The practices that grow from here will not be the ones working harder, but the ones identifying and plugging the hidden leaks draining capacity and growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the second in our four-part series, where we unpack four leaks every senior South African adviser should be measuring and managing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read the first article of the series: The capacity leak: the steady erosion of the hours senior advisers should be spending on high-value advice<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A senior SA adviser’s top 30 clients by Assets Under Management are usually well known to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The spreadsheet is clean. The relationships are warm. The annual review schedule is set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look one layer below the spreadsheet, though, and a different picture appears. This layer reveals the spouse who attends one joint review a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Or the adult children who have never met the adviser. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Add the business interests, the offshore allowance not yet used, the property portfolio, and the inheritance still ten years away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These sit outside the investment account but inside the relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the second growth leak: the portfolio view sees one client, but the household view sees four to seven, and the difference between those two views is where most of the future revenue in the existing book is hiding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Industry research across the SA adviser community shows this leak in stark detail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Roughly 90% of advisers say they are engaging on intergenerational wealth transfer, which is a high number. Look at the how, though, and the picture is more nuanced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The most common approach (used by close to half of advisers) is through engaging the broader family, which in practice often means encouraging older clients to bring adult children to one annual review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That can at most only be a touchpoint. It is rarely a relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The harder work \u2013 formally mapping the household, building a separate engagement with the spouse, introducing a younger adviser early, documenting the household in writing \u2013 is happening in perhaps a third of practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here is where international evidence lines up uncomfortably with the SA picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Top-quartile growth practices in the UK and US are not winning because they pick better funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They are winning because they have made themselves the source of clarity in the household, not just the source of returns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They segment by future value, not current AUM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many households have built substantial wealth over time through retirement savings, property, businesses, and other investments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As their financial lives become more complex, understanding how these assets work together becomes increasingly important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A connected view provides the clarity needed to make informed decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one of the highest-growth segments in the existing book, hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKey points<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The diagnostic that finds the leak<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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