Have Your Heard What’s New?
With everyone thinking of fresh and new, now is a good time to send out a call for updates from clients on what has changed in the past year.
From our experience, clients often make changes and forget to send those changes to advisors for updating. Things such as:
- Beneficiary updates
- Email, phone and address changes
- Add or change bank accounts (We have found that clients do not always remember to let us know when they change or add bank accounts).
- Updates to Wills and Trusts
- Health issues
- Additional children or grandchildren
- Life events such as taking care of an elderly parent
- Employment or other important events
For those clients that either don’t have annual reviews or they won’t be held soon, reaching out to them at the beginning of the year is not only a way to touch base and update their files but to let them know you are thinking of them beyond just handling their investments or giving advice. You never know, they might have just had a life-altering event and you can be there to help them.
There are several ways that you can easily obtain updated information from clients. Two examples are:
- Simply mail or email a questionnaire that clients can fill out and return.
- Use software such as Formstack and Fastfield forms to create fill-able forms so clients can quickly send updated information via your website or their mobile devices.
Helping your clients keep their account and personal information up-to-date on a consistent basis can be considered a value-added service that doesn’t take up much time, but can make a difference for your clients, particularly in areas such as keeping beneficiaries up-to-date.
Of course, if you prefer to spend your time on other tasks besides tracking down client updates, you could always assign that task to us. We have a variety of processes and form templates that can help both you and your clients and we can make this task one that is easy and efficient!
We hope you’re having a wonderful New Year and that we hear from you soon!
Copyright 2016 Sherry Carnahan
