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For RIAs, 2017 Is All About the Clients

For RIAs, 2017 Is All About the Clients

Advisors expect to spend more time this year on building relationships and finding new clients.

Most advisors expect to increase their time spent on client acquisition and relationship building this year, while spending less time on HR and training-related efforts. This was one of the findings of a recent WealthManagement.com  survey of more than 530 advisors affiliated with RIAs.

Among the study’s additional findings:

  • When advisors reach out to clients, they emphasize the personal touch, preferring phone calls and personal meetings to webinars and blogs.
  • Most advisors—but not all—say their firms are prepared for the DOL fiduciary rule, and they expect it to result in more paperwork and more complicated compliance.
  • A majority of advisors do not currently offer robo-advice, but those who do (or who plan to) say they do so for competitive reasons, such as attracting Millennial clients or diversifying their services.
  • Advisors are three times more likely to expect an increase than a decrease in their use of alternative investments in client portfolios over