Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked about pornography, “I know it when I see it”. 

Unfairly perhaps, “financial wellness” – or just “wellness” to her friends – is suffering a similar condition by defying consistent description by a notoriously analytical financial services industry anxious to connect better with clients. “Wellness” is fancied by CMOs and some CEOs for its promise of delivering enduring client value, but how do you introduce a concept that many clients might already be expecting – and not receiving?? I mean, isn’t the point of our advice and solutions to make clients financially “well”?? Awkward…

Nail That Jello to the Wall

The squishiness of “wellness” lies in the highly subjective benefits of being well. Not surprising when you consider the nearly infinite array of client situations and family dynamics where healthcare issues alone often disrupt even the most detailed financial plans. There are foundational elements – health, finance, security, wealth transfer – but no easy map to follow, no standardized answer. And that makes trouble for advice providers that don’t listen well or that cannot be both empathetic and purposeful in providing the needed guidance and solutions. “Wellness” doesn’t fit in a product box.

Peace of Mind

“Wellness” is most basically “peace of mind”. That’s how Frank McAleer of Raymond James defines it – he’s the leader of their effort with plenty of experience translating “wellness” into a business plan. That peace of mind includes financial, health and family needs that require preparation. More clearly, “What is the list of stuff you most worry about or that could go wrong as you live longer?” And what about family members for whom you could become responsible? Those lists are different for a 26 year old DC plan participant than they are for a 60 year old pre-retiree or a 75 year old with dementia. Or any of their family members. But the concerns are very tangible to all. Though the inevitable issues of longevity are tough to confront, there is a calm achieved by being ready.

Get Ready for the Wellness Experience

Wellness is the objective of planning – it is both a noun and a verb. An assessment at a single point in time of conditions that are guaranteed to change. Issues of wellness so pervade real life that calling out “wellness” as a concept separate from a plan, even in addition to a plan, seems superfluous. Do clients and retirement plan participants really need to be told we are working to help you achieve “wellness”? Or are we talking to ourselves again, to our advisors and product teams and marketers that we now have a higher calling than investing?

This is the conclusion reached by our Next Chapter study group on Financial Wellness. Wellness is a more catchy, benefit-sounding label than “success”, which is the presumed objective of planning. But clients don’t benefit from the words, they expect the results. I get the same weird feeling when I fly and a flight attendant calls out today’s opportunity to have the Airline X “Experience”. The what? Can we just land on time please? There is nothing outside of a first class pod that is worth calling out as an in-flight “experience”. Marketing overreach.

I’ll Take a Little Empathy with that Investment Portfolio, Please

“Wellness” and in particular “financial wellness” are internal design directives given to financial companies and advisors to make sure they don’t overlook the requirements of “wellness” in the solutions being created for and delivered to plan participants and advisory clients. To wit, the Next Chapter team, including the RJ longevity program leader, Amanda Stahl, named “empathy” as the leading design principle of “wellness”.

A Slogan in Search of a Business Plan

Integrating “wellness” into financial services is necessary to establish and sustain the value of the product/service offering. If the end beneficiaries don’t achieve peace of mind from their retirement plan, benefits offering or the services and solutions offered by their financial advice provider, they can be lured away by an offering that promises that peace of mind. Nothing motivates action more than fear – and there is genuine fear that manifests when you think you will run out of money or have to sell your home and move into assisted living. The reality of this vulnerability is becoming of greater concern to advice firms and plan sponsors who are not actively engaged with most of their clients (see Pareto’s Revenge https://theexecutionproject.com/paretos-revenge/ ).

The Business of Wellness – Five Levers Drive Results

My research and business experiences (successes and many failures) suggest that the most common and most impactful business growth objectives of broker/dealers – net new assets, consolidated assets and client household share of wallet – can be achieved with these actions based in “wellness”. Five levers in rough order of max impact/min effort. Intermediate measures like NPS (we used at Fidelity) can provide earlier confirmation of momentum:

Lever One: Words Matter – The Value of Common Sense Language

even very analytical services like asset allocation and investment policy can be made much more user friendly when rewritten from the perspective of conveying “peace of mind” instead of purely technical concepts and – essential – compliance disclaimers (Big fund companies are the frequent violators here). Language use is the fastest way to change perceptions of a firm, plan sponsor or advisor. Our Next Chapter Executive Board has been adamant on this perspective of improved language – stay tuned. 

Lever Two: Design for Better Outcomes instead of “Best Efforts”

Most retirement solutions in place today are market dependent. Results can be impacted by market risks well known to the designers but not so familiar to the investors. The designers rely on their knowledge of capital markets research and the known risks are further mitigated by assuming a long-term time horizon to smooth variations. That’s a rationale, objective approach intended to work across a broad population – and generally it does. 

But even the brainiacs will admit to “terminal point risk” that awaits unsuspecting retirees rolling out or annuitizing after a significant correction. Today’s retiring clients and plan participants have seen down markets – big ones – in 1987, 2000-01, 2007-09 and some sharp corrections in between. My late father knew nothing about markets or investing, but he knew when the stakes were too high for his peace of mind. He worked for universities his entire career and earned the negotiated benefits of retirement annuities. He surprised me by sharing that he had converted his 50-50 plans to 100% annuities with my mother as second life. He never looked again at the market. He cashed the checks, and she does to this day at 88. My parents’ definition of “financial wellness” was not having to worry about the markets, their income level, their ability to finance healthcare and the ability to age in their home. Done.

Once again, we are in the way of “wellness”. The best efforts approach undermines peace of mind by not providing a certainty of outcome. A risk matrix offering a percentage likelihood of success is great for analytical clients whose peace of mind is satisfied by data, but I don’t believe that represents more than a fraction of clients – especially when “client” is defined as a retiring couple and their family. In most client households there is someone who values protection and guarantees over potential returns or capital market theory, so why not at the same time (go to #3..)

Lever Three: Redefine the Client as a Family and a Household..and Engage

Most advisor engagement remains with a typically male and financially confident head of household. Firms are aware but not yet effective in providing (requiring??) more direction to advisors for supporting the family across today’s most common HNW construct of three generations – aging parents and adult children surrounding a Baby Boomer couple. This demographic sandwich will drive more than 80% of advice industry profits through at least 2030 and success is dependent on retaining existing clients and consolidating their not-held assets from competitors gearing up to mount a similar effort. 

At Fidelity we sought the identity of other family members and developed simple communications to be more inclusive of less financially savvy relatives. We created a specific design target – a Baby Boomer wife and mother – to guide the design of the branch office right down to the furnishings and colors. But the operationalizing of “family” means some serious additions to CRM and data stores as well as some much needed training and coaching of associates that talk to clients. Peace of mind is different for different age groups and levels of financial literacy. Today’s Boomer retirement plans are providing real time education for their children and grandchildren. Some positive, some not so much.

Lever Four: Service Models for Everyone

Fresh off the summer vacation season, we are reminded of the challenges of bringing everyone together. Each family member has their quirks. Separately identifiable service models provide family members with options for engagement – especially with respect to communications, pricing and product options. “Separate” provides space and identity and satisfies each individual’s peace of mind. And that’s financial wellness. Because peace of mind for one client may be the reliability of a paper account statement – for another it may be the immediate transparency of a mobile app. The ability of an advisory firm, plan sponsor and plan administrator to offer a choice of service models – including in-plan advice and fiduciary wealth management (including trust) is fast becoming the expectation of HNW families – and history indicates those expectations roll “downhill” quickly to the mass affluent and beyond. Separate service models allow the advisor/firm/sponsor/platform owner to more easily and consistently focus on improvements for unique cohorts. Each needs to know we care enough to know and deliver against their preferences. 

Lever Five: Adoption is the New Innovation

Last for a reason, “adoption” here refers to the integration of “wellness” principles into the delivery of services and solutions. There is both a “will” and a “skill” perspective to adoption. Financial advisors may or may not have the skill to help clients plan with the full empathy needed to anticipate the needs of an aging parent or pay off a child’s college loan. That’s a management problem for an advisory firm to make sure empathetic advisors are in place. Bull market success further reduces the incentive to engage – the “will” – as well as the energy to reach all of the clients in a given advisory practice. This failure to engage creates real risk for firms with low share of wallet – as we saw with Fidelity in 2009. Especially if their engagement is wholly dependent on the will of the human advisor and does not – as we did at Fidelity – complement busy advisors with consumer outreach in support of advisors to drive warm leads. But wait a minute, Merrill Lynch did the same with Total Merrill 20 years ago. The future of large scale client engagement is to provide some level of lead generation and direct-to-consumer outreach on behalf of advisors and not rely on human advisors to fully shoulder the burden of optimizing the opportunity of the full client roster. 

Discovery: We Can Design for Adoption

Adoption is also a challenge to the operational eco-system of the advisory firm or plan administrator. Call it “ethos” or values or customer centricity, the issue of wellness adoption by the eco-system is simultaneously an issue of empathy and humility and the willingness to invest. Removing friction from systems benefits consumers and delivering associates. But it needs a vigilant champion empowered to take action. And budget to improve system effectiveness. 

The reality of adoption is that it is seldom achieved because of either will or skill. Adoption of the complex array of anything – including the myriad “wellness” measures needed to produce human peace of mind – is most often the product of DESIGN. The most adopted products and procedures lend themselves to adoption because adoption was one of their creators’ key design principles. In the popular consumer view, if I need an owner’s manual to understand a product, I might not want it. Financial firms seeking better and more comprehensive engagement of plan participants and advice clients will increasingly have to facilitate that engagement, not hope that if they build “wellness”, people will clamor for it. 

The Business of Wellness: The State of Mind to Create Peace of Mind

The bad news for companies is that “wellness” is not a widget they can attach to their existing offering. That approach has been attempted with the best of intentions by retirement income product providers who developed myriad riders and benefits aimed at specific consumer objectives and concerns, like combatting inflation or funding long-term care. In the hands of good advisors during the planning process, these products and their capabilities can provide invaluable peace of mind. But complexity of the products and their sometimes inconsistent availability (and pricing) are barriers to more consistent use in planning – and adoption by more advisors. These barriers are beginning to fall as demand for peace of mind – protection, security – rises and firms respond. 

“Wellness” Requires Technology, Humans Alone Can’t Ensure Peace of Mind

To achieve its true potential as the True North of retirement solutions, “wellness” has to be integral to the language and the systems and the solutions of the firm. Despite the good intentions of many service contacts and financial advisors, the human resources of the industry don’t have the capacity to accurately record and maintain full engagement with clients, participants and their families. There are too many people to track, to proactively provide information and to be available to help establish and maintain “peace of mind”. I will never forget the call from a seasoned advisor who had completed his outreach to a HNW family, with the help of the head of household. “I now have nine clients instead of one!” He was only partially kidding. It’s a lot of work to track the needs of families and you don’t want to be the advisor who missed a Medicare election, a life event or the 21st birthday of a beneficiary. The solution is a combination of proactive systems leveraging data, simple tools that can be accessed by consumers and help self-actualize their needs, along with old school training, coaching and learning for all human associates for how they can best succeed in a company dedicated to “peace of mind”. This is the Village of Adoption needed to establish human leaders and delivery champions, DIY options for consumers and data-based processes to ensure the reach and consistency of engagement. And that is the #1 job of today’s financial firm CEOs, creating peace of mind – aka “wellness” – for BOTH their clients and associates.