How Best To Deliver Bad News To Wealth Management Clients

It is not a good idea for wealth managers to hide or ignore bad news. Instead, you should flag problems to your clients as soon as possible – and explain context and causes, along with any action you’re taking to help the situation. This paints you in a much better light.

But too many wealth management firms still put the onus on the client to contact them when there has been an event like a market crash. Or, they simply leave it until the next annual review, which could be weeks or months later, to talk the client through what has happened and what it means for their holdings. This is not good for client experience and is completely unnecessary in the digital age. You can keep clients abreast of the situation in a general way, through social, email, web posts etc. But you can also offer more individual support, through video meetings with clients, so you can have a conversation about what the problem means for them specifically and how you are handling it.