A Case Study with Telemus Capital: Grow Your Business with Lumiant HALO
Telemus Capital is a Michigan-based RIA with $3.2 billion in AUM that utilises a unique financial life management approach to offer customised life cycle planning for clients throughout the key stages of their lives. While they offer a full range of wealth advisory services including investment management, Telemus' hallmark is a holistic planning approach that creates a fully integrated plan for achieving clients' short- and long-term goals.
It has proven to be a successful approach, propelling the firm to the top tier of RIAs nationally in just 14 years.
But having hit the proverbial growth wall as competition in the RIA space reached a fever pitch, Telemus realised it needed an edge — a way to differentiate itself among its target market.
Telemus Capital's Goals
Telemus needed a solution to achieve three critical goals: further differentiate their firm, increase client engagement, and grow outside referrals and prospects.
The Challenge: Standing Out in a Crowded Market
A case in point is the massive amount of attention the 80 million baby boomers are receiving from the financial services industry — and rightly so, because there are trillions of dollars of assets at stake. But since the entire industry is developing strategies targeting retiring baby boomers, differentiation becomes extraordinarily difficult. If retirement planning is simply the cost of entry into the Baby Boomer market, most advisors can claim the same expertise. Without something that uniquely positions a firm, advisory practices risk appearing as a homogeneous blur to prospective clients.
Historically, offering customised advice solutions from a trusted, independent, credentialed advisor has been an effective differentiator. But going forward, advisors need to do more than describe their value — they need to deliver a genuinely unique client experience, providing services and solutions that change the conversation and elevate it to a level that can't be matched by others.
The Solution: Telemus Implements Lumiant HALO
After evaluating several possible solutions, Telemus selected Lumiant's HALO Assessment Planner to give their advisors the edge they needed. Since implementation, Telemus advisors have used HALO to launch goal-based conversations about longevity and health with over 500 clients and prospects — building it into a true competitive advantage by helping advisors address critical issues their clients care about but have never before discussed with a financial professional.
HALO is the convergence of science and financial planning, creating personalised projections about clients' longevity, health, and elder care needs and costs. It's an engaging client experience that can be completed in minutes, with results shared in a comprehensive, personalised report. Built by experts with backgrounds in computational genetics, data science, and health IT, HALO pinpoints a client's risk so advisors can help them plan for it.
How HALO Works
HALO's guided or self-guided assessment creates the opportunity to engage clients in an entirely new conversation about their financial future, while capturing key data to better understand the needs and concerns of their ideal audience. Specifically, HALO helps advisors and clients plan for their most active and healthy retirement years, personalise longevity planning, determine how many years of elder care they may need and estimate the associated costs, and project out-of-pocket healthcare costs across different life stages.
“"HALO helps Telemus be better financial planners. We now have information about the longevity of our clients that allows us to be more accurate with our financial projections. HALO has also made the insurance discussion — long-term care and second-to-die — with our clients easier, and more from an advisory instead of a sales approach." — Lyle Wolberg CFP®, Partner, Telemus Capital”
How Telemus Differentiates with HALO
Active Engagement
Client check-ins and touchpoints are a great opportunity to start the conversation about health planning. Telemus uses two approaches depending on the client.
The first is to have the client complete the HALO assessment prior to a meeting, then use the meeting time to discuss the results and what they mean for the client's financial plan — naturally leading into a discussion of planning options. The second is to complete the HALO assessment together during the meeting, which deepens the conversation and allows the advisor to capture client concerns in real time, highlighting how planning can address each one.
Using HALO, Telemus gained more accurate, personalised healthcare cost and mortality projections — supporting informed discussions about elder care considerations, increasing revenue and assets under management, and growing insurance coverage, all while keeping the client's best interest front and centre.
Business Development
Telemus placed the HALO assessment link on their website homepage and other landing pages, allowing visitors to take the assessment directly. HALO captures key contact information and sends it to Telemus for follow-up — resulting in a backlog of qualified leads: prospective clients who are concerned about health and care costs in retirement and have demonstrated they are motivated to act.
Telemus has also actively promoted the importance of longevity and health planning, which has resulted in local TV news coverage and a feature in U.S. News & World Report focused on their work with HALO. That coverage has been a powerful brand-building tool, generating new client leads from viewers who saw the stories and visited the Telemus website to take the assessment.
Better Targeting Through Better Data
The HALO assessment also provides firms with rich, insightful client data that helps spot trends and needs among clients and prospects. Telemus has been able to gather detailed data about their target audience through website engagement — learning, for example, that the average age of a prospective Telemus client is 55, slightly more likely to be female, with an average desired retirement age of 63. More than half exercise regularly and nearly all are non-smokers. This data leads to sharper targeting and a clearer understanding of who their ideal audience is and what they want to talk about.
Key Takeaways
Differentiation — To truly stand out, advisors need to deliver a genuinely unique client experience that elevates the conversation to a level others can't match.
Meaningful health conversations — HALO brings science and financial planning together to reveal critical aspects of a client's financial future they've never considered before, with the ability to accurately predict future healthcare costs.
Personalisation — HALO helps advisors create financial plans that account for each client's unique health circumstances, making health and care cost planning a cornerstone of wealth preservation.
Ready to learn more about how Lumiant's HALO Planner can help you differentiate your practice and have deeper client conversations? Schedule a consultation today.