Delivering ancillary services and maintaining certifications comes with a serious CE commitment, one advisor explains his approach
Erik Wachman understands the value of education to an advisor. The financial planning advisor at WWH Financial Group of Assante Financial Management Ltd. has a law degree in addition to his bachelors of commerce and R.F.P. certification. While not a member of the bar or a practicing lawyer, the knowledge he gained in law school can help him facilitate referrals for clients and identify key issues regarding the myriad aspects of client lives that advisors are now expected to manage.
Wachman explains that advisors’ continuing education is essential to the industry’s shift from a distribution business to a service business. As advisors are expected to do much more than just pick the right investments, they need to take on a serious commitment to continuing education. Wachman explained how he approaches his own CE commitment, balancing the value they can bring to clients against the time constraints they can place on an advisor’s day.
“All good advisors realize that they are service-first practitioners. Historically there might have been more of a focus on investments, but that has shifted over the last decade as advisors have become a service agent for their clients,” Wachman says. “So advisors ask themselves how they can improve their skills in financial planning, estate planning, tax planning, or even in law. In that light, continuing education is going to be vital for advisors that want to continue in this industry, because it’s our job to continuously hone the buzz saw and add service in areas that might not be traditionally linked to an advisory practice.”
Despite the importance of CE in the industry’s future, Wachman understands that the work of continuing education can feel onerous at times. He believes that advisors are committed to constant learning, but acknowledges that when CE comes to feel like an arbitrary requirement or a box-ticking exercise, it can be hard for advisors to motivate themselves. His approach is to be intentional with his CE where possible, asking himself how a program might help him serve his clients better.
Wachman will also seek out education based on what he’s hearing from his clients. When certain issues or questions occur to which he doesn’t have immediate answers, Wachman will seek out those answers in continuing ed options available to him. He puts his CE work into the wider goal of improving his client service. For example, he’s been encountering more cross-border issues in his practice recently. Given how complex and challenging that area can be to work in, Wachman is seeking ways to educate himself on what he can and can’t do to help clients. Even if it just means he’s better equipped to make a referral, that can result in better client service.
That is not to say he doesn’t sometimes have to sit through a mandatory webinar, as every advisor does. He notes, too, that advisors with multiple certifications or credentials are subject to multiple different CE requirements just to maintain those credentials. Sometimes that means attending redundant sessions. Wachman says that it might be more ideal if some of those certification programs could communicate with each other and allow for more inter-operable CE credits.
An advisor’s approach to CE may also be determined by the stage of their career. Young advisors building their business may have more of an appetite for education, despite how busy they are servicing their books. Some older more established advisors, however, may prefer to simply keep the lights on and the existing clients happy. While Wachman understands that mentality, he believes that without committing to CE, even those older and more established advisors could lose out.
Despite the occasional groan that comes with CE requirements, or the sense that the time spent in class could be better spent serving clients directly, Wachman insists on the value of CE. He argues that as advisors look to add intention and efficiency to their CE work, they should maintain the outlook that in learning more and bettering themselves, they are improving their capacity for client service.
“There are ways in which you can maybe cut down on the amount of time that you spend getting the credits that aren't providing value. When you look at an advisor's day, you can spend eight hours doing CE credits, but then you're not servicing clients. You can spend eight hours servicing clients, but then you're not meeting your obligation. It's just part of the juggling act,” Wachman says. “The choice of continuing to learn and to learn about different aspects is vital. And anybody that wants to stay in this business a long time needs to, needs to have that at the core of what they do.”
