How Should Financial Advisors Spend Their Time?

You have plenty to do to grow your business and serve your clients. But there are only so many hours in a day. Time management is critical to furthering your success, not to mention maintaining your sanity. That’s where an ideal financial advisor time allocation schedule comes in. Creating one allows you to spend more work hours nurturing relationships with existing clients as well as prospects.

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Typical Financial Advisor Time Allocation

How does the average advisor spend their time? Here’s how an advisor’s weekly work hours break down, according to the 2024 Natixis Global Survey of Financial Professionals:

• Meeting with clients (23%)
• Managing clients (20%)
• Managing investments (16%)
• Administrative tasks (10%)
• Prospecting (9%)
• Compliance reporting (8%)
• Getting up to speed with new investments (5%)
• Marketing (5%)
• Monitoring media for market trends (4%)

Meeting with and managing clients takes up the bulk of the typical advisor’s schedule, which is a positive. But is it enough?

Many advisors feel challenged when it comes to time management. J.D. Power’s 2023 Financial Advisor Satisfaction Survey sheds some light on what it means to be a “time-starved” advisor, and found:

• Nearly one-third (28%) of advisors said they don’t have enough time to spend with clients.
• Advisors in this category say they spend an average of 41% more time each month on tasks related to compliance and administrative duties.

These findings support the results of the Natixis survey. This survey showed that advisors devote a significant amount of hours to middle and back-office tasks. Prospecting and marketing, meanwhile, get a smaller share of their time.

Advisors who spend less time interacting with clients or prospects and more time on behind-the-scenes tasks risk hindering their firm’s growth. At a minimum, they may experience burnout or dissatisfaction at having to devote so much of their time to tasks that are not client-focused.

What’s the Ideal Financial Advisor Time Allocation?

In a perfect world, you spend most of your time working with your existing clients to nurture and strengthen relationships. Or maybe prospecting to find new ideal clients to add to your book of business. As the surveys above illustrate, the reality may be quite different.

Developing a time allocation model for your business is dependent on several factors, including:

• How many clients you currently serve
• Your growth plans and the number of clients you need to add to your practice each month to reach those targets
• The number of employees and support staff you have
• Your budget for investing in automation tools or third-party services to simplify your firm’s back-office operations

Following the results of the Natixis survey as a guide, you could argue that an ideal financial advisor time allocation might look something like this:

• Meeting with and managing clients (50%)
• Prospecting and marketing (25%)
• Investment management (10%)
• Business development (10%)
• Administrative duties and compliance (5%)

In this breakdown, the bulk of your time is dedicated to meeting with and managing existing clients and finding new ones.

Now, is this realistic? Again, it depends largely on where your firm is now and where you’d like to take it. You can, however, take proactive steps to bring more time back into your schedule to focus on growth tasks.

How to Find More Time as an Advisor

Time management solutions are everywhere if you’re willing to look for them and try things you may not have considered before. Here are five common ideas for how to add time back to your day as a busy advisor:

• Hire a paraplanner. Paraplanners provide support services to advisors. That may include conducting financial research, analyzing data, preparing reports and maintaining client files. Many paraplanners work remotely, either as employees or independent contractors. This allows for some flexibility in choosing one to work with.
• Automate. Automating workflows and processes can significantly trim down the amount of time you need to spend on administrative and compliance duties. There are a variety of ways to leverage automation. You can use it to grow your email newsletter list with automated drip campaigns, or on digital onboarding or recordkeeping tasks. You don’t necessarily need to invest a ton of money in upgrading your tech stack, either. Your existing customer relationship management (CRM) platform or email marketing platform may even have built-in automation tools that are ready to use.
• Consider AI. Artificial intelligence has a growing presence in the financial services space, particularly among advisors who want to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Potential time-saving applications for generative AI can include drafting content for your social media accounts or websites, writing email newsletters, and even portfolio analysis and optimization.
• Hone your marketing. One of the biggest ways to waste time as an advisor is by trying to be everywhere at once. Targeted marketing campaigns can take a little time to develop. But they can yield a bigger payoff if you’re getting the right message in front of the right prospects. You can also lean on tech to lessen your marketing burden. SmartAsset AMP, for example, is a compliant marketing tool that helps you connect with leads. This leaves you free to serve your existing clients.
• Reevaluate your niche. If you have limited time for prospecting, consider how you can attract clients who have the potential to be most valuable to your business. For example, if you’re not currently focused on high-net-worth investors, what’s stopping you from pivoting your business to attract them? Working with fewer clients who bring more assets to the table can ease some of the time pressures of running your business. All without sacrificing revenue and profits.

Bottom Line

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer on how to best allocate your time as an advisor. Ultimately, you have to choose how to manage your time based on your business goals and the needs of your clients. The examples and tips shared here are designed to help you carve out more hours in your day for what’s most important to your firm’s success.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

• Marketing can be overwhelming to say the least, whether you’re just getting started as an advisor or you have years of experience under your belt. If you’ve reached a plateau with your current marketing efforts or simply prefer a change of pace, you might consider working with an advisor marketing platform. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
• Developing a daily schedule and using calendar tools can help you manage your time. You may also consider some simple hacks. For example, you can use the Pomodoro method to get things done in bite-size chunks throughout the day. If you’re truly overwhelmed, that’s a sign that it may be time to hire new staff or reevaluate your business model. This way you can figure out what’s not working for you.

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