A client rings having decided to consolidate four pensions. He has spoken to a colleague who did it, he wants it done before the end of the month, and he is expecting to sign something this week.
The first scheme will take five weeks to send the information required even to begin.
Why clients expect it to be quick
Because moving money elsewhere in their life is instant. Transferring a bank account, an insurance policy or a mobile contract takes minutes, and there is no reason for them to assume this is different.
Where the time actually goes
Requesting information from existing providers, waiting for it, chasing it, establishing what each scheme actually contains, the advice process itself, and then the transfer mechanics between providers.
Explain the sequence at the first conversation
Information gathering, analysis, advice, decision, then transfer. Four stages before anything moves. A client who sees the sequence stops interpreting the delay as inaction.
Explain who controls the timescale
Largely the existing providers. An adviser cannot make a scheme respond faster, and saying so early stops the frustration being aimed at the wrong place.
Explain why the information matters
Because some schemes contain features that would be lost, and establishing that is the entire point. A client who understands this stops experiencing the process as bureaucracy.
Explain the requirements that apply
That certain transfers carry specific regulatory requirements before they can proceed, without attempting to say which apply to them. It is a conversation, not a web page.
Publish a realistic timescale
A range, by complexity. Clients plan around a stated figure and lose confidence when an optimistic one passes, which is the same honesty as in fee structure questions clients should ask.
Tell them what they can do now
Finding paperwork, locating scheme references, tracing lost pensions and gathering statements. It gives an impatient client something useful and it genuinely speeds things up.
Keep them informed without being asked
A short update at each stage, including when nothing has changed. Silence during a three month process is what generates chasing calls and doubt.
Never assess suitability in an enquiry
Whether a transfer is right, what it would achieve or what they would give up is the advice, and it belongs in the process rather than in a first reply.
Explain what happens if the advice is not to transfer
That it is a legitimate outcome, that it is not a wasted process and how it is charged. Clients fear paying for a recommendation to do nothing.
Explain what the client will be asked to sign
Transfers involve authority letters, discharge forms and declarations that arrive over several weeks and look alarming out of context. Describing what each one does, and that they appear in a sequence rather than all at once, means a client signs promptly instead of setting a document aside to look at properly later.
Capture the right facts at enquiry
Number of schemes, approximate values, whether any are still being contributed to, retirement timescale and what has prompted the question.
Answer the enquiry when it arrives
People think about retirement at night, which is the whole point of retirement planning enquiries that arrive at night and what customers expect at midnight, and deadlines matter in the same way they do in time limit questions in injury enquiries.
Getting started
Publish the sequence, a realistic timescale and what a client can gather now, then capture scheme details at any hour without assessing suitability. SpideyChat for financial advisers answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about capture on the features page.