Great information for financial service marketers. I suspect that you won’t hear this from most sales managers. The PDF from Jackson Life is at https://goo.gl/8PMUrR
“Since the dawn of the financial advice industry, financial professionals have been creating value propositions centered on the intangible qualities they can provide to an investor. As you can imagine, the focus on these types of qualities, which can include frequent face-to-face interactions, the promise of a genuine personal relationship and emotional support
(or helping to take emotion out of the investing equation), has only grown stronger as the robo-advisor revolution has gathered steam. To counter the robo foothold, the industry has pegged these qualities as the key differentiator separating a human financial professional from a machine. As such, these intangibles are often defined as what investors are paying
for above and beyond the low-cost fee structure of a tech-based advice platform.
New data released by the Center for Financial Insight offers a distinct challenge to this line of thinking. Of the 2,774 respondents to the Center’s recent “Man vs. Machine” investor survey, more than 82 percent said they would not be willing to pay more for these intangible qualities. Perhaps even more concerning for the industry, the “No” results were consistently high for all age demographics represented. The highest percentage of “No” responses (88.51%) came from the 66+ range, while the lowest (77.92%) was attributed to the 46-55 age group. While the industry may be able
to explain away the 66+ results due to the large percentage of retired investors in the category, the pre-retiree age range (56-65) – supposedly the top target market for most human financial professionals – came in at 84.74% (the second-highest instance of “No” answers).”
(emphasis added)
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