Attracting Millennial Clients

Millennials want quality investment advice from a Financial Advisor who knows what he or she is talking about and is willing to educate them on the financial markets and financial products. Shockingly, this sounds remarkably like every other client segment.

A useful quote often attributed to the late Sir John Templeton says, “The four most dangerous words on Wall Street are ‘this time it’s different.’” [1] This is good to keep in mind when advising Millennial clients since there isn’t any substantive difference between them and everyone else. 

While you may think they want something dramatically different than quality advice that fits their circumstances and beliefs, that isn’t the case in my experience, the experience of our instructors, or various studies issued by financial firms.  

The way you communicate is often different since smartphone usage is very high among this group, but good advice is good advice, no matter if you deliver it via carrier pigeon, snail mail, or smartphone. Besides, I have still noticed older people texting away with the rest of us.

A larger percentage of Millennials compared to other generations, are focused on socially responsible investing (SRI). But we see this interest across generations, it's just stronger among Millennials. While the popular conception is Millennials only want to interact with robo-advisors or other technology platforms that deliver advice without a person involved, this isn’t true either.  In a white paper released by Deloitte, 84% of this generation seeks financial advice from Financial Advisors, and of those who have Financial Advisors, the large majority want more personal meetings with their advisors, not less. [2]

According to this paper by Deloitte, “Many millennials possess a low-to-medium level of financial knowledge.” This signals a great opportunity for wealth management firms if they can figure out appealing ways to educate younger clients. Just having a “lunch and learn” is hardly the way to approach this. You need a systematic plan of education, which is not condescending and can be accessed via smartphones, laptops, tablets, or other devices. [2]

There is another issue with the Deloitte report which shows a standard trend repeating itself. “The language, which the wealth managers use has to be clear, simple, and understandable for the unexperienced Millennials.” [2]

Cannon has been beating this drum for decades. Industry financial jargon can be impenetrable even to those of us in the industry if we step outside of our specialty. Yet it isn’t just Millennials who want Financial Advisors to use less industry speak and communicate more clearly. All of our clients want us to communicate in this way. It isn’t generation specific.

We seem to have a great passion in this country for putting everyone into different categories and assuming everyone in that category is alike when they aren’t. We are especially attracted to broad generalizations. “All Millennials have loads of student debt.” Actually, more than 40% don’t, according to a recent study by Fidelity Investments. [3]

Fortunately, Baby Boomers (people over 55), who do everything possible to save for retirement, have paid off their student debts. This isn’t true, either. 29% of Baby Boomers have student debt according to the same Fidelity study. [3]

Generalizations are easy to make but unwise to follow. If we as Financial Advisors deal with Millennials as being part of a generation and not as individuals, we’re going to do a poor job of attracting Millennial clients. This will be true even for advisors who are of the Millennial generation.

We must put aside stereotypes and categories of every type and deal with individuals as exactly that, individuals. Everyone has different hopes and dreams. Our job is to help them realize their own individual hopes and dreams.

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Contributing Writer: Subject Matter Expert Charles McCain