really is good for organic reach. Meaning, I never spent a single peso on ads to grow my following. It was really just more on consistently putting content out there and putting up videos that are very easy to consume or to understand.

And then the second question is, what platforms have you used? So I started with Facebook because normally everyone starts out on Facebook. So, you know how you make a page. You share a quote. You share tips. But I figured that it wasn’t for me. I was just doing what all the financial advisors were doing at that time, because they would usually promote either on Facebook or on Instagram. But I realized that the market on Instagram is quite saturated. So there are already a lot of people on the app. If you want to stand out, you have to pay for ads. Something like that. You have to boost your posts.

But when I started out, I didn’t really have enough money set aside for marketing. So I really just went on TikTok and I tried it out. And next thing you know, I’m here in front of Sean Si and speaking to all of you watching.

Sean: Yeah, I’m still at like 40%, 50% trying to convince myself to go to TikTok, but a lot of people have already been goading me to go to TikTok.

Toni: Yeah, I know. You should. You should. People would love to see your content. When I first started, there weren’t a lot of educational content takers. I’ve seen lawyers, doctors, but I noticed that there weren’t a lot who were talking about, maybe, the only business that I knew that went viral was Ms. Nina, the CEO of Colourette. But there was no one talking about personal finance or investing. So I said, okay, it’s still quite undervalued for finance content creators, I’ll get on the app. And then one thing led to another, it went viral. The growth just went boom.

Sean: Thank you so much everyone for being here tonight. And we are so glad that we have you here tonight. On behalf of the Leadership Stack team, I just want to thank all of you for being here.

Toni: Thank you for having me and I really hope that all of you guys watching got a lot of value from this and just learned at least one or two things. And you know, after this, I hope you apply something, the things that we shared to your life.

Sean: All right there you have it. Thanks guys. Bye, bye.