A client relationship often goes much deeper than the financial advice service advisers provide.
Looking after a client's mental wellbeing is as much part of their job as making sure staff and they themselves are happy and content, according to the guests on the FT Adviser In Focus podcast.
"It's really really important that your clients and your members feel confident to be able to have those kind of conversations," says Rob Heath, wealth director at IronMarket Wealth.
"If we know one of our members has suffered a life-changing event, be it a critical illness or the loss of a loved one, we will definitely increase the amount of communication, whether that be a text or a phone call, a visit to the home, a visit to our office where there's more people, but that trust has already started from the minute they walk through the door to come and speak to us for a wealth need."
Patricia McGirr, chief marketing officer at Finanze Group and a former mental health nurse specialist, says spotting vulnerability in clients and deciding how to deal with it is little different to dealing with staff.
"It's creating a safe space wherein people feel like they're being treated as human beings...it's having a conversation with the person you're dealing with, which is about what are their goals, what are their purchases about, what is the life event that's either leading to this purchase or as a result of them maybe downsizing and wanting to refinance."
She says it is about talking to people as humans and remembering the small things.
"When someone says 'I'm going to be away for a fortnight, I'll get back to you with the documentation, it's my daughter's wedding', even just recognising something as simple as saying 'hey, you know, congratulations on that, how are you feeling about it, where are you going', it literally is creating a culture of genuine care for the person."
She adds the difficulty in spotting signs of mental health issues is "strong hearts break in silence", which means it is often not obvious that a person is struggling because it can be easier for them to hide their feelings than talk about them.
Therefore asking questions and taking a little bit of extra time to enquire about their circumstances and feelings can work well for advisers.
Gaurav Shukla, chief executive at Home Me Mortgages, has vulnerable clients in certain circumstances, for instance when their deposit is made up of an inheritance.
"That [inheritance] could be as soon as two months ago, three months ago, and losing a loved one is big, it's massive," he says.
But they could also be vulnerable when they're going through the stresses of a first-time house purchase.
Therefore, he says, "the culture we have here is every single client needs the same amount of care, we don't work on a volume basis, we work with giving the customer the service they need."
