A year that calls for unusual year-end client activities

As Europe teeters on financial disintegration and U.S. equity markets end a volatile 2011 having gone nowhere, financial advisers are trying new end-of-year tactics to show client appreciation, cement ties and take care of traditional December business. This year, to calm her anxious clients, Cathy Curtis, president of Curtis Financial Planning in Oakland, Calif., is sending out 2012 desk calendars studded with homespun advice that she calls “simple truths about money.” Her holiday card will feature a woman doing yoga, which many of her clients practice. “It is peaceful and it appeals to women,” a focus of her practice, Ms. Curtis said. Kristin C. Harad, a San Francisco-based registered investment adviser and owner of VitaVie Financial Planning, wants to help clients take stock of more than just their financial condition, so this year, she is conducting telephone seminars on setting personal goals. “I take them through a process that has a bit of a financial bent, but it is about their whole life,” she said. Ms. Harad thinks that her planning practice can help clients accomplish their personal goals. For one client, it is visiting an ashram in India to get a deeper understanding of yoga. For others, is getting back on track with projects that have stalled. “I teach them a framework for getting active,” Ms. Harad said. This year, she senses that clients need even more reassurance and personal attention, and she is setting far more year-end appointments than usual. “Usually, not that many clients come in, but this year, I've heard from at least 25% of my clients, some of whom I haven't heard from in a long time,” Ms. Harad said. For the past couple of years, Tucker T. Watkins, owner of Tucker Watkins & Associates, an Irvine, Calif.-based private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services Inc., has sent e-mail invitations to clients inviting them to get involved in year-end charitable events. “This year, I have seen a profound shift” in the mood of many clients, he said. “There is a sadness out there.” Mr. Watkins thinks that encouraging clients to think about the less fortunate is therapeutic and helps draw clients closer to him. This month, several clients took him up on his invitation and joined him to spend a day assembling Thanksgiving food packages for low-income families in a project with the charity Feeding America. “Back in the days before the housing crisis, when the market was only going up, up, up, people were more focused on stuff and things,” Mr. Watkins said. “Now they are more focused on relationships.” Mr. Watkins sees a business value in facilitating charity work. “It conveys to clients that we care about the whole person,” he said. After these events, clients often open up about “the passions of their heart,” Mr. Watkins said, and they begin talking about helping their favorite causes or new goals for their estate planning. Often “their dreams involve their legacy when they are done,” he said. Philip J. DeAngelo, managing director of Focused Wealth Management Inc. in Highland, N.Y., also feels that charitable events are resonating more than ever with clients. This year, instead of throwing a holiday party, his firm invited clients to a wine auction it sponsored to benefit Greystone Programs Inc., a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., foundation that focuses on autism. It was a huge success. “My staff and I spent valuable one-on-one time, and everyone had fun,” said Mr. DeAngelo, whose firm manages $123 million in assets. “Aside from bonding, clients feel that they are helping to contribute to some real worthy causes.”

DELIVERING TOYS

A breakfast with Santa benefitting low-income families with children is an event that Robert J. Blattel, founder of Blattel & Associates of St. Peters, Mo., has sponsored for several years. But this year, he finds that his clients are more interested than in the past in getting involved, and for the first time are pitching in to deliver toys in addition to donating them. “It really lifts you up to see these kids,” and clients enjoy that feeling, too, Mr. Blattel said. Adviser Lee Munson is taking a different tack in his holiday party this year: offering personal instruction to clients in using their iPhones. “Our firm has an app to get performance and other reporting, but clients don't know how to use iPhones that well,” said Mr. Munson, who is chief investment officer at Portfolio LLC in Albuquerque, N.M., which manages $50 million in assets. “Having my older, or more "mature' clients be able to use an iPhone with confidence” will be his gift to them, he said. Email Lavonne Kuykendall at lkuykendall@investmentnews.com