ADVISOR | November 2024
One of the many reasons for the success of the service model of financial advisor networks in Italy is that there is not a single model but different models.
There are networks that belong to banking groups to which they are synergistically connected, and that are able to offer their clients and their advisors a set of products and services that go well beyond financial advice alone.
There are networks that, despite belonging to a banking group, differentiate themselves precisely to diversify the offer and focus only on financial advice, leaving the provision of complementary services to other divisions of the group.
Then there are networks that belong to insurance groups and that combine the offer of financial advice with solutions that integrate the two souls of protection and investments.
Then there are independent networks that have agreements with other companies and banking groups to offer their clients credit and banking products.
What all these very different entities have in common is the centrality of the financial advisor and his ability to act as a pivot between the different souls of his client.
Regardless of the reality in which he finds himself, the financial advisor can decide independently whether to focus only on investment solutions and whether to integrate them downstream and upstream with an offer of credit, protection or other services requested by the client.
Some networks focus heavily on the segment of entrepreneur clients, serving not only the individual as a natural person but also his company as a legal entity.
In this case, the advantage of being part of a banking group is greater on the credit side, vice versa the strength is supporting the company without absorbing capital, focusing on activities with greater added value.
Corporate and investing banking activities have in fact fully entered the scope of the solutions proposed by some networks to their clients, especially small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, who constitute – with over four million companies – the economic fabric of our country.
In addition, the investment solutions proposed by the networks, once essentially limited to mutual funds, have expanded enormously.
Let’s think of private markets, investments in start-ups, club deals, but also the growing weight of ETFs and investments in government bonds – the so-called administered savings – which find space in consultancy portfolios.
Fee-based or advanced consultancy will allow all of this to be embraced in a single area in which the consultant is recognized for his ability to create a system within his client in the interest of the client.
All of this would not have been possible if the networks of financial consultants had not understood before and better than other entities that the work of the savings management professional must be supported with increasingly greater and diversified internal or external skills to the company.
All of this will be increasingly important to intercept and satisfy that segment of investors, upper affluent and private whose relative weight in the networks is constantly growing.
The success of the networks lies precisely in the ability to adapt very quickly and efficiently to find solutions capable of supporting the projects of their clients by choosing in complete freedom which ones to focus on most.
The freedom to choose one’s own model is the secret to the success of consultancy networks.
Nicola Ronchetti