From Financial Professional to Quarterback: Coordinating the Business Owner’s Advisory Team
Spend time at a modern hospital, and you’ll quickly notice a remarkable workflow by the medical professionals in the building. Patients are not seen over and over by the same physician. Instead, a team of cardiologists, radiologists, pharmacists, nurses, and other specialists all provide different touchpoints of care.
So why don’t details constantly slip through the cracks? Why aren’t conflicting recommendations more of a major issue? The answer is coordination.
Imagine being a patient who receives fragmented advice from a dozen specialists, some of it duplicative and contradictory. It’s then your responsibility to synthesize all of the information, connect the dots, and put it into action. For an overwhelmed patient, the results would typically be far from ideal.
And yet, in a different context, business owners are forced to wrestle with this same challenge all the time. Over time, a business owner may have assembled an impressive roster of professionals, including a CPA, a financial advisor, a benefits consultant, attorneys, and perhaps an insurance specialist. Although each licensed financial professional is highly qualified within their own discipline, they operate independently. The business owner functions as a clearinghouse, deciding how one decision affects another.
This illustrates why more and more business owners are attracted to multidisciplinary teams as a replacement for the existing, uncoordinated set of experts they employ. In fact, according to research from Cerulli Associates, more than 50% of licensed financial professionals now work alongside other professionals as part of a multidisciplinary team.
These days, the most valuable financial professionals are those who can be trusted to quarterback a multidisciplinary team on behalf of a client, providing more confident management of their assets through a holistic understanding of their wealth and goals.
Fewer Licensed Financial Professionals, More Coordination
Licensed financial professionals often come across this scenario: They’re working with a successful business-owning couple who initially sought help with retirement planning. As the conversations evolve, so does the scope of their questions. They want guidance that extends to insurance planning, tax strategy, and business succession. What quickly becomes clear is that the clients don’t simply want answers. They want someone whom they trust to bring every moving piece together.
Of course, no one person can possess deep expertise across every planning discipline. Nor should they attempt to. What licensed financial professionals can do for clients, over time, is become the trusted head of a multidisciplinary team serving that mission. A CPA can still focus on taxes. An attorney can still review buy-sell agreements. An insurance specialist focuses on risk. But none of those conversations take place independently.
You, the licensed financial professional, are uniquely positioned to be entrusted with the bigger picture. And because you’re meeting with the clients more often, you have the opportunity to understand all angles of their financial life, from the business they’ve spent years growing to the personal wealth goals that the business is intended to support.
Importantly, when you fill the role of quarterback, clients begin to see you differently. You’re no longer viewed simply as the person who manages investments or facilitates insurance conversations. You’re the trusted licensed financial professional overseeing all of their financial decisions.
Better Questions Lead to Better Planning
Whether you’re looking at a hospital staff or a NASCAR crew pit, the key to any multidisciplinary team is alignment. There’s a leader who must bring the right people together, communicate the strategy, and keep everyone moving toward the same objective.
But how do you get that all in place? Becoming an effective quarterback starts with asking a client comprehensive questions. Perform a discovery process to identify where a business owner’s personal goals and those of the firm intersect or diverge.
Consider questions such as:
- Has your buy-sell agreement been reviewed since ownership or company valuation changed?
- Does your estate plan accurately reflect the current value and future transition of your business?
- Have your tax strategies been coordinated with your long-term succession objectives?
- Are your executive compensation and employee benefit strategies aligned with your personal retirement goals?
- If something unexpected happened tomorrow, would your current insurance strategy provide sufficient protection for both your family and your business?
Questions like these rarely produce simple yes-or-no answers. Instead, they uncover the range of needs that you’ll need to understand before putting a multidisciplinary team in place. Rather than trying to solve every issue yourself, your role becomes identifying opportunities and bringing the appropriate specialists into the discussion.
Seeing the Entire Financial Ecosystem
While it’s easy to see the advantages of an effective multidisciplinary team for a business owner, it offers plenty of benefits for licensed financial professionals, too.
Once you’ve established yourself as a trusted quarterback, the strategies at your disposal become far more efficient. You can identify risks more easily. You can minimize taxes more confidently. You can see how an executive compensation strategy might impact estate planning. Most importantly, clients gain confidence knowing someone is overseeing the complete picture.
The most effective licensed financial professionals understand that collaboration is a strength, not a limitation.
Building relationships with trusted CPAs, attorneys, insurance specialists, valuation professionals, and employee benefits experts allows you to expand the value you provide without expanding beyond your expertise.
The Bottom Line
The most successful licensed financial professionals of the future won’t be those who try to master every discipline. They’ll be the ones who know how to bring the right experts together at the right time. Clients are increasingly looking for licensed financial professionals to fill the role of quarterback, bridging the gap between their business and personal financial lives. You’ll become an indispensable strategic partner rather than just another advisor.
If you’re looking to build or strengthen a multidisciplinary planning approach, AIMCOR EIG can help. Our team works alongside financial professionals to identify planning gaps, coordinate with trusted specialists, and integrate insurance solutions into broader wealth, tax, estate, and business succession strategies.