Insurance Daily | December 2022
Holistic financial consulting is a debated topic. Holistic financial consulting offers the chance to assist clients on three fronts: protection, credit, and asset management.
Combining credit and asset management is a difficult task: financial professionals whose job consists in granting credit to clients have a diametrically opposed attitude and DNA to financial professionals whose job consists in asking and managing assets.
On the one hand, the key quality of skilled financial professionals working in the field of credit is to assess the reliability of clients as well as their potential for future operations.
Financial advisors, on the other hand, must win the trust of their clients with the aim of acquiring and managing their money.
The third element encompassed by holistic financial consulting is protection. However, the level of satisfaction with non-life insurance products offered by banks to financial advisors, private bankers and bank managers is currently quite low.
More specifically, of over 6.000 financial professionals (financial advisors, private bankers, and bank managers) involved in FINER’s annual monitoring, the percentage of professionals fully satisfied with non-life insurance products available ranges between a maximum of 30% among bank managers and a minimum of 16% among private bankers.
There are four main underlying reasons.
Firstly, 52% of the respondents declare a lack familiarity with the products provided by the bank. In this case, the answer would be increasing internal communication and training.
Secondly, 49% of them claim that offering insurance products requires ad hoc skills. This issue could be addressed by bringing together specialists in protection, financial advisors and bankers.
The third reason is connected to the priority banks grant to their professionals in terms of strategic goals, budget, and incentives. According to 34% of the respondents, banks should set their goals, including those pertaining to protection.
In addition, over 42% of the respondents admit not to be equipped with non-life insurance products.
In fact, it is worth recalling that non-life insurance does not include policies protecting fundamental assets such as real estate, buildings, and capital goods.
Over half of affluent Italians – private and HNW clients – owe their wealth to a family business – active, completely or partially sold.
About one fifth of this universe, deemed strategic by dozens of banks and financial networks, does not have adequate protection for their assets.
In fact, the habit of keeping liquid assets on current accounts is quite common among affluent Italians. This leads to their erosion due to inflation, while investing them would safeguard their real value.
The reason is always the same: liquid assets are kept on current accounts in case of need or emergency, should something happen.
Defusing risks through adequate insurance coverage would set free part of the liquid assets, which could be successfully turned into assets under management.
If not now, when?
Nicola Ronchetti