You know your client’s retirement date, their risk profile and which grandchild is at Stellies. Now try to find a phone number for their daughter in Johannesburg, the one who will inherit the lot.
When the estate is wound up, the money moves to people who have never sat in your office. They have a banking app, a share trading account and a view on advisers that formed long before your name came up. If the first they hear of you is a letter from the executor, you’re a stranger asking to keep their money. Strangers lose that argument.
The trust doesn’t transfer with the assets
Your client trusted you over twenty years of meetings their children never attended. The children see a fee on a statement and a name they can’t place, and the fee is the only thing they have to judge you on. Some will stay anyway. Plenty will move the money to the platform their friends use, or to the bank adviser who handles their bond, within months of the estate closing.
A better statement won’t change that. The only real defence is to be someone they already know by the time the estate is wound up.
Ask the parents a different question
Asking clients to introduce you to their children makes them uncomfortable. It sounds like you’re counting their money before they’ve gone.
Ask this instead: “If something happened to you tomorrow, who would be dealing with all of this?” Every client can answer it. The answer gives you names, and it gives you a reason to meet those people that serves your client first. A surviving spouse or an executor child who has never seen the plan will struggle at the worst possible moment. Helping your client prepare that person is part of the job.
Make the first meeting about the parents
The easiest first meeting is a family one. With the client’s permission, invite the children to the next review and walk them through where everything is. Which policies exist, who the beneficiaries are, where the will is kept and who to phone first. Keep it practical. Don’t pitch anything, and don’t ask about their own finances.
You’ll learn plenty anyway. You’ll see who asks sharp questions, who is overwhelmed and who already has an adviser of their own. They’ll see you explain their parents’ affairs clearly and without jargon, which does more for you than any brochure.
If a family meeting won’t happen, send the nominated person a short letter, with your client’s written consent, introducing yourself and explaining what you would do for them if they ever had to step in. File the consent. POPIA applies to the children too.
Give them a reason to stay in touch
After that first meeting, the relationship needs a light, regular reason to continue. Copy the executor child on the annual summary if the parents agree. Invite them when a big family decision comes up, like selling the family home or moving a parent into frail care. Send a short note when a change in the rules affects how the estate will be handled.
None of it should feel like a sales process. When one of them eventually wants help with their own money, you’ll be the obvious person to ask, and you won’t have had to ask for the business.
They won’t want what their parents wanted
The children are in their thirties and forties. They bank on their phones, they expect to sign documents without printing them, and they’ll compare your fee with something they read online. Decide now how you’d serve them. Can you meet on a video call at eight at night? Can you explain your fee in one sentence? Can they see their portfolio without emailing your PA for a PDF?
If the answer to any of those is no, fix it before the estate lands.
Start with twenty names
Pull your twenty oldest clients, or the twenty who bring in the most income. Next to each name, write down who would deal with their affairs if they died tomorrow. Where you don’t know, that’s the first question at the next review. By this time next year, every one of those clients should have a named person you’ve met at least once.
It’s a short list, and it covers the part of your book most likely to change hands in the next decade.
Not sure who your top twenty are? Commspace’s client segmentation groups your clients by the revenue they bring in over any period you choose, so your A clients are one report away. See how at www.commspace.co.za.
