The Relationship Manager Productivity Problem

We all know the adage “time is money.”  But in the asset management industry it couldn’t be more meaningful because AUM are directly tied to the productivity of relationship managers.  And in the case of most asset management firms, they have a serious relationship manager productivity problem.

The Two Roles of the Relationship Manager

Relationship managers have two main revenue generating responsibilities: sell their financial products to new customers and cross-sell / upsell existing customers more of their financial products or services.  In both cases, time spent interacting with customers is the single limiting factor to increasing AUM.  And since only 35% of the average salesperson’s time is spent interacting with customers, it’s fair to assume that the majority of firms are leaving chips on the table by not enabling the relationship managers to spend more of their time doing what they do best: wooing clients.

The Huge Time Drain

So what are relationship managers spending the other 65% of their time doing—playing fantasy sports?  As it turns out, a lot of the time being wasted is spent on inefficient business processes like creating and accessing the collateral that they use to interact with their clients.  Take the example of interacting with existing clients.

The problem looks something like this:

1. An annual investment review is a great way to build trust and confidence with clients and to introduce new products.
2. Creating the customized presentation with the updated financials, the right products, the right logos and the correct disclosures takes about 2 days of the relationship manager’s time and tons of marketing and IT resources.
3. The relationship manager just spent 2 days prepping for the 2 hour meeting and can’t possibly do more than 10 per month.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because we see it over and over again with our customers.  They are craving ways to free their relationship managers to spend more time building AUM. And a highly achievable increase from 35% to 50% of time spent in front of customers translates into a 43% increase in relationship manager productivity.

Meaning a 43% increase in AUM. 

Now that’s turning time into money.