PFP Podcast presents - Inside Paraplanning Episode 7

You're going to get me talking about objectives straight away, aren't you? So I think for me, it is objectives.

The information that is included in a client objective is so crucial to showing how suitable your advice is that I always find the objectives are very generic or vague.

Advisors often say that the client just didn't give them the information for it.

And that's such a fundamental part of advice is actually, what is the point of the advice? It's to meet the client's objectives.

And if they aren't, good if they aren't clear and concise and you know actually saying what the client wants you can't how can you prove that your advice is suitable so for me that's kind of one of the key things it's at the heart of suitability um but i still find that they aren't clear enough and there's not enough time given to developing them with the clients.

They can be a bit cut and pasty, can't they? I've seen this where objectives are on one client file and then they're on the next client file and the next client file.

And you're looking at them thinking, well, not only are these not client specific objectives, some of them are things like, I don't know, invest tax efficiently.

Nobody ever came in to see an advisor and said, I want to invest tax efficiently.

I mean, this is our job, right? This is our duty to the client to invest their money tax efficiently.

And I think getting to the actual heart of what they're trying to achieve, like you just said, is the advisor's skill.

But that doesn't always translate through to the file that we get.

My favorite is absolutely about beating inflation.

No client has any.

No, you want to invest so that you can.

No, no, no one's ever said that.

If you ask them what that meant, I guarantee they would not have a clue.

And I think it's just exactly as you said, Alan, like it's cut and pasting.

for the notes that we're getting, but then it's also these very generic, you want to be invested in this way, you want to do it.

They haven't actually said that, put it in the client's own words, surely it's much more palatable for them, but also it allows us to then refer back to them throughout the report in a much more personal way.

I've had that same thing with advisors saying, oh, the client didn't tell me.

and they didn't say it in the way that you want it.

And that's like, no, they won't just give you like a smart objective off the bat.

You know, They don't always know what they want.

That's kind of the idea is to try and build that out over time.

I've said this before, but it doesn't have to be your full SMART objective straight off.