Financial Advisor Checklist for Clients

Financial advisors can do more than provide simple financial advice, although that is a part of their day-to-day duties. 

What Is a Financial Advisor?

A financial advisor works with clients consistently to help them reach their financial goals. While these professionals can help reach short-term goals, they’re often found helping clients and businesses reach long-term financial targets.

These professionals will work with clients to:

• Reduce and/or eliminate financial risks
• Build long-term wealth
• Create sound financial strategies

From a tax firm perspective, adding financial advisor services to your business can make a lot of sense.

Tax season can provide an influx of business, but as a financial expert, it makes sense to try and earn money from a client all year long. Clients can use financial advice to make pertinent decisions in their lives and in business.

For a tax firm, offering these services allows for:

• Growing cashflow without investing in client base growth
• Earning higher rates

When meeting with clients, it’s always important to have a thorough client meeting prep checklist that can outline the services you plan to render.

A Thorough Client Meeting Prep Checklist

Clients have a lot of financial documents to handle; when dealing with multiple clients, it’s overwhelming to make sure that they have all of the documents ready. You’ll be responsible for asking all of the right questions and providing a process that is repeatable.

One way to create a solid system that can move from one client to another seamlessly is to create a thorough checklist of items that you cover with each client.

We recommend that you create either multiple checklists or multi-part checklists that cover all processes you need to perform. 

Note: While the checklists below are as thorough as possible, feel free to add or remove items as necessary. We also recommend notes or descriptions be used for items that may be confusing to anyone aside from you that plans on using the list.

Fundamentals Checklist

Your first checklist, or at least part of your checklist, should cover all of the fundamentals. These are items that 99% of clients will need covered, and they encompass the most essential items that a financial advisor assists with.

This checklist can be expanded, but it should include:

All of these key items need to make it onto your initial checklist before going through a series of questions and answers that will be part of your financial planning checklist. 

Financial Planning Checklist

The next part of your financial advisor checklist should be all about financial planning. You’ll need to provide a lot of input with these questions. A few of the items to ask or bring up during your first meeting are:

If your clients have a few commonly asked questions that are not on this list, be sure to add them over time. The information will help you provide an optimal service while also managing future communication with the client.

Asset Management Checklist

Your client has a lot of assets, potentially, that you’ll need to be updated on. Prior to the meeting, it’s important to go through the following checklist:

• Obtain updated reports on all of the client’s holdings.
• If a stock watch list is present, be sure to review it.
• If the client has stock options or an ESPP, review it.
• Verify that the portfolio remains consistent with the investment policy statement.
• Review the client’s retirement plan to determine if an in-service withdrawal can be made.

The assets will provide great insight into the financial planning advice that you offer. In addition, there’s one final checklist that can help. 

Prior To Appointment Checklist

A lot of work needs to be done prior to the appointment or client meeting. This lengthy checklist can help ensure that you have all of the information to make the meeting a success. Items on this checklist should include:

Once you have all of these items in place, it’s time to start adding some of these processes to your client onboarding platform.

How to Automate Client Onboarding.

Client onboarding is one of the most important aspects of setting up your firm’s financial advisor services. The easiest method to streamline the process is through client onboarding automation.

Tools such as TaxDome can help automate the onboarding process to:

• Save your firm money
• Reduce the risk of errors
• Ensure consistency across clients

Financial advisors are an integral part of many people’s financial decisions. When a client is trying to achieve their retirement goals, the financial advisor services you offer can help them plan for retirement while maximizing your firm’s revenue in the process.