Adam Tucker
Beddoes Institute, a data and benchmarking company that works across all major stakeholder groups in the financial services sector, has launched the Adviser Trust! Score™.
The trust score is a powerful success metric developed specifically for the Advice sector. Beddoes Institute analysed over 3,000 client ratings for more than 60 different client experience metrics to develop the Adviser Trust! Score™.
The Adviser Trust! Score™ is based on ten questions asked of clients including the widely-recognised Net Promoter Score® in addition to other customer loyalty metrics relevant to the adviser-client relationship. As such, the Adviser Trust! Score™ moves beyond the NPS™ by incorporating elements of the adviser-client relationship that are unique to the advice sector, and by doing so, has become a more sensitive and relevant tool for the industry.
The score has been empirically validated by comparing client and business outcomes for advisers with a high Adviser Trust! Score™ against those with a low score. Advisers with a high score produced better outcomes for clients and greater client satisfaction, whilst simultaneously rapidly growing their advice businesses and increasing profitability.
“It’s an exciting turning point for the advice profession” Dr Tucker, Director of the Beddoes Institute said, “as it paves the way for all levels of the advice sector to engage with the challenge of rebuilding trust with clients and consumers.”
Not only can the Adviser Trust! Score™ be computed for an individual adviser, but it can also be calculated for a practice and a licensee or dealer group.
In addition, the Adviser Trust! Score™ can also be used to segment clients – the high value segment being those clients who give their adviser a high Adviser Trust! Score™.
“So often client segmentation is based on historical information such as product purchase and spend, which like the historical record of the stock market, is a poor predictor of the future. On the other hand, attitudinal segmentation using the Adviser Trust! Score™ is a forward measure based on the characteristic of the relationship between the client and adviser/practice” Dr Tucker said.
“It is the clients that give their adviser a high Adviser Trust! Score™ that will produce growth and profit for advisers, practices and licensees over the next 1-2 years and so it’s vital for practices and licensees to know who these clients are and service them accordingly.”
An Adviser Trust! Score™ of 85 or more out of 100 is now the key qualifying criteria for the Most Trusted Advisers (MTA) network, a network designed to serve as a ‘trusted adviser’ referral source for consumers.
To help consumers understand the level of excellence achieved by these advisers, the Adviser Trust! Score is accompanied by an Adviser Trust Star Rating, with advisers achieving an Adviser Trust! Score™ of 85 or more also being awarded a 4 or 5-star rating (out of 5 stars).
Membership of the Most Trusted Advisers network is by invitation only and is based solely on how participating advisers have been rated by their clients. “The advisers we survey include the very best of the best from our corporate partner advisory networks as well as those advisers who have, over the past three years, been finalists and winners of a number of different Award programs including the prestigious AFA Adviser and Practice of the Year Awards,” Dr Tucker said.
Advisers on the Most Trusted Advisers network are assessed every 12-18 months and must re-qualify in order to continue to belong to the network. They cannot pay to belong. Eighteen Advisers (listed below) have recently re-qualified for a second time, demonstrating that they are able to maintain the trust of their clients in an increasingly difficult business environment.
In addition, the 37 new advisers listed below have met the extremely high qualifying criteria for the MTA Network since February 2015 and have now joined the elite group of Most Trusted Advisers taking the total Advisers in the network to over 100.
Consumers can source a trusted adviser in the MTA network via the free Most Trusted Advisers App available on Apple devices as well as through a website.
“The App allows consumers to in effect crowdsource an adviser they know they can trust. It’s a little bit like being able to talk to thousands of neighbours over the back fence about how to find an adviser they can trust,” says Dr Tucker.
For advisers, the Most Trusted Advisers network formalises their clients’ endorsement of their services. “Our message to advisers who are members and those who wish to be is – your clients trust you and now, via the Most Trusted Advisers network and app, others can too.”
