Welcoming a baby is a major life event and can spark the need for some wealth planning. This is a perfect time for you, as a financial advisor, to add value and show your client that you are listening and that you care. Millennial clients appreciate a proactive advisor who is in touch and aware of their various life events.
The biggest challenge here is being able to add value without spending a lot of time in the process. As their trusted financial advisor it's your job to provide awareness on key wealth planning issues and opportunities as well as encourage (and motivate) your clients to act.
The key wealth planning opportunities that arise when your clients are welcoming their first baby are:
An important part of the will planning process is to determine a guardian for their children. Some of your clients may already have a will in place, but for those that don’t, the birth of their first child usually provides the motivation they need to get one done. The key here is to leverage technology to strengthen your client relationship in the will planning process.
One of the reasons people get life insurance is for income replacement in the event that something unexpected happens to them. When your clients have children, they now have someone depending on their income. Making sure that their dependents will continue to live at the standard they are used to, can be a key motivator for obtaining insurance.
Opening up a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP). As an advisor, this is something that you can help your client with directly. Ensure they are aware of the Canada Education Savings Grants and explain what happens if their future children do not attend post-secondary education.
Great, now we have covered where you can add value but the real question is HOW.
Try not to spend a lot of time here. You could pick up the phone and explain the wealth planning opportunities, send an email, or schedule a client web meeting. However, the issue with these three options is that the information will most likely be too detailed for this stage of the planning. They probably aren’t ready to make these decisions quite yet, and the detailed work can be overwhelming. Remember, they are busy planning to welcome their new baby!
Your goal here should be to plant a seed. A great way to be there for your clients is to send them educational content. You can do this by sending them an infographic or maybe a video, something they can view at their leisure. Visuals are a powerful way to help your clients engage with the information you are providing. HeyAdvisor’s content library has a section dedicated to the life event ‘Having a Baby’ where you can find reliable original content to send. Make the email personal by congratulating them or expressing your excitement. Then set a reminder in your CRM to follow up in a week or two.
HeyAdvisor is a digital content library that financial advisors leverage to connect with their clients. The highly engaging educational library of videos and infographics is white-labelled with advisor branding and can be integrated into email marketing campaigns, websites, client portals and social media. The intuitive library is grouped by life events making it easy to add value to the client relationship at times in their lives that matter most. Review our plans here.
