Financial Advisor Succession Planning
Preparing clients for retirement is what you do best. Have you made provisions for your own? Succession plans are often overlooked by financial advisors, yet a transition strategy should be a component of any growth or marketing plan. This is particularly true for older advisors. More than $2.3 trillion in assets are managed by financial advisors aged 60 or above. Clients need to know there’s a plan for when their advisor retires. The expert consultants at Bridgemark Strategies can assist you with financial advisor succession planning to help you increase the value for your business and ensure stability for your clients.
What is Your Vision for Retirement?
When we do what we love for a living, retirement is the furthest thing from our minds. The first step in a succession plan is to envision what retirement means to you. Does it come at a certain age or when you’ve reached a specific goal?
Do you want to retain some ownership of your firm?
This option is more semi-retirement, but it could be the catalyst for triggering your succession plan. A senior partner steps away to take on more of a consulting role and a junior partner steps in to handle active asset management.
Do you have a financial goal for your retirement?
Perhaps you have a specific financial goal that determines when you walk away from the business. You’ve earned that right, but what about your clients? Leaving them to fend for themselves puts a damper on your life’s work. There needs to be a plan for them as well.
Succession Plans Turn a Practice into a Business
A succession plan can make the difference between managing a practice and running an actual business. As an active financial advisor, you accumulate assets under management (aum) throughout your career. That book of business can be kept intact after you retire. Choosing a successor and having a plan in place to smoothly transfer those assets to another advisor will preserve all assets under one roof and provide opportunity for the firm to continue to grow.
