For registered investment adviser (“RIA”) firms, the process of generating proposals has become simplified in the age of digital tools. By adding these tools to your tech stack, advisors can create proposals within minutes by following an intuitive step-by-step process.
After the initial contact with the prospective client, proposals become one of the most fundamental “first” impressions your firm can make. They typically include your background, your firm’s introductory summary, your prospective client’s account information, like existing assets, and expected goals and objectives, including the client’s risk tolerance profile. Another key component is the description of your strategy on how you will help fulfill goals with portfolio asset allocation, investment selection criteria, and rebalancing strategies. If executed properly, the proposal document can serve as a future guide post for both advisors and investors.
Advisors can benefit from implementing proposal generation tools that streamline the process with customizable templates, helping them easily understand the information required to be entered, while offering investors a well-designed document that communicates the tailored investment recommendations.
Some advanced solutions even integrate with custodians or digital account open tools to pull the client information from the existing custodian directly into the proposal. If accepted, all information can be directly synced into the digital account open tool.
The key benefits of digital proposal tools include the following:
- Quick Proposal Turnaround: Advisors can provide prospective and current clients with extensive and detailed portfolio packages in an efficient manner, as templates can be reused, customized, and updated immediately after the first initial client contact.
- Enhanced Client Experience: The right digital proposal tool elevates the customer experience by giving the advisor more time to build the relationship with his or her clients.
- Increase Business Development: With the ability to expedite the proposal generation and delivery process, advisor’s will be able to spend more time developing new relationships
Providing your prospective or current client with all the right information is only part of the process in creating a strong client-advisor relationship. Advisor’s must also consider investors likely compare proposals while seeking the right investment advisor for them. Investors may also decide to move forward based on the first impression of the advisor and his or her firm. This puts more pressure on the advisor when it comes to producing the actual design and delivery of the proposal. It is ideal for the advisor to produce a clear, visually appealing, comprehensible document with clearly defined objectives and strategies.