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Written by: Nigel Green | deVere Group
Financial advice is built on numbers. But it’s powered by words.
In a profession defined by market metrics, asset allocations, and tax efficiency, the single most decisive factor in long-term success isn’t a model portfolio or a new AI integration, it’s how effectively an advisor communicates.
Communication isn’t a soft skill, it’s the main skill.
The difference between the clients who stay and the ones who walk away rarely comes down to underperformance. It comes down to whether they felt heard, understood, and consistently informed.
The industry knows this, at least in theory. But in practice, communication often gets reduced to routine: a quarterly call, a templated email, a pre-meeting checklist.
What’s missed is that communication isn’t about delivery, it’s about connection, and that requires intent, nuance, and skill.
Why does this matter more now than ever?
The environment’s changed. Investors are more empowered, more skeptical, and more flooded with information than ever before.
They’re not just comparing your performance—they’re comparing your presence. They’re measuring how clearly you explain risk, how quickly you respond to uncertainty, how well you tailor complex concepts to their worldview.
In a volatile market and an AI-saturated world, the human element has become the differentiator. Your clients want to know they matter. Your prospects want to know they’re not being sold to. Your colleagues want to know you’re someone they can build with. All of that is communication.
So how do you get better—beyond the clichés?
First, learn how to convey certainty without pretending to be certain.
Clients crave clarity, especially in times of stress. But clarity is not the same as overconfidence. Too many advisors feel pressure to sound definitive about markets or economic direction in order to maintain trust. That’s a mistake.
What builds long-term trust is your ability to explain uncertainty clearly, and to outline options, context, and consequences without spinning forecasts as facts.
Second, get better at reading cognitive bias in real time, and adjusting your language accordingly.
Most clients don’t process financial information like economists. They process it like humans—with emotion, anchoring, loss aversion, and recency bias all in play. If you don’t tune into that, your advice will land flat or get ignored. If you do, you can shift the entire trajectory of a conversation.
Finally, make intentional silence part of your skillset.
This may sound counterintuitive in an article about communication, but silence is not the absence of communication—it’s one of its most powerful forms. Knowing when not to speak, when to pause, and when to let a client fill the space is a strategic advantage. It gives insight into what matters most to them, often in their own unfiltered language.
Too many advisors rush to fill silences, explain over objections, or cut in with reassurance.
But sometimes the most valuable thing you can do in a meeting is wait. Wait for the client to finish their thought. Wait for them to express the thing they’re unsure about. Wait, so you don’t miss what’s underneath the surface-level questions.
The more space you give, the more real the dialogue becomes and the more tailored your advice can be.
In a competitive, fast-changing industry, advisers are rightly investing in digital tools, back-end efficiency, and scalable models. But don’t forget what those models are built to support: relationships. And, of course, relationships live or die on communication.
The top-performing advisors of this decade won’t be the ones with the cleverest alpha story or the biggest LinkedIn following. They’ll be the ones whose clients say: “They ‘get’ me. They explain things clearly. I trust them.”
This trust is not a product of charisma. It’s a product of skill, and like any skill, communication can be practiced, measured, refined and mastered.
Not necessarily by doing more talking. But by becoming more intentional with how, why, and when you speak.
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