Many advisors still believe it is essential that they personally manage their clients’ investments. But outsourcing investment management has been proven to improve compliance at 64% of firms, cut costs at 44% and improve investment quality at 63%.
The truth is clients don’t care who is actually managing their assets: they trust you to manage their financial dreams. Research from Spectrum shows that clients leave advisors for a lack of communication or trust – it rarely has anything to do with investment decisions or even performance returns.
In this article, we invite you to reevaluate your role as a business owner. Could an unnecessary resistance to outsourcing be holding you back? And if so, what could letting go of the reigns mean for your firm?
Expect to learn:
➡️ How outsourcing reduces costs at the average advisory firm
➡️ Why outsourcing can actually increase transparency
➡️ What advisors do with the free time outsourcing gives them
Three Ways Outsourcing Investment Management Leads to Faster Growth
1. Reduce Operational Costs and Focus on Your Core Competencies
Most advisors assume that keeping functions in-house is financially prudent. Why waste time sourcing a third-party when you can just manage investments by yourself? But this overlooks several factors that produce a very different cost-benefit calculation.
Consider the full costs of effectively managing numerous clients’ investments and portfolios. You need to pay for access to:
➡️ Research databases
➡️ Portfolio management systems
➡️ Rebalancing systems
Not to mention the time and effort required for the various administrative and due diligence tasks.
The net result? Outsourcing is often far more financial efficient – especially when you factor in the increased growth most firms experience from using third-party investment managers. Your firm can access professional expertise and innovative investment solutions without the excessive consultation fees or upfront costs. Better still, outsourcing frees you to focus on servicing your clients and leads to a measurable increase in the value of your firm.
A recent study of over 700 advisors confirmed this: 67% of firms that outsource investment management experience 17% lower operating costs, while 77% grew their total assets under management by 27%.
2. Increase Performance Visibility
63% of advisors don’t outsource because they fear losing control of their firm. They suspect outsourcing will force them to trust figures they can’t verify or reduce accountability and therefore impact overall performance. But these concerns are not borne out for two reasons.
The first is simply that outsourcing doesn’t harm portfolio performance – it improves it. One study found that 63% of advisors believe outsourcing enhances the quality of their investment management. Another piece of research shows 67% of firms that outsource investment management report making more new client acquisitions and 65% say they retain more clients.
Second, the right outsourcing model can actually increase visibility and transparency. Using RFG Advisory’s Bluemonte platform, your firm can access a curated list of leading investment platforms or even have your own OCIO (outsourced chief investment officer) building investment portfolios and ongoing rebalancing decisions on your behalf. Better still, you can assess them more objectively because you are not personally working on the account. This explains why advisors that fully leverage Bluemonte see 19% organic growth each year compared to those that do not.
3. Focus on the Bigger Picture
Outsourcing removes a range of tasks which are a perennial time-suck for advisors. From due diligence and research to monitoring investment performance, you can free a significant portion of your week and redirect those efforts to other value-adding tasks. In fact, even advisors that outsource less than half of their tasks saved nearly 6 hours every week.
What you do with that free time is up to you. For some advisors, it simply an opportunity to enjoy owning their own business and improve their work-life balance. Others use it focus on strategic decision making or servicing clients – producing a meaningful boost to their firm’s overall value.
Studies show that 68% of advisors that outsource investment management report having better client relations, while 48% receive more referrals. This can have a cascading effect, improving your reputation and ultimately helping you build the business of your dreams.
All of which begs the question: What strategic opportunities are you missing because you aren’t outsourcing investment management?
Find Out What Supported Independence from RFG Could Mean for You. Book Yours Today.
