The harsh reality is that there is no person alive today who will not die at some point in the future. This means that having to deal with a person’s estate is not only a possible event, it is inevitable.
From an accountant’s perspective, this means they have a professional responsibility (legal, ethical and emotional) to ensure that their clients are prepared for this event.
However, in most cases (even those with legal and current documents in place), clients and their advisers are not prepared for a person’s death.
As a technical area of advice, estate planning can be very complex and time consuming. In addition, it involves skills across a broad range of advisers. These issues alone mean that there is a lack of coordination, work is done inefficiently, different advisers are working with different pieces of information and costs for doing the work become prohibitive.
Adding further complication is the fact that people are often uncomfortable addressing their mortality, they are scared of the costs and therefore constantly procrastinate rather than dealing with the issues.
The end result is that most clients don’t get the advice and direction they need, their affairs remain out of control and advice businesses fail to benefit from the legitimate commercial opportunity estate planning offers.
The ‘Family Manager’ opportunity
Estate planning is a unique area of advice that naturally intersects all relationships associated with a person.
The high value opportunity for an advice business is to position themselves as the ‘Family Manager’ for the client. This is the most valuable role that can be undertaken with a client and means the advice business is engaged with the client at the strategic/management level.
Estate Planning For Life
The cloud-based Estate Planning For Life app from MYP, enables advisers to position themselves as the Family Manager with almost any client, bring order and control to the family, and very efficiently create a whole new estate planning business that drives high value and annualised (high margin) revenue.
With Estate Planning For Life, advisers can now efficiently, effectively and comprehensively:
- Analyse the current state of their client’s affairs and any gaps
- Identify the key personal and professional relationships and the key ‘hot’ buttons
- Appeal to the client’s desire to be in control of their lives (both now and also to have a back-up plan should something go wrong in the future)
- Instantly prepare action plans that specify tasks for the client and the advice business to complete
- Provide a quick (and low cost) way of keeping information current and ensuring that estate planning is an annual process
Estate Planning For Life enables advice businesses to genuinely connect with their clients at a more strategic management level.
The benefits to the client are obvious, providing them with greater control, security, confidence and transparency of their affairs. In addition, it ensures that all their advisers are working in unison.
By using and following the Estate Planning For Life process, your clients will engage with you on an emotional, practical and commercial level in a way that does not leave the client feeling overwhelmed by technical information.
To find out more about how you can engage and connect with your clients in a new way with Estate Planning For Life, click here or contact MYP for a free demonstration webinar.
- MYPcon17 – Time to refresh your thinking – MYP Corporation - 20 October 2016
- The New Way to Manage Your Personal and Business World - 5 November 2015
- Taking Business From Now To Next - 23 June 2015
