You may be financially solvent, but are you "solvent in mind and soul" and if not, who are you going to call? This is the groundbreaking question raised by Susan Galvan in her recent post, "A Fiduciary of the Heart" on the FPA's Future of Planning blog. Its a stunning question and Susan's answer hits the nail on the head.
Galvan is a thought leader in the field of life and financial planning and her article gets right to the core of the argument of what we are all doing in the planning profession; it is also timely as it adds to the debate we have been developing on this blog about services, fees and professional relationships. Particularly, it provides both a reason for consumers' fear of visiting a planner, as well as setting out an answer.
Susan starts off by pointing out that the extreme materialism and consumption of the last decade brought us to the brink of financial Armageddon. However, she goes on to argue that this same extreme materialism and consumption has also brought us to the brink of an “insolvency of mind and soul” as well as a financial insolvency. For Susan, true impoverishment is when we forget our larger purpose, the one that connects us to the wellbeing of the world around us. Susan says that “we know that over-consumption eventually leads to death. You cannot fill an inner emptiness, an insolvency of soul with substances whether food, alcohol, drugs, money or stuff.”
This has deep implications for the client planner relationship. As planners we should truly be in the business of helping our clients become “healthy, wealthy and wise”, not only financially but in their lives as a whole.
For Susan, the crucial question is whether, as planners, we want to enable our clients to "live more amply with greater vision and a finer spirit of hope and achievement or do we just want to manage their money and make our own living in the process of doing so". Interestingly, Susan sees this as being important not only for our clients but for planners themselves.
Susan describes a simple strategy that will facilitate enriching our clients’ lives – and our own – in what really matters. She suggests we should get to know them in depth, providing genuine care for them as we come to know them in a very deep way. In our deep conversations with our clients we become a "fiduciary for the heart as well as the financial assets".
As we’ve noted time and time again, money is one of the most emotional things we have to deal with. We have always argued that you can’t deal with money on its own. You have to deal with its reason in our lives as well. This is so fundamental that once consumers realise what we do they will not only lose their fear of coming to see a financial planner, but positively embrace it, a trend we have seen at Planning for Life. They will find real value in the fees that they pay for our "genuine care" and advice. The holistic approach that Susan describes should not only increase the number of people wishing to visit a financial planner, but the subsequent demand created will ultimately pull more advisers and planners back into the profession.
