Bringing advice to life: The future of client meetings

Quick insights:

• HUB24’s field research shows traditional, data-heavy client meetings are not delivering clients the clear, relevant insights and meaningful conversations they value.

• According to the 2024 Investment Trends HNW Investor Report, good customer service is the number one reason these investors choose their private wealth adviser.

• Technology that empowers advisers to turn static reports into compelling stories is driving efficiencies and deepening client relationships.

At the heart of client relationships lies the client meeting, an often once-a-year opportunity to demonstrate value, build trust, and maintain engagement.

Yet, despite the importance placed on client experience, the structure and execution of this review process have remained largely unchanged.

Opportunity to enhance client meetings

For many advisers, preparing for client meetings is a labour-intensive and time-consuming task involving pulling data from multiple platforms, logging into separate systems, manually verifying figures and formatting everything into a professional, client-ready report.

Canberra-based advice practice Custodian Financial has a diverse client base including farmers, politicians and retirees. Felix Humphries, Partner at Custodian Financial Group, knows well the challenge of producing client reports.

“Our review process was laborious, and we found that our clients weren’t very interested in the reports because they were too data-focused and not very engaging.”

Custodian Financial Group recognised that their clients were looking for more than just numbers on a page. They wanted clarity, a clear narrative, and the ability to explore specific investments or insights based on portfolio performance.

Communication is what clients value most

The 2024 Investment Trends Adviser Technology Needs Report found that most financial advisers who manage or advise on non-custody assets still rely heavily on manual processes.

There’s clear demand for solutions that help advisers communicate and engage more effectively – 21% of advisers expressed interest in using investment platforms to administer and report on these assets.

This is consistent with feedback HUB24 receives on its platform, where advisers call out client presentation and reporting tools as a key innovation that has been beneficial to them. Beyond lowering fees, advisers highlighted client reporting and review tools as the key area where platforms could improve.

Research shows that high net worth clients in particular, value clear, quality communication. According to the 2024 Investment Trends HNW Investor Report, good customer service is the number one reason these investors choose their private wealth adviser.

On the flip side, poor communication ranks among the top three reasons clients leave their adviser, alongside firm-related changes and concerns about fees or performance.

By improving how reviews are presented, advisers have an opportunity to address two of the biggest client pain points, namely communication and cost.

Rethinking the client experience

In 2022, recognising the inefficiencies in the traditional review process, HUB24 embarked on a project to review how client meetings could be enhanced led by HUB24 Group Product Manager, Leah Winterton.

Through deep engagement with advice practices, the team identified key pain points, adviser goals, and how technology could better support advisers.

The result was a client meeting solution, known as Present, designed to consolidate data, reduce manual effort, and support more meaningful conversations with a complete picture of a client’s wealth, including assets held on HUB24 along with other off-platform investments.

Present enables financial advisers to move away from static reports towards a more dynamic, storytelling approach. This helps clients see the bigger picture and understand the ‘why’ behind their portfolio’s performance, delivered instantly in one click.

Bringing the numbers to life

Through interactive visuals, customisable slides, and the ability to drill down into specific accounts or supporting detail, Present provides financial advisers with a way to tell the story a more engaging way.

For example, the platform’s “waterfall” chart is a highly effective way to explain the change in value of a portfolio for the period. Further, a quick switch in the timeframes used in a line chart, can help retain a client’s focus on the longer term.

“Clients often think a 10% return is a straight line,” explains Humphries. “Now, we can show them when global events like an announcement by the US President caused volatility and explain how their portfolio responded. It’s a much more engaging conversation.”

This shift from data delivery to storytelling has had a measurable impact at Custodian Financial Group. Weekly client reports that once required two full-time staff now take one person less than half a day to complete.

Investment updates, which previously dominated meetings, now take up just a quarter of the time, freeing up space for broader discussions about goals and strategy.

The change has also added efficiencies, and in the case of Custodian Financial Group, financial advisers now have capacity to see more than 150 clients per year, up significantly from previous years.

An industry ready for change

Custodian Financials’ experience is part of a wider shift across the financial advice industry to leverage technology to enable productivity and deliver enhanced client outcomes.

In a recent poll conducted by HUB24 at an Ensombl PD day, almost 650 advisers identified their biggest challenges in preparing for client meetings, citing the difficulty and excessive time taken in creating compelling visuals, collecting accurate data, and aligning outputs with their brand identity.

HUB24 continues to invest in this area, with a focus on retaining its current simplicity and incorporating more customisation, branding flexibility, market commentary, and enhanced ability to extract enriched data.

Leveraging technology to deliver human-led advice

The evolution of client meetings is more than just a technical upgrade, it represents a shift toward a more human, insightful and scalable client service.

Clients expect their financial advisers to deliver not just performance, but perspective. They want to understand their position, feel reassured and more engaged.

“We needed a solution that allowed us to articulate what we were doing and that clients could trust us,” says Humphries. “It’s no longer a one-way dialogue, we’re having real conversations again.”

By embracing smarter tools and more client-centric storytelling, financial advisers can unlock the full potential of their client meetings, transforming them into a strategic interaction that helps to deepen client relationships and grow the business.

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Client and business benefits driven by HUB24 Present: A case study

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