Social media key for advisers

In an interview with Hootsuite, Mr Swift said connecting with people via social media “should become part of the daily routine of every adviser”.

“Every single adviser should have a complete profile on LinkedIn and be connecting with family, friends, prospective clients (after a meeting, for example),” Mr Swift said.

Mr Swift also said as wealth starts to “cascade” down from older generations to younger generations it is increasingly more important for advisers to build relationships with them via social media sites such as LinkedIn.

“There is tremendous opportunity for the wealth management sector to ensure their advisers have positioned themselves with family members on LinkedIn and ultimately to leverage those relationships to ensure the younger generation feels comfortable with the family adviser,” Mr Swift said.

“Financial advisers that aren’t active on LinkedIn risk losing the assets of their clients in the future to advisers whom their children feel more comfortable with and who are socially savvy,” he said.

Mr Swift also added that advisers who build strong, “information-rich” profiles, while sharing useful content within their network can make themselves more notable among other professionals and clients.

“This is new for the industry so anyone getting involved now is seeing huge success,” Mr Swift said.

“[Also,] from a recent survey ... [we know] that 70 per cent of high-net-worth individuals use social media [including] C-level executives, business partners, and business owners,” he said.

“The wealth management industry wants to connect with these people, and LinkedIn and its communities provide the means to do so.”