The High Price of a Missed Connection

What if 66% of Your Best Clients Left? 

Imagine this scenario. You’ve spent years carefully building a relationship with a local attorney. Finally, an opportunity to show your worth arises and you help the attorney out with a well-timed and perfectly orchestrated tax planning scenario using life insurance death benefit protection. Their client is elated, and your relationship with the attorney is cemented. Referrals will be going both ways now. Plus, you’ve landed a great new client.  

But wait.  

Years of cultivating relationships go into every life insurance sale. And all that time and energy invested can be tossed away if your client dies and you never met their beneficiaries. 

Odds Are, You’re Gone When the Money Comes In 

According to recent research, 66% of heirs fire their parents’ financial professional (1) after receiving an inheritance (2) and 70% of wives change their financial professional within 12 months of their spouse’s death (3). The assets you used to manage, gone. The relationships, transitioned.  

Who owns the new opportunity? Those forward-thinking financial professionals smart enough to cultivate relationships with their current clients’ beneficiaries. After all, when they’re important enough for your client to protect, they’re important enough for you to get to know. Your client’s beneficiaries are likely to become the next generation of wealthy. 

Consider the Role of Family Meetings 

Your opportunity may come in helping your client orchestrate a family meeting with their policy beneficiaries. Many clients find it uncomfortable to discuss their finances with their children. This can result in the lack of trust and poor communication that causes the vast majority of wealth transfer failures.(4) 

While most American families (74% of parents and 87% of adult children) know it’s critically important to talk about finances, few want to begin that conversation (11% of parents, 37% of adult children).(5) Top reasons for this avoidant behavior? Participants feel it will be awkward, stressful, and uncomfortable.(5) By learning to facilitate an effective family meeting, you can create a lifetime of good will and strengthen your ties with the next generation.  

And odds are, your clients will thank you for it, as nearly half (45%) of parents who discussed future financial plans with their children felt proud about how those conversations went.(5) If you manage to take an active role, all the better, as 55% of heirs said they would be more comfortable having financial professional present during the conversation.(5)