Making advice matter in an expanding market

"We can matter greatly to those individuals who are looking for options and solutions, to navigate their own personal journey through later life, into retirement and beyond."

At our recent National Later Life Adviser Conference, we were fortunate to hear from the British astronaut, Major Tim Peake. To say that his talk was original, illuminating and down right, inspiring, was perhaps an understatement and there were also points when you couldn’t help but feel a little bit intimidated by the scale of his achievements.

However, it’s all relative isn’t it? For instance, look into the vast expanse of space and you’re likely to feel even more inconsequential until, as Tim pointed out, we acknowledge that we (as far as we know) are the only intelligent life in the known universe. It makes us special, it makes us unique, it makes us matter.

In our ‘space’ it also makes us matter to our clients. Changing the course of humankind by landing on the Moon, or in the next decade or two perhaps landing on Mars, is the preserve of very few, but helping people right here, right now change the course of their own life for the better can be the preserve of the many, and it can certainly be the preserve of advisers, particularly in the later life space.

We can matter greatly to those individuals who are looking for options and solutions, to navigate their own personal journey through later life, into retirement and beyond. It is a message that we should increasingly put out into the market, a signal we should send time and time again – and in doing so the more positive contact we will get.

And for advisers, there should also be an acceptance and a willingness to engage with what the market has to offer. Whether you are a seasoned pro across multiple later life lending sectors, or you are a specialist in one area, or you are looking at the undoubted growing market that is already here and is only going to expand like our universe, there are more opportunities than you might ever have imagined but it’s going to need a full 360-degree proposition that covers all product solutions.

The good news here is that you are not alone. Tim Peake didn’t somehow find himself up on the International Space Station just through his own endeavours. His talk detailed the huge amount of planning, resource, investment and time that goes into that feat, and it is a vast team of people all over the world, working together for that common goal.

So, one person matters but also by working together we are able to achieve tasks, goals and ambitions that would go far beyond our own individual capabilities.

It is a message that I hope many delegates took home with them, because let’s be fair, a large number of those working in the advice sector are one man/woman-bands and therefore there is a real need for those value-adding, support service propositions like Air, that can allow advisers to be more than the sum of their individual parts.

This is a settled product sector but it has seen some extraordinary change in a very short space of time and a brief history of it will tell you all you need to know about what is likely to be coming over the horizon. The underlying fundamentals of demand are only going to get stronger, which is likely to be mean greater numbers of providers, greater solutions, more clients to service and more needs to meet.

That change can be difficult to keep track of, so it is likely to be important that you have somewhere to go in order to be provided with everything you need. To have everything at your fingertips in order to service clients in an ever-changing sector, whether that’s sourcing, or product choice, or the best commission terms, or T&C, or CPD, or marketing options – I could go on.

Having all that in one place, having access to all this and more, is going to help you adapt to meet the changing needs of your client base and the changing aspect of the sector. It will ensure you don’t stand still, it will mean you are able to drive your standards of advice and activity higher, it will ensure you can keep learning and developing your individual skills and knowledge, and help grow your firms to achieve all you want to.

It is a big old universe but you have to acknowledge the big picture in your own world and do what you need to do in order to make the most of the opportunities that are available right now and in the future. Get it right, and partner with the right business, and you’ll not be waiting on the tarmac for blast-off but out in the stratosphere exploring and achieving all manner of existing and new worlds. Let’s go on that journey together.