How Specialization Leads to Success – InsuranceNewsNet

As professions such as medicine and law have evolved, we have seen greater specialization among their practitioners. The profession of financial planner is a younger profession than medicine and law, but we are seeing a growing shift towards specialization among finance professionals.

That was the word from Michael Finke, director of the Granum Center for Financial Security at American College, who chaired a webinar explaining why now is the time for registered investment advisers to specialize.

For Scott Winslow, managing partner at Nabell Winslow Investments and Wealth Management, the decision to specialize in retirement planning for the wealthy came about in response to potential clientele in his community of Wilmington, North Carolina.

“At the end of the day, when you look at our market and try to be a business owner, we’ve seen here in Wilmington that retirees are moving here at a rapid rate,” he said. “So we decided we wanted to be all retired. We all got our Certified Retirement Income Professional designation because we wanted to be able to put the math, art, and science behind what we do.

Winslow said his clients hold between $500,000 and $10 million in assets. “We use a lot of behavioral finance to help them stay in their plans,” he said.

After deciding to focus his practice on his target client, he said, “We started doing everything in our business, from how we invest, how we talk, how we do our marketing, how we build relationships with other professionals for focusing on affluent retirees.Our goal is to be the best in this market for what has the most customer potential.

In a large company with multiple advisors, each focusing on different areas, specialization means “Let’s bring together the best minds to get the best possible solutions,” said Heather Welsh, vice president of wealth planning at Sequoia Financial Group in Akron. , Ohio. “There are so many nuances in planning that no one can know everything.

Welsh specializes in working with small business owners, and she said they have a range of needs. “Having different people in your business who can dig a little deeper into these different areas can help these business owners with everything they need to know,” she said.

The specialization has led to a “continuous wave of referrals,” said Terry Parham Jr., chief financial officer at Innovative Wealth Planning in Los Angeles. He mentioned an adviser in his firm who attracted clients from a specific geographic area.

“He’s developed this kind of territory where he gets this continuous wave of referrals from those who live in the area he serves,” Parham said. “It’s like licking an ice cream cone.”

The key to specialization, Parham said, is “actively listening” to people in your niche market.

“When my career took off, I was working with active duty military,” he said. “It comes down to listening. I had to listen to their concerns, their struggles and their qualities. Once I was able to wrap them up and create a recipe that worked well, I could do it over and over again.

“It’s the same active listening process I use when working with other client groups. It’s really caring about the person in front of me and doing it in a way that adds value and in a transparent way.

Susan Rupe is an editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She previously served as communications director for an association of insurance agents and was an award-winning journalist and editor. Contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @INNsusan.

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