Issue link: https://resources.envestnet.com/i/1527487
Taking the Measure of Advice © 2022 Envestnet. All rights reserved. 4 INTRODUCTION Many different professional organizations and financial advisors use derivations of the term "financial wellness" to mean a variety of things. But nearly all the definitions suggest that financial wellness means that one feels secure in one's ability to meet current and future financial obligations, including the capacity to absorb a major financial shock, and confident that one is in control of one's destiny and is free to make choices about how to enjoy life. Further, the concept promotes healthy attitudes toward money and sensible behaviors regarding spending and saving. Thus, advisors who deliver financial wellness are those who help clients organize their resources to meet their current and future goals and build a healthy relationship with their money, including developing sensible spending and saving habits. This report examines how financial advisors are helping their clients achieve an "intelligent financial life"—a holistic view of financial wellness delivered through financial planning, services offered, client engagement efforts, platform capabilities, technology usage, and addressing the holistic advice needs of clients. The research effort also sought to quantify how advisors and their practices benefit from delivering this concept to their clients. This report discusses the results of this analysis and the implications for advisors. METHODOLOGY In Q4 2021, Aite-Novarica Group conducted an online study on behalf of Envestnet with 483 professional financial advisors to examine how financial advisors are helping their clients achieve what Envestnet has coined an "intelligent financial life"—a unified ecosystem to connect every facet of investors' finances through data-driven advice, solutions, intelligence, and technology, and to quantify how advisors and their practices benefit from the delivery of this concept to their clients. The survey asked advisors detailed questions about their practice, the nature of their client base, and how they worked with clients. Through analysis of the survey data, Aite-Novarica Group made a quantitative assessment of the extent to which each advisor was delivering financial wellness to clients. The data for the full sample have a 4-point margin of error at the 95% level of confidence; statistical tests of significance among segments were conducted at a 90% confidence level.