Early Career Specialist at MD Financial Management outlines concerns she hears from young docs, how her firm markets
For many advisors, physicians are an almost ideal class of client. They have high income potential, they’ll never want for work, and they come with some complex long-term challenges that many advisors relish. They often need advisors to navigate them through key transitions and decisions, and offer huge opportunities for advisors to demonstrate their value.
At MD Financial Management, working with doctor clients means meeting them early in their career. Elizabeth Karlinsky, Manager, Early Career Specialists at MD explained that their firm will often connect with medical students and doctors in residency, offering them support at key transitionary periods. She outlined some of the aspects of early practice that other advisors can make themselves aware of if they want to service more physician clients themselves.
“Residency can be gruelling and competitive, and often that time period is associated with significant life events such as new partnerships, buying a first home, starting a family. It’s a unique time period for young physicians and at MD we are really focused on supporting physicians through major transitions,” Karlinsky says. “We have multiple teams dedicated to helping physicians through these major changes early in their careers.”
That early career is so crucial, Karlinsky explained, because choices a physician makes before, during, and immediately after their residency can be among the most important choices they make in their lives and careers. Anxiety levels are high at these moments, and offering knowledgeable support is key. If an advisor can map out hypothetical career consequences for a major decision and help a young doctor prepare for those consequences, they can help alleviate some of the stress that comes with a huge choice.
After spending the better part of a decade studying medicine, many physicians are thrown into their careers without adequate training on the business side of a practice. They might have significant student debt, and now are facing overhead costs for a new practice. At the same time they may be unfamiliar with the deeply nuanced ways doctors are remunerated in much of Canada. MD has specialists who can talk physicians through those nuances and develop plans to manage debt, income, and tax burdens.
While many advisors don’t have access to the specialist knowledge that MD does, skills like debt management and financial literacy training can go a long way to establishing a strong relationship with a young doctor. Advisors who want to capture more of this client base can take steps to familiarize themselves with the business side of Canadian medicine. Karlinsky insists that knowledge and education is much of what sets MD apart.
It's important, too, to understand how different disciplines of medicine will impact a doctor’s financial needs and goals too. Karlinsky notes that a hospital pathologist on salary will have very different concerns from a doctor in private practice. A graduate from a foreign medical school will have different constraints than a domestic graduate. The list of nuances goes on, but it’s important to know how those different choices and designations can impact a potential client.
In her work with younger physicians, Karlinsky says she’s seeing greater priorities being placed on work-life balance. Where previous generations might maximize their earnings by working significant hours, younger docs tend to think about how they can balance their work with other desires and goals. It’s important to then have conversations about facilitating that balance, and outlining what foregoing some earnings can mean for long-term financial goals and plans.
For all the complexities a young doctor faces, Karlinsky believes that at a fundamental level what they need is supportive, knowledgeable service from their advisors.
“The foundation and fundamentals aren’t different: understand your clients needs and wants, offer them high quality servicing and a wide breadth of products,” Karlinsky says. “These are consistent values that advisors already demonstrate with their clients.”
