Bridging the “advice gap”: how your millennial clients can benefit from seeking financial advice

For many millennials, the coronavirus pandemic was a trigger to seek financial advice. According to a study by Oxford Risk, published in FT Adviser, 16% of younger investors have sought more financial advice during the pandemic than they would have normally.

If you have millennial clients who have begun to take an interest in their finances, there has never been a better time to do so. Studies show that receiving professional advice has a wide array of benefits, so here is how your millennial clients can benefit from seeking financial advice.

Studies have found that receiving professional advice has direct financial benefits

One of the most obvious benefits of receiving professional advice is that your millennial clients will be able to make informed decisions regarding their finances. This can help them to grow their wealth more effectively and allow them to meet financial goals more easily.

According to a study by the International Longevity Centre (ILC), many clients who receive financial advice felt more able to take greater risks with their investments than they might have otherwise.

This change in their attitudes to risk translated into an increase of £47,000 in additional wealth over a period of a decade, on average. This included an increase of £31,000 in pension wealth, which can be invaluable for helping your clients to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in retirement.

Building up a pension fund is likely to be one of the most important financial steps a client will take. Whilst retirement may seem far in the future, the earlier your clients start saving for it the better and a financial adviser can help them to find the most effective ways to do so.

An adviser can help your millennial clients to absorb financial shocks more easily

According to a report by market research firm Mintel, there has been a sharp rise in money worries amongst millennials during the coronavirus pandemic due to the financial strain it has put on many of them.

Short-term disruptions, such as being made redundant, can have a serious impact on your clients’ long-term financial stability. For example, if a client is unable to work for several months, they may have to dip into their savings to pay the bills until they get back on their feet.

Even relatively small financial shocks can set your clients back on the progress towards their goals. This is where an adviser can help, by working with your millennial clients to restructure their finances so they are better able to absorb them.

For example, this might involve something as simple as helping them to set up an emergency fund so that they have a financial buffer against the unexpected.

A study by Royal London found that working with a financial adviser made many clients more likely to feel that they had the financial resilience to overcome financial shocks. This confidence can be invaluable for your millennial clients to have when making large life decisions such as buying a home or starting a family.

An adviser can help your millennial clients to find the protection that suits their needs

In the same vein, one of the best ways that an adviser can help your millennial clients is by enabling them to overcome larger financial shocks, which may have a significant impact on their finances. As the pandemic has shown, illness can strike unexpectedly and, when it does, your clients’ financial wellbeing may suffer if they don’t have the right protection in place.

If your clients are the primary, or only, earners in their household, an unexpected bout of illness which leaves them unable to work could have serious consequences.

This is especially true if they have important commitments such as mortgage payments to make. According to a study by Legal & General, more than one third of millennial joint-mortgage holders stated that if they passed away, their partner would be unable to keep up with mortgage payments.

This is a worrying statistic, given that the same study found that around two fifths of millennials had no life insurance in place, putting their finances at unnecessary risk.

This is where an adviser can help to find the protection that suits the needs of your millennial clients, giving them the confidence to live their lives with the knowledge that they are protected against the unexpected.

Get in touch

If you have millennial clients whom you believe could benefit from seeking financial advice, we can help. Email enquiries@prosserknowles.co.uk or click here to request a call back from one of our advisers.