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.”

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Adam Tucker

From their work with some of Australia’s leading financial advice practices, the Beddoes Institute (Beddoes) has discovered that while practices come in all shapes and sizes, the one key driver of success is a disciplined approach to business planning.

Director of Beddoes, Dr Adam Tucker, says there are four pillars which support business planning and advice practices must excel at all of them if they are to succeed in 2015 and beyond.

The four pillars are:

1. Strategy and Business Management
2. Marketing/Clients
3. Infrastructure and Operations
4. Human Resources

To help advisers understand how to construct and maintain these pillars, Beddoes has created a free interactive tool which takes only a few minutes to use.

“It’s a simple tool that takes far less time to use compared with other planning tools,” Dr Tucker says. “We are calling it The 10-Minute Business Planner.”

Advisers using The 10-Minute Business Planner will find:

• An interactive business checklist
• A business plan scored and prioritized, ready to download
• A growing list of resources to help implement the plan

Dr Tucker says the results and resources will help advisers manage priorities and allocate resources where they’ll do the most good. “We are seeing effective managers regularly reviewing business fundamentals to identify gaps before they become a problem,” he says. “The tool is designed to quickly and easily identify these gaps and thereby help advisers to address them.”

Beddoes is currently producing a snapshot of the advice sector to share with the broader adviser community early next year.

The 10-Minute Business Planner can be downloaded free of charge here.

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Adam Tucker

Another 32 financial advisers have been added to the Most Trusted Advisers Network (the Network), designed to serve as a referral source for consumers to advisers that other consumers profoundly trust, making a total of 64 advisers on the register and consumer-facing App.

Beddoes Institute, a data and benchmarking company that works across all major stakeholder groups in the financial services sector, launched the Network in August this year after analysing thousands of client ratings from a survey of over 150 advisers and identifying an objective benchmark of exceptional client service and performance – a Net Promoter Score (NPS®)[1] of 50 or more. Director of Beddoes Institute, Dr Adam Tucker, said members of the Network have an average NPS® of 72, which represents one of the highest results the company has seen.

“We are seeing phenomenal results from these advisers,” he said, “And their clients are gaining better outcomes than we have seen from other adviser relationships. The survey process is tough, and it is honest. Under a confidentiality agreement and with the consent of their clients, advisers have to hand over their whole client base to us for review.”

The 32 advisers join the first 32 invited into the Network in August, and have proven to be the best of the best in terms of keeping clients on track with their financial plan, having more satisfied clients, and having stronger relationships with clients than other advisers surveyed.

“Advisers in 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,” Mr Tucker said. “We have just had David Clark of Clark Pacific and Anne Graham of McPhail HLG Financial Planning re-qualify, so we know that the process is continually rewarding the advisers for their hard work and also keeping them accountable.”

Consumers can source an adviser in the Network via the free Most Trusted Advisers App. “The App enables consumers to find an adviser who has really happy clients. We have gone direct to the clients and they have provided us with honest and detailed feedback,” Dr Tucker said.

A full list of the new Most Trusted Advisers appears at Appendix 1. Advisers in the Network have a variety of different licensing arrangements. Appendix 2 reveals the number of Most Trusted Advisers to date from each licensee.

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[1] The NPS® is a powerful loyalty metric which has been linked to profitability and growth in a wide range of businesses. An NPS® higher than zero is regarded as ‘good’ while an NPS® of 50+ is regarded as excellent. Advisers must achieve an NPS® of 50 or more in order to qualify for membership of the Most Trusted Advisers network. Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

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Beddoes Institute launches referral app for consumers to advisers.

Beddoes Institute, a data and benchmarking company that works across all major stakeholder groups in the financial services sector, has launched the Most Trusted Advisers network, including a register and consumer-facing App, designed to serve as a referral source for consumers to advisers that other consumers profoundly trust and as a way to champion best of breed advisers.

Beddoes Institute analysed thousands of client ratings from a survey of over 150 advisers and identified an objective benchmark of exceptional client service and performance. That benchmark is a Net Promoter Score (NPS®) of 50 or more.

Speaking at the launch of the Most Trusted Advisers network in Sydney last week, Dr Adam Tucker, Director of Beddoes Institute said, “The NPS® is a powerful loyalty metric which has been linked to profitability and growth in a wide range of businesses. An NPS® higher than zero is regarded as ‘good’ while an NPS® of 50+ is regarded as excellent. Advisers must achieve an NPS® of 50 or more in order to qualify for membership of the Most Trusted Advisers network.”

By way of illustration, Optus has an NPS® of around minus 8, Telstra around minus 13 while airlines collectively average around zero.  “Advisers in the Most Trusted Advisers network outrank consumer brands like eBay, Dan Murphy’s and Emirates*,” Dr Tucker said.  “We are seeing scores in the advice industry that are higher than we have ever seen anywhere.”

Membership of the Most Trusted Advisers networkis by invitation only and is based solely on how participating advisers have been rated by their clients.  “The advisers we surveyed included the very best of the best from corporate partner advisory networks as well as those advisers who have, over the past three years, been finalists and winners of the AFA Adviser of the Year Award,” Dr Tucker said.

The survey is the Beddoes Institute’s Client Experience Survey, part of the Beddoes Institute’s Leading Practices Program. “Most Trusted Advisers deliver significantly better outcomes to their clients,” Dr Tucker said. “Their clients believe they are more on track with their financial plan and are financially better off as a result of working with their adviser compared to clients of other financial advisers.”

Most Trusted Advisers also rated higher on their qualifications, experience and technical skills than other advisers and have better interpersonal skills, Dr Tucker said. “We found that clients of Most Trusted Advisers are more satisfied and have stronger relationships with their advisers than clients of other advisers. We were also very pleased to discover that the advisers currently included on the Most Trusted Advisers network hail from different segments of the industry, including both institutional and non-institutionally aligned licensee groups.”

Advisers on the Most Trusted Advisers network will be assessed every 12-18 months and must re-qualify in order to continue to belong to the network. They cannot pay to belong.

Consumers can source an adviser in the network via the free Most Trusted Advisers App, which has now been approved by Apple. “The App allows consumers to in effect crowdsource an adviser 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.”

For advisers, the Most Trusted Advisers network formalizes client endorsement of their services. “Our message to advisers who are members and those who wish to be is – your clients trust you, now, via the Most Trusted Advisers network and app, others can too.”

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