Financial advisors are looking to broaden their service offerings beyond just portfolio management and investment returns to attract long-term clients. However, according to the latest Cerulli Edge—U.S. Retail Investor Edition, affluent clients still focus primarily on a select few services. The challenge for advisors is to get these services in front of clients, thereby bridging the gap between their offerings and investor uptake.

Cerulli research finds advisors offer their clients an extensive range of financial services. Advisors across all channels offer an average of 6.1 of the 11 financial planning services Cerulli presented to survey respondents. Predictably, retirement income and accumulation planning are the two most popular services offered, in keeping with clients’ traditional key financial goal of prioritizing a stable and secure retirement.

Despite the range of services advisors offer, Cerulli finds retail investors focus on a select few services within their advisor relationships. Among the 11 same services, retail investors report using an average of just under three services with their current financial providers. While retirement-focused advice ranks highest among services used by clients, other services reveal a significant gap between the advisor-reported offerings and client-reported use. For instance, while 67% of advisors offer insurance services, just 17% of retail investors rely on their primary provider for them. Tax planning is another example, with 47% of advisors offering it, but only 14% of retail investors utilizing this service through their primary provider.

While it may seem that advisors offer more services than clients demand, such diversity can be leveraged as a competitive advantage in advisor-client relationships. “It is very possible that advisors already offer these services within client portfolios as a core offering, but that they are not effectively being communicated to the client,” says John McKenna, research analyst. “As our past research has shown, satisfied clients are the most willing to say the value of the advice they receive from their advisor is worth the expense, but competitive positioning relies on knowing that their advisor is doing more than just focusing on returns and collecting fees.”

This requires advisors to proactively communicate with clients and understand their goals within the financial relationship. In-depth discovery meetings can help determine a client's complete financial picture, as well as where and how they manage non-investable assets. “By demonstrating key competitive positioning of specific services while also remaining sensitive to client preferences for existing partners and discretion over how much information they feel comfortable sharing, advisors can showcase the full range of their service offerings—both financial and nonfinancial,” concludes McKenna.