Fidelity Clearing and Custody has partnered with FirstPoint Financial, a subsidiary of Mariner Holdings, to provide its RIA clients with access to client segmentation solutions.
FirstPoint has developed consultative services to help advisors analyse their current and prospective client base and develop strategies to segment their clients in order to support emerging and mass affluent investors.
According to Fidelity’s most recent Millionaire Outlook study, emerging affluent investors – investors ages 21-49 with investable assets of USD50,000 to USD250,000 – are well positioned to attain millionaire status. Yet, new Fidelity research finds that 76 per cent of financial advisors continue to focus their current client acquisition strategy on investors 49 years of age or older, or those with USD1 million or more in investable assets. And, 45 per cent of financial advisors have no plans to target emerging and mass affluent investors over the next five years.
“We’re seeing an interesting dichotomy among firms: some are finding success by expanding their client base to include emerging affluent investors, while others are staying focused on the traditional high-net-worth target client profile,” says David Canter, executive vice president, practice management and consulting, Fidelity Clearing and Custody. “This offering may help address the client segmentation needs of many RIAs who want to ‘stick to their knitting’ and focus on their core clients, while still providing an advice option to those emerging and mass affluent investors who are seeking it out.”
“We chose to offer this program because we’ve heard from many RIAs that they haven’t been able to figure out how to scale and serve this segment profitably,” says Marty Bicknell, chief executive officer, Mariner Holdings. “We made a strategic decision to invest in helping RIAs develop client segmentation strategies because we believe it meets a critical need in both the advisor and investor community.”
