The eMoney Summit 2018: What It Means To Be A FlexGen Financial Advisor

A recent comprehensive survey of 458 financial advisors conducted by eMoney and Fidelity revealed a common set of traits among the most successful advisors. These traits include embracing change, learning new strategies, challenging conventions, focusing on forward thinking and staying nimble.

"FlexGen" advisors increased their assets under management by an average of 24 percent in the past year compared to just a 14-percent increase among their peer group, according to the survey. 

The FlexGen Mindset

Benzinga was at the eMoney Summit 2018 in Orlando this week, where more than 1,000 guests saw presentations by leaders in the wealth management industry, one-on-one training sessions and more.

Ed O'Brien, eMoney's CEO, spoke about the rise of FlexGen financial advisory professionals and eMoney’s latest financial planning product, Foundational Planning.

“Advisors, whether a sole practitioner or on the enterprise level, are beginning to see that challenging convention with a fresh mindset is necessary to reach new investors,” O’Brien told Benzinga.

He said 86 percent of FlexGen advisors consider their business approach to be nimble compared to just 55 percent of the rest of the industry.

“That’s a shocking gap, considering the growing needs and real-time service expectations of clients today,” O’Brien said.

Foundational Planning

The Foundational Planning product, which is intended to help FlexGen advisors better serve clients, is coming to the eMoney platform in January.

The new offering supplements eMoney’s more advanced services by providing a more modular approach to financial planning that can help simplify and streamline the time-consuming process of creating a financial plan.

“We wanted to make it easier for advisors to work through the process, both on their own and with the client, of creating this financial plan,” said Jess Liberi, Head of Product at eMoney Advisor. 

She said clients are often focused on a primary financial goal that is most important to them.

“At the end of the day, the thing that makes it really unique is that it takes those very modular, episodic, quick, bite-sized chunks of planning focused on a particular goal and it gives you the ability to put them together and continue to build on that plan on an ongoing basis,” she said.

As clients needs evolve over time, they can add dimensions to their plan in Foundational Planning or they can move to eMoney’s traditional, more comprehensive cash-flow based planning tools. 

Summit Feedback

Liberi said feedback from advisors who attended this year’s eMoney Summit has been extremely positive. She said her personal highlight from the event was “Rise of the FlexGen Power Hour.”

“We had six different sessions, each 8 minutes, and told advisors to share with us what you do in your business, why it’s unique, why you’re successful and what other advisors here should be doing. I think that was one of the best sessions,” she said. 

For those who were unable to attend this year’s event, CEO O’Brien said he expects the eMoney Summit 2019 to be the biggest and best yet.

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Photo courtesy of eMoney.