If you think your inbox gets filled with a bunch of articles about investment strategies and other wealth management content, you should try being Gil Weinreich. As the senior editor for Seeking Alpha’s financial advisor content, Gil’s job is to sort through the thousands of articles that get submitted to Seeking Alpha from outside contributors and select the ones that will provide the most value for financial advisors.
For marketers at institutional asset managers, mutual fund companies, wirehouses, and other companies looking to create content that reaches a large number of financial advisors, Gil is a great person to know. Seeking Alpha has become one of the largest platforms for contributed content on all things investment-related, and Gil is charged with building the site’s Financial Advisor Center, which launched in February 2017.
“Seeking Alpha’s Financial Advisor Center aims to tackle this important constituency’s key issues, including wealth management, retirement advice, building a business and industry news,” Gil wrote in an article announcing the site. Gil joined Seeking Alpha in 2016 after spending 18 years as editor-in-chief at Research Magazine and ThinkAdvisor.
Gil said that he views his job as being a “curator” more than being an editor in the traditional sense. In addition to deciding which articles go on the site, each morning Gil publishes his “Financial Advisors’ Daily Digest,” which includes summaries of and links to some of the best articles he has encountered.
Gil Weinreich on Three Key Trends Facing Financial Advisors
I recently attended an event hosted by Seeking Alpha in Chicago where Gil shared his thoughts on some of the biggest challenges facing the wealth management industry and how financial advisors can meet these challenges.
Here are three of the most interesting questions that Gil answered from the audience, which comprised mostly representatives from asset management firms and the advertising, marketing, and creative agencies that represent them.
What is the biggest difference between good financial writing and bad writing?
This question came from yours truly. I was interested in hearing Gil’s thoughts on what separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to all of the articles and white papers that he reviews. (I told Gil that, as someone who ghostwrites thought-leadership content for the wealth management industry, I definitely had a vested interest in his answer.)
Gil said that the biggest differentiator in the content he reviews is relevance. “You need to show why your topic is important to the audience, and you need to show why it is relevant to them,” he said.
Too often, articles fail to resonate with the audience because they fail the “so what?” test. That is to say, many articles do a good job of explaining the investment thesis or the technical aspects of a certain strategy, but they don’t do a good job of explaining why the reader should care about the topic.
A financial writer’s most important jobs are to 1) find a topic that matters to the target audience and 2) explain how the topic affects them. Only after you accomplish these two things can you move on to explaining the technical aspects of your investment thesis.
How is the rise of robo-advisors reshaping advisor-client relationships?
Gil said that while there’s no denying that robo-advisors and other technological advancements are changing the face of the wealth management industry, one thing hasn’t changed: the importance of trust. Gil said that strong client relationships will always be built on trust.
As algorithmic trading platforms and low-cost ETFs and index funds continue to grow in importance, an increasing portion of the value that an financial advisor provides will come in managing the client’s emotions. This is something that a robot can never do as well as a human, Gil said.
I believe that advisors need to recognize this reality and view it as an opportunity. I wrote a blog post about how advisors can use their newsletters and other forms of marketing to illustrate the aspects of the value they deliver for clients that can’t be automated.
What is the biggest challenge facing investors over the next decade?
With millions of Baby Boomers entering retirement every year, Gil said that advisors must do a better job of explaining how investors need to adopt a different mindset as they transition from the accumulation phase to the drawdown phase. He said that the drawdown phase involves a new set of risks and variables for investors.
Not only do retirees inherently have a shorter time horizon as they enter retirement, they also have the disadvantage of not reinvesting at depressed prices when the market dips. These two factors mean that an investor’s risk profile is vastly different once they enter the drawdown phase. Gil said that many investors don’t fully appreciate these differences, so it presents an important opportunity for advisors to educate their clients as they approach retirement.
About the Author
Scott Wentworth is the founder and head writer of Wentworth Financial Communications. Scott and the team of writers and editors at WFC help professionals across the financial services industry build their brands by creating investment-grade white papers, bylined articles, newsletters, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content marketing.