Missed the Finance Forum? Watch the Webcast!

We just wrapped up our 2003 Finance Forum, an eye-opening two-day look at the changing financial services consumer. If you couldn¿t be there in person, don't worry: You can get an audio and video recording of the entire Event, including PowerPoint slides, via the Webcast. View a sample of the Webcast. Forum speakers include three chairmen of billion-dollar companies, a Nobel Prize winner, CEOs, an insurer, bankers, brokers -- plus Forrester analysts Ron Shevlin on the evolving consumer, Jaime Punishill on their advisors, John Dalton on the new customer experience, Catherine Graeber on eCommerce teams, and John McCarthy on going offshore.

The Zeitgeist has changed

Our six years of research with hundreds of thousands of households shows that consumers are becoming more mistrustful, more insecure, and more hands-on. Here's just one data point: More than half of US consumers now tell us that corporate scandals have decreased their trust in US corporations, a 22% rise from last year.

What's the antidote to this mistrust and insecurity? Customer advocacy. Our most recent research shows that firms that are perceived to offer products and services that are best for the customer -- as opposed to products that are best only for the firm's bottom line -- have a much better chance of selling more products.

Which firms do consumers perceive to be least mercenary? Among wealth management firms, The Vanguard Group, Edward Jones, and Fidelity Investments score best. At the other end of the scale are firms like Prudential Securities, where one in five think the firm is not looking out for its customer's best interests.

Building better advisor-client relationships

Most brokerages and insurers demonstrate customer advocacy through personal relationships and proactive advice, "Yet the one thing you don't support with technology is the way advisors and clients interact," says Jaime Punishill in our Webcast. "In fact, today's digital channels undermine the advisor-client relationship."

The solution is collaborative advice -- advice developed jointly by clients and advisors across channels. "There is a clear opportunity to blend online and offline channels together," says Mark A. Ernst, chairman, president, and CEO of H&R Block. "I would concur with Jaime -- the technology itself is not far off. The bigger issues are the people and the business processes. People are not ready for this."

John W. Bachmann, managing partner of Edward Jones, is even more cautious: "We're trying to develop mirrored screens, where we can have a two-way experience without the customer having to come into the office." But generally, he says, "we don't want to automate what touches the customer."

How can advisors serve their clients best? Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics, says that "the main thing is to overcome thinking small -- to have people think in terms of all of their assets as a whole." But that doesn't mean fueling their bias toward optimism; on the contrary, "emphasizing the downside builds trust."

Get the whole story

That's just a taste of one morning at this year's Forum, which also featured bankers like RBC's James T. Rager, and technologists like Scott G. McNealy. The Webcast contains 8 hours of content, plus access to speech summaries and downloadable presentations. You can register for the Webcast online, or by calling Forrester Events at +1 888/343-6786 or +1 617/613-5905.

And stay tuned through the rest of the year as we write about customer advocacy, collaborative advice, and other ideas that sparked discussion at this year's Finance Forum.


Bill Doyle
Financial Services Research Director

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