One of the most effective ways to increase assets under management and to deepen relationships with customers is to ask clients to consolidate their assets with your firm.  While there are some investors that will never consolidate their assets with just one firm, there are some surprising opportunities available for those advisors who will “Just Ask” their clients to do so.

Spectrem Group recently completed research with investors with $100,000 to $25 million of net worth and asked them what would make them more likely to consolidate assets with one advisor, and their answers provided lots of ideas for advisors to use when discussing this issue with their clients. 

First, it’s important to note that 78% of investors have only one financial advisor, however, those with higher levels of assets are more likely to have multiple advisor with 40% of those with $10-15 million of net worth having 2 or more advisors.  More than half of those with multiple advisors indicate that they have more than one advisor I order to meet different investment objectives.

When investors were asked why they might consider consolidating assets with their primary advisor, 21% indicated they would do so because it would be easier to manage their financial lives, while 20% would consolidate if they were receiving outstanding service from their primary advisor.  An additional 20% indicate that if their primary advisor had better investment performance than others, they would consider consolidation.  This is especially true for older investors.

Millennials are the most likely to consider consolidating assets especially if they felt their primary advisor had more diverse services available or if the primary advisor provided them with a financial plan.

Note that 35% of investors will never consolidate to one firm.  This is primarily because they “don’t like all of their eggs in one basket”.

One of the easiest ways to convince investors to consolidate assets is to review and discuss the performance of other advisors the investor may be using.  Twenty-four percent of investors indicate that their advisor did discuss the performance of their other advisors.  Once that discussion was completed, more than a quarter of those investors indicated they were likely to consolidate their assets with their primary advisor.

Clearly when advisors reach out to investors with multiple advisors and discuss the benefits of consolidation and point out their superior services, the ease of having all assets at one provider, and potential investment performance benefits, the decision to consolidate becomes much easier.  Millennials are especially open to consolidation.

For most investors, the advisor just needs to ask.