Beacon Flash: Building the Bridge Between Generating Wealth and Meeting Financial Goals - A Conversation with Sheryl O’Connor, IncomeConductor

In a piece of music, the bridge acts as a connector – true to its name – often bringing together the chorus and the verse.

For Sheryl O’Connor, professional musician turned CEO and founder of IncomeConductor, financial planning is the bridge in wealth management. “How do clients generate wealth through investing? And how do they use that wealth to meet their goals, which usually involve saving, spending, and passing that wealth on to others?”

On a recent Beacon Flash podcast episode with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert, Sheryl explains that the role of a financial advisor is to ensure his or her clients are financially secure. To do so requires taking a look at their entire balance sheet and approaching financial management as a continuous arc, from working years to retirement. 

Traditionally, Sheryl points out, from a product perspective, there have been two camps: investment and insurance, both competing for client assets, with the investment camp further divided into the wealth and retirement plan camps. 

“From a client's perspective, it really doesn't make sense to approach the issues that they have this way,” she says. “It really doesn’t serve them well.”

Instead, being a true fiduciary and acting in the client’s best interest means using products from both the investment and insurance sides based on which product best meets a specific goal. Advisors can no longer be successful simply managing clients’ investment portfolios and running Monte Carlo simulations.

To Sheryl, the future of the advisory business requires restructuring to address each client’s full financial lifecycle, creating a service model where the advisor becomes the go-to professional for all things financial. 

At IncomeConductor, which empowers advisors, their firms and their clients to plan for retirement more simply, more accurately and more reliably, Sheryl and her team bring together the science of financial planning and the client persona. The science, she explains, focuses on rates of return, tax efficiency, withdrawal rates – all traditional elements of financial planning, while the client persona focuses on client goals and concerns, biases and attitudes, and their appetite for risk, along with their health and longevity.

“I think advisors need to surround themselves with the professionals and resources to address their client's needs,” she points out. “And that includes legal accounting professionals, social services, community services, grief services, having those curated professionals around them at the ready when their clients need them. Can you just imagine how that would increase client satisfaction, client loyalty, and client referrals?”

Overview
The State of Financial Planning (02:52)
Retirement (10:32)
Financial Planning Software (20:09)

Resources
Sheryl O'Connor's LinkedIn
IncomeConductor's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website