Financial advisors are never short of opinions about their firms, whether they express them anonymously and confidentially for Investment Executive‘s Dealers’ Report Card or to their firms directly. But advisors would just like their executives to listen to their feedback a little more closely sometimes.
This year, advisors gave their firms an overall average performance rating of 7.5 in the “firm’s receptiveness to advisor feedback” category, a slight decrease from 7.7 last year. However, the gap between the overall average performance rating and the overall average importance rating (8.6) for this category raises a red flag. This gap is tied for the second-largest in the Report Card, which means that firms are falling well short of their advisors’ expectations.
Although some advisors said their firms pay attention to their concerns, many others said that confusing corporate structures and, in some cases, executives’ dismissive attitudes can make it difficult to be heard.
For example, many advisors with Toronto-based Assante Wealth Management (Canada) Ltd., who rated their firm at 7.6 in the category, down from 8.1 in 2013, feel the firm’s business structure creates a disconnection between advisors and their dealer’s executives.
“There are so many layers between myself and the decision-makers,” says an Assante advisor in British Columbia, “that any input I give gets filtered out.”
Assante executives, for their part, said that advisor feedback is a priority for them. “We go out of our way to ensure that we have that advisor input,” says Steve Donald, Assante’s president. “Clearly, we will need to try harder to close that gap.”
Another firm that also saw its rating in the feedback category drop is Calgary-based Portfolio Strategies Corp. Advisors rated their firm at 6.4 in the category, down from 7.0 in 2013. But Mark Kent, the firm’s president and CEO, says he has always had an open-door policy: “We don’t ever screen our phone calls or our emails.”
The issue for many Portfolio Strategies advisors is not that they can’t talk to their executives; rather, it’s just that the interactions they have sometimes can be negative.
“The experiences I’ve had don’t make me feel welcome or as part of the team,” says a Portfolio Strategies advisor on the Prairies. “It makes me feel like my role is just to generate revenue.”
Even advisors with firms that haven’t seen much of a change in their receptiveness ratings – such as Oakville, Ont.-based Manulife Securities – can find it difficult to get their message across sometimes.
“They have a predetermined mindset,” says a Manulife advisor in Atlantic Canada. “They’re not going to listen.”
This sense of frustration among Manulife advisors could be due, in part, to the recent restructuring of the firm’s parent, Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp., says Rick Annaert, Manulife Securities’ president and CEO.
Last year, the parent firm moved to having four business channels from eight. As a result, the structure of the field team – the people many advisors give feedback to – has changed, says Annaert: “This is an area that we can improve upon and make sure there’s greater clarity.”
Conversely, advisors happiest with their firms’ receptiveness appreciate executives who not only are accessible, they actively seek feedback. Even more important is that firms act upon, or seriously consider, the feedback that advisors give them.
Such is the case with Windsor, Ont.-based Sterling Mutuals Inc., which received the best rating in the feedback category, at 8.7.
“They listened to my suggestions,” says a Sterling Mutuals advisor in Ontario. “In the development of [our technology and back-office platform], they were very proactive as they told advisors to use it and to give feedback during the process. It’s a reason why the platform is as good as it is.”
Nelson Cheng, Sterling Mutual’s CEO, says the firm’s corporate culture is “not very formal” and, as a result, advisors know they can call head office anytime. Cheng does admit, however, that some feedback will receive a better response than others: “You don’t necessarily have to do what [advisors] ask you to do, but you still have to listen to them and hear what they have to say. And if [an idea] makes sense, you’ll do it for everybody else.”
Winnipeg-based Investors Group Inc., which saw its rating rise to 8.1 from 7.7 year-over-year, also was praised for its receptiveness to advisor feedback. In particular, many of the firm’s advisors appreciate that head office seeks their opinions.
To do this, Investors Group gathers feedback from its advisors through monthly calls with field management, says Todd Asman, the firm’s senior vice president of products and financial planning, as well as talking to people at conferences and allowing questions to be submitted via the firm’s intranet.
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