• A mixture of self-service, robo- and advised services (flexibility)
• The ability for customers to effortlessly switch between advisers.
With more than 14m millennials either currently, or soon to start, investing but languishing firmly in the ‘advice gap’, savvier intermediary firms will, in our opinion, be wary of focusing exclusively on the ‘fat head’ of wealthy clients with large portfolios.
They will also set out to attract the long tail of everyday millennial investors with smaller portfolios where there is just as much, if not more, value.
In the future, the most successful IFA firms will be the ones that can offer Millennials (and over time, Gen Z) professional advice in a way and at a price they are comfortable with.
At the heart of this new advice paradigm, radical transparency around service and fees will be key, as will the use of emerging technology platforms that connect advisers with the end investor.
Those that embrace this challenge will thrive, all the more so as those four figure millennial portfolios gradually grow into six and seven figure portfolios. On the flipside, those advisers that don’t embrace millennials are staring down the barrel of a gun.
Adam Dodds is co-founder of Freetrade.io
