Specialist SMSF advisers must limit the number of clients they service who are already embedded in the retirement phase of their lives in order to maintain a successful practice, according to an industry expert.
SMSF Strategies principal Grant Abbott pointed out to delegates at the 2013 SMSF Strategies Day in Sydney the reason for that recommendation was the emotional element involved in servicing those clients, who were typically categorised as the war generation.
“For them really the big stuff is aged care, estate planning and incapacity planning,” Abbott said.
“These are three really significant areas and are hugely emotional. Death, incapacity and aged care: apart from divorces, you can’t get bigger emotional events in your life.
“So if you’re going to go down that track, and it’s a great track to go down, you need to be in a position where you cannot have a lot of clients. You cannot have too many of these clients because [for] one [thing] it’s going to cause you too much heartache, because it doesn’t matter what they say, you will get emotionally involved.”
He said if the adviser serviced the space well it could be most rewarding because the emotional element would be felt by all parties concerned, making advice a most valuable commodity.
“If you nail it well, it’s fantastic because at the end of the day most children, particularly children who are part of generation X, are more than happy to pay someone to look after that emotionally complicated situation for them,” he said.
