By Laura Hutchison via Iris.xyz.
Once more, I want to say that Russell Investments believes in the value of advisors. And we believe communicating that value to your clients is more important than ever. That’s why we keep sharing this easy-to-remember formula:
In the first blog post in this five-part series, we discussed the value of annual rebalancing. Then we covered behavioral mistakes. In this post, we’ll tackle the cost of basic investment-only management.
We’re talking about basic investment-only management because we all know quality investments are important. We believe services such as asset allocation, security selection and portfolio construction are the building blocks of any successful investment strategy. All three are critical for hitting a client’s financial goals.
We also recognize that robo-advisors are making these three building blocks more accessible and affordable than ever. For good and ill, robos have taken this industry by storm over the last decade, commoditizing whatever aspects of wealth management they can commoditize, most typically in the form of basic investment vehicles and approaches.
But here’s the thing: Investments are only one component of a comprehensive financial strategy. Wealth managers do so much more. Robo-advisors may be great at taking in large amounts of available numeric data and creating if/then criteria for specific, predictable problems. Human wealth managers, on the other hand, still have the advantage of taking in many additional sources of information, including the personalities of clients, the surprising life events clients face, and the other non-numeric aspects of a real person’s investment journey. A skilled wealth manager can then craft a comprehensive, real-world financial plan that addresses the unique needs that every individual client faces.
Read the full article at Iris.xyz.
