It has never been easier to communicate with almost everyone you would want to communicate with. Almost everyone has a smartphone, and an even higher percentage has a computer which receives e-mail responses. There are a few outliers who are only reachable by telephone, but those outliers are likely old and otherwise out of touch.

And that last group is also probably retired.

Spectrem’s affluent and wealthy investors communicate with their financial advisor. Between texting and social media, the practice of communicating with each other has become increasingly easy and immediate, assuming the person you are communicating with is holding on to his or her smartphone.

But retired investors may not be holding on to their smartphones, assuming they have one to hold on to.

Spectrem’s recent report Wealthy Investors And Their Use Of Digital Toolsdemonstrates that advisors cannot forget about older clients when it comes to their own communication practices. While the thrust of modern communication practices demands that advisors at least consider increasing their social media use and begs them to accept texting as a communication vehicle, it is obvious that there are older investors who are not on Facebook and don         Only 17 percent of retired investors have any interest in texting their financial advisor.

·         Asked to rate their interest in communicating with their financial advisor via different communication vehicles on a 100-point scale, retired investors placed their interest in texting their advisor at 33.03 (they were almost twice as interested in communication via e-mail at 64.60).

·         Interest among retired investors in communicating with their advisor via social media is virtually non-existent (6.34 on LinkedIn, 5.43 on Facebook and 3.72 on Twitter).

·         Asked to estimate the specifics of their annual communication with their financial advisor, retired investors said approximately 45 percent of their communication occurs on telephone calls (that’s voice-to-voice), 32 percent occurs in person and 18 percent occurs by e-mail. That’s virtually all communication that occurs between retired investors and their financial advisors.

The above percentages indicate that there are retired investors for whom modern technology is a part of their lives, and they are willing to communicate with their advisor the way their Gen X children and Millennial grandchildren do.

But there is a danger in believing everyone communicates through computer-generated or smartphone technology. Certainly, a huge portion of communication today occurs through e-mail, even though some younger investors do not have e-mail accounts they regularly check.

 

 

©2020 Spectrem Group

 

 

Keywords: social media, retirement, mobile technology, investors, advisors, Spectrem, digital