‘Soul-baring experience’ needed for proper onboarding of clients

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Intimate relationships often start with a honeymoon period where everything looks rosy and your new partner seems perfect in every way.

In my wealth advisor and family office practice, where relationships with clients are simultaneously professional and personal, the flaws and cracks are revealed quickly – right at the start, during the onboarding stage of the relationship.

For our clients, it can feel like a soul-baring experience.

Advisors talk a lot about understanding “the big picture” so they can develop a comprehensive financial, tax and estate plan for clients. This may sound like cliché marketing, but it’s a vital truth in the work we do.

As part of onboarding, we talk about life goals. That’s the nice and easy part where clients tell us about the life they’d like to live today and in the future. When we start getting into the numbers, however – how much money they make, spend, save and want to pass down – some of our clients may get anxious.

If they’re a couple, we may feel tension in the room; money and love often create the perfect breeding ground for power imbalances, and these inequities quickly become apparent to us as we probe into what our clients want. Often, one-half of the couple — typically the one who brings in less in income or net worth — defers too much to what the other wants, or sometimes doesn’t say anything at all.

But that’s still the easy part. The real challenge starts when our probing expands beyond the person or couple in front of us, beyond the numbers on paper, and into the various corners and people in their lives.

There is no place for judgment, and we need to know the facts. We ask about alcohol and substance abuse; is anyone in the family – yourself included – struggling with addiction? Does anyone have a gambling problem or other mental health issue? We ask about their children. What are their lives and careers like? How good are they with money? Do they get along, with each other and with you? Any half- and step-kids? Do the children live in Canada or do some live abroad?

Some of our questions force our clients to really dig deep and, perhaps for the first time in their lives, articulate what they didn’t even know they felt. We’ll ask parents which kids they consider strongest and weakest, and which ones they trust the most to make the right decisions during critical times, such as if one of the parents became incapacitated and unable to make health- and money-related decisions.

The real challenge starts when our probing expands beyond the person or couple in front of us, beyond the numbers on paper, and into the various corners and people in their lives.

It’s not unusual for clients to feel uncomfortable during these discussions. Some may feel guilty, especially when we get to the part where we ask how much material financial help each child has received over the years.

Did one child, for example, attend an Ivy League university while another pursued an entrepreneurial path and bootstrapped a successful business with little or no help from the family? Was money put down toward a first home for a couple of the kids, but not for the one who’s had legal problems and needed bailing out more than a few times?

Have any clients told us, “It’s none of your business?” Not in those words, exactly, but some have conveyed this sentiment through their body language or with their vague responses. A few have asked outright: How is any of this relevant to what we’re trying to accomplish here?

Short answer: It’s all relevant.

A financial plan works only if it’s built on the fully fleshed-out framework of a client’s life. Money enables the goals within the plan, but the plan itself must be based on all the moving parts that make up each client’s reality. Without full knowledge of this reality, financial advisors are merely selling products that may serve a good purpose but don’t necessarily advance an overarching strategy.

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In our firm, onboarding takes as many as five meetings over several weeks. We start with a “soft” conversation to see if a potential client’s values align with our values of love, laughter, trust, generosity, courage, authenticity, growth and empathy. This matters a lot because we don’t enter into transactions with our clients – we build relationships, the kind where clients know they can call us in tears when they’re on the verge of divorce or with pride because they’ve just welcomed their first grandchild, and where we know we can give frank, unfiltered advice.

Another important part of onboarding? The money talk – the kind where we detail our fees and the value we deliver. Consensus on the latter is critical because it’s no good to us if a client is willing to pay our fees but doesn’t recognize the value we bring into the relationship.

Once we get past the onboarding phase, that’s when the honeymoon period begins. Because things do look rosier when you have a comprehensive and realistic financial plan that assures you everything will be okay.

Elke Rubach is a Certified Financial Planner with CLU and MFA-P designations. Her expertise lies in optimizing income and tax efficiencies, achieving cohesiveness in financial and estate plans, and providing ongoing asset management strategies that foster wealth accumulation and growth. Elke is a reformed lawyer who earned her graduate degree in law, with a focus on banking and finance, at the London School of Economics, where she studied on a Chevening Scholarship. She worked as an associate at the London (U.K.) and Toronto offices of the law firm McCarthy Tetrault. During a stint in banking, Elke observed the life-changing impact of good financial advice and decided to switch to a career in financial planning and wealth management. She founded Toronto-based Rubach Wealth in 2012. Today, Elke is a sought-after speaker on wealth management, estate planning and philanthropy. She’s the founder of Fashion Heals for SickKids, which has raised more than $500,000 for pediatric cancer care and research since 2016. She also gives back with board and volunteer commitments with the Professional Advisory Council for SickKids Foundation, the Investment Committee at the Office of the Public Guardian, the advisory board for Transpod Inc., and the board of Ronald McDonald House Charities in Toronto.

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