New Research Reveals 5 Opportunities to Address in 2012 Business Planning

“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” - Demosthenes, c. 380 BC

Opportunities, both small and big, are plentiful in today’s investment and retirement market: a new customer need, a new way of doing things, a crisis or a threatening trend. Competitors who recognize and adapt will gain share and influence. But there’s a dark side to opportunities-those competitors who don’t see opportunity, or fail to adapt, eventually wither.

To stimulate business planning, Hearts & Wallets presents the first seven Insight Modules of the 2012 Investor Quantitative Panel. Opportunities abound, along with examples of firms who are capitalizing and thriving, or losing relevance. The top five topics we propose you think about are:

• In 2011, “advice gaps” increased for most tasks, including retirement planning. (The “advice gap” is the difference between when people think a financial task is difficult and actually seek help for it.) Meanwhile, the industry is screaming itself silly offering retirement advice. How do your firm’s advice and retirement offers and messaging need to change to actually reach people?
• What an investor really wants in terms of help (investment decision-making process) is often misaligned with channel choice. Contradictions abound: 25% of “Delegators” use a self service firm as their primary provider, while 31% of investors who use a full service firm as their primary provider describe themselves as “Self-directed”. How can your firm clarify what your “advice-pricing value proposition(s)” are, and how they compare to alternatives?
• Nearly half (46%) of Emerging investors (age 21 to 27) say they don’t own investment products, and risk aversion is rising. It’s hard to imagine how these Americans will achieve financial security unless someone can show them how they can participate in our economic system. What is the younger investor opportunity for your firm?
• Americans have fewer relationships with financial services firms in 2011 than they had in 2010. One in 5 Americans fired a provider. What can you learn from the firms who are winning and losing?
• Three of the top 5 most important attributes Americans seek in financial providers are related to reasonable, clear, unbiased pricing. Only a few firms are giving it to them, and they’re winning share. What’s holding your firm back from satisfying this reasonable desire?

Laura