As a financial advisor, your clients are your lifeblood. Yet it’s easy to forget that and take the customers you have for granted — especially when business is going well. A reward programme allows you to give back to your most loyal clients, encouraging them to keep coming back to your services over time. And thanks to technology, it’s never been easier to do exactly that.
Here’s what you need to know about loyalty programmes, including why they’re so important for financial advisors and a few key features to look for.
Have you ever received a discount for your loyalty to a shop, or got a freebie for making x number of purchases? If so, you’ve been the direct recipient of a loyalty scheme.
Yet while these types of programs are common among retailers, you might wonder how this applies to financial advisors in Singapore. After all, financial advice is a very different ballgame from buying coffee or clothes.
You only need to turn to some of the biggest financial institutions to see that financial services and loyalty programmes can be compatible. For instance, an insurance company might offer its policyholders a Grab or NTUC gift card if they take out another policy with the same provider. Banks often give their account holders perks, such as free antivirus or accounting software subscriptions.
There’s no reason financial advisors can’t follow in their footsteps.
Once upon a time, individual financial advisors may have been closed off to offering these types of opportunities due to the high barriers to entry.
Beyond giving the occasional gifts to close customers during festive holidays or on a discretionary basis, giving rewards was too complex. There was no way to make a program that was consistent, scalable, and easy to track.
But now, thanks to fintech, things are changing. Financial advisors can access software that helps them track their customers, determine which clients have demonstrated the most loyalty, and give them the rewards they deserve — without spending many precious hours doing it manually.
Plus, because most communication is digital now, it’s also easier to contact customers to offer rewards as part of a loyalty programme. This is also something that you can automate.
Loyalty programmes are all about customer retention. Too often, financial advisors focus all their attention on attracting new customers, assuming they are the key to more growth and revenue.
But did you know that, on average, companies spend five to ten times more on acquiring new customers than selling to their current customers? Plus, fostering great customer relationships can bring around six times more lifetime revenue.
This is especially true for insurance agents, because it’s crucial for financial advisors to foster personal relationships with their clients. Clients are giving you the responsibility for handling their insurance policies and wealth management, which are both incredibly important areas — and if they can’t trust you, they’ll move on to someone they can trust. Offering loyalty rewards is a great step toward creating a long-standing relationship built on trust.
Plus, they can remind customers of your existence when you’re not necessarily at the top of their mind. Offering a reward can provide a kind of touchpoint that wouldn’t usually exist in day-to-day communication, and customers may then take the opportunity to schedule a consultation with you or reach out for another reason.
And remember how we said that most financial advisors focus on new clients instead of their existing ones? This means that your competitors may be offering your clients special perks for signing up with them instead of you. You need to fight hard to get your customers to stick around, and loyalty programmes are the perfect way to do it. If you cultivate a good enough relationship, it will reduce the price sensitivity of your clients, so even a tempting discount may not get them to seek services elsewhere.
Reward programmes for financial advisors are likely to look a little different from those other companies use.
For one, most financial advisors don’t have customers that continuously buy from them. Instead, their clients only come to them when they want to take out a new insurance product, carry out a review of their finances, or if they encounter a problem.
This provides unique challenges — here are some features you may want to look for in a reward programme.
Software integrations are what help software offering reward programmes to be so powerful and save you time. If a reward programme can take data from your customer management system, it can identify who your customers are, how often they’ve worked with you, what services they’ve bought, and more — meaning it can suggest more personalized rewards.
In some cases, a software with a reward programme may offer these features within its own interface, in which case you won’t even need to use integrations.
Technology is a game-changer for offering rewards. Automation and machine learning can identify the clients you “owe” a reward and periodically send out rewards on your behalf, instead of you having to figure everything out manually.
The way a software offers rewards, and the kinds of rewards it offers, are further aspects to pay attention to. After all, it’s only worth offering the kinds of rewards your clients will find useful — and sometimes that requires customization.
If your software lets you pick from a variety of rewards front he same interface, this will make everything easier
It’s a bonus if it offers rewards related to your products. For instance, it makes sense to offer a health insurance customer perks related to them leading a healthy lifestyle (such as a gym membership).
Some financial advisors may wish to offer a referral incentive for them to invite people they know to join. For instance, you might offer your clients an e-voucher for referring someone else to work with you.
Good software should track this for you automatically.
At Finberty, we know how crucial customer relationships are for financial advisors, so we provide a range of features to help you engage and reward your clients.
Through our app, we provide a mechanism for you to give clients different products or experiences they enjoy — this could be anything from an e-voucher to an event ticket to an e-voucher for an online store.
To give your reward programme a personal touch, we also have a customer management system that allows you to enter details about your clients such as their birthday — which is the perfect chance to offer a reward. You can also give them perks related to other special occasions, such as the new year or the Festival of Lights.
Another feature is our referral automation campaigns. This allows your customers to refer their family and friends to use their service — and best of all, it automatically tracks who is referring who so you don't have to. Then, you can offer them perks for doing so.
Finally, you can use our software to learn who your best and most loyal customers are, who they’ve referred, how many people — and more.
Loyalty programmes are all about ensuring that your customers don’t just feel like another number to you. Show them you care, and they’re unlikely to make you regret it.
Ready to take advantage of reward programmes and take your career to the next level? Join the waitlist for Finberty. As well as our features to offer rewards, we offer a community for financial advisors in Singapore so they can network with others in the same career.
