What We Do
By Kate Kinkade, CLU, ChFC

An item in the November 14 “Insider News” column on the California Broker Website brought me a realization–about what we really do. Not just us insurance agents, but also any financial advisor who sees their job as understanding needs and fulfilling them with knowledge and appropriate products. What we do is get people to talk about and think about issues they don’t typically address and don’t really want to address.
      The article was about a study that found that the topic that most people wished their parents talked more about with them is money and their financial future. (To get the survey visit www.HaveTheTalkAmerica.com) As a result, they didn’t learn how to discuss it or deal with challenges regarding money. The study confirmed that most spouses avoid the topic with spouses and family members to avoid conflict; which has had a detrimental effect on marriages and family relationships. This behavior was cited by 20-year olds all the way up to Baby Boomers.
      So what happens when they meet with their insurance agent or financial planner? We ask them to talk about these very things. We need to know how they feel about their retirement savings, taking care of their families in case of death, distributing assets to spouses and children, controlling rights to property–all topics people rarely talk about or want to talk about.
      How many times have you been working with a couple and discovered they had never discussed some very vital issues? Perhaps their earned income is disproportionate and they have never addressed the risk that represents for the lower income earner. Perhaps they have never talked about the balance between spending and saving or shared their priorities for early retirement.       Perhaps they have never discussed an assumed inheritance from one member of the couple and how that will impact their plans. They are asked to have these conversations in front of you to be able to do proper planning.       Rather than one spouse demanding the conversation to address their issues, you are “demanding” the conversations to address their issues and nobody is at risk for bringing it up. The same dynamic is true for multi-generational planning; children get answers to questions they didn’t want to ask.
      We are sometimes witness to conflicts we didn’t intend to initiate, but there can be little question that the conflict needed to surface for the clients to be prepared for their own futures.
      Insurance agents share these stories, but rarely give themselves the credit for being able to open and negotiate these discussions. Discussions people have been avoiding for years – discussions they never had with their own parents.
      What trains us to do this? I would suggest several things.
First, we are focused on the purpose of understanding and defining needs in financial terms. Anyone who is successful selling life insurance or annuities knows the numbers part of the job is the easy part. The hard part is understanding what people want for themselves and their loved ones; translating that into how much savings they need or how much insurance they need is simple. We know we need the information in order to make good recommendations, so we don’t back off of the conversation. It is a step in a process to us, not a “big emotional deal,” which it often is for the client. For lack of a better term, we don’t take it personally.
      Second, most successful agents or advisors are trained in understanding needs. We have a laundry list of possibilities (premature death, early retirement, family inheritance, divorce, children with special needs, etc.) so we are apt to ferret out the issue that clients have been avoiding simply by asking a lot of questions.
      Finally, we are as trained to have difficult discussions as any caring person would be. This is a hard business to be in if you don’t like and care about people. It attracts caring people. You don’t have to be a psychologist to hear a client’s embarrassment or anger or pain and react appropriately. We aren’t marriage counselors, we are financial counselors, and in that role, we can allow people the space to feel what they need to in order to come to decisions. My guess is that most of us don’t even know we are doing it.
      I think this is a big part of what makes our job fulfilling. We can make a very good living in a relatively independent career and we get to work through interesting issues with interesting people and then help them solve problems. That’s the job. It’s what we do.