6 Essential Skills Your Financial Planner Must Have

Wondering what it takes to be a successful financial planner? As a financial planner, you’ll be the person people turn to for advice on making wise financial decisions that will impact their future and security.

In order to make good calls and handle other people’s money well, you need to have a particular set of skills.

In this article, we’ve listed the essential skills that every financial planner must have to do their job well. Let’s take a look!

1. Excellent attention to detail

One thing that sets a good financial planner apart from the average is their attention to the little details of a client’s life. By doing this, you can tailor strategies towards your client’s specific preferences and needs. Having an eye for detail also means you’ll be able to pick up on market trends so you can bank big bucks and avoid losing your client’s cash. 

Look, when you’re dealing with people’s money, even small admin mistakes can ruin a professional relationship, and being particular about the small details will help you eliminate chances of making mistakes, big or small. 

2. Outstanding communication

It’s one thing to be good at talking to clients, but as a financial planner, you must be an outstanding communicator. Once again, you’re dealing with people’s livelihoods, so they want to know everything about what is happening with their cash. 

Being an excellent communicator will help ensure working with clients is smooth sailing, as you’ll be able to smooth out the friction with those experiencing financial troubles or those nervous about investing. 

It just takes being able to find common ground and help people trust you and feel comfortable with you handling their money. 

As a financial planner, the success of your business is also closely linked to how well you’re able to maintain relationships and build new ones. 

When you can communicate with others exactly how your services can benefit them, this can make all the difference in landing new clients. 

Jargon can make you sound impressive, but being able to relay information in a way that is clear and palatable is going to help you win people over. 

Sometimes, it’s just as simple as grasping communication skills like being aware of good telephone and email etiquette and knowing how to network – this is just the bare minimum, but it can get you quite far. 

If you want your business to thrive and convert potential clients to long-term clients, you must master communication on various platforms. 

3. Extensive market research capabilities

As a financial planner, it’s essential to have an in-depth understanding of how the market works to provide sound advice to your clients. It doesn’t take much for people to find a good investment. 

Still, clients don’t come to a financial planner for help investing in something that they could just Google for themselves – they come to a financial planner because they trust you as a professional will do extensive research and investigations into market research and provide them with the best possible option.

4. Good stress management

When you manage people’s finances, you need to be prepared that you’re working with a critical part of their lives—it’s a heavy responsibility. You can either make your clients very happy or very upset. 

Handling a client’s financial portfolio means that there won’t always be high-impact decisions that need to be made. Still, there always seems to be an underlying anxiety that looms over clients, making it an incredibly stressful job.

On top of managing your client’s money, as a financial planner, you also need to manage your own business. This means gaining and maintaining clients, marketing, looking after staff, and researching the markets – it’s a lot! 

If you’re not on top of it all and effectively managing stress levels, it can quickly become too much, and you may suffer from burnout. So, whether it’s going to a therapist or finding a hobby, ensure you’ve got a way to de-stress to help you manage work and life well. 

5. Exceptional risk management

One requirement of being a financial planner is knowing when it’s not worth taking a risk. Many people are weary of investing because they see it as just as risky as gambling, but when you’re a financial planner and you’ve done all the research, you’ll know when something is too much of a risk to invest. 

Having good risk management skills will help you deliver sound advice to clients and make them aware of all the risks as well as the rewards so they know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. Risk assessment and management can include looking into the following: 

• Market fluctuations 
• Client job security
• Anticipating risks

6. Being trustworthy

There will always be those people who will over-promise and under deliver in the line of financial planning – being trustworthy and being able to deliver results will be the thing that really grows your business. 

Why? While marketing on different platforms is a wonderful way to put yourself out there, having clients who recommend you to others based on how much they trust you will help you retain clients – word of mouth is still alive and well and at the end of the day being a trustworthy financial planner will get you further than having all the licenses, and certifications.

These tips are absolutely essential for anyone who wants to be successful in the world of financial planning. Doing your master’s in financial planning will not only help you master these skills but also make you stand out from the crowd of people in the field.