Values Over Location: How To Choose Your Financial Advisor

Click below to listen to Episode 218 – Values Over Location: How To Choose Your Financial Advisor

Values Over Location: How To Choose Your Financial Advisor

Why proximity is not greater when it comes to the quality and values of a financial advisor.

More episodes >>

Within the past 5 years, our world has truly transformed the way individuals can receive personalized financial advice, making location no longer a barrier. With advancements in video conferencing, digital documentation, and secure online access, values based financial advisors, like Christian Financial Advisors, can give personalized financial guidance without the need for in-person meetings.

Even if you do live close to your financial advisor, the convenience, ease of communication, and extended adviser availability are benefits of the shift to online financial advice. Finding an advisor that aligns with your values and needs is more important than geography, as technology enables advisers to serve clients nationwide, and Christian Financial Advisors is here to help you with just that!

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters

Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors

Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters

Bible Verses In This Episode

2 CORINTHIANS 6:14

Do not be mismatched with unbelievers; for what do righteousness and lawlessness share together, or what does light have in common with darkness?

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.

SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Shawn (00:00):
Are you limiting your search for a financial advisor just because of where you live? In today’s digital world, you shouldn’t have to compromise on finding an advisor who truly understands your values and aligns with your financial goals. We’ll explore why location no longer matters when it comes to getting expert personalized financial guidance, and how technology has transformed the way you can receive financial advice that matches your specific needs. Let’s get some perspective. Welcome back to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. I’m so glad that you’ve joined us. My name’s Shawn Peters. I’m joined as always by Bob Barber, and today we’re going to be covering a very interesting topic, one that’s kind of close to my heart because it’s going to be covering a little bit technology stuff, but the shift from local to online personal financial advice. And before we get too far into this, I do want to go ahead and share the scripture we have for this episode 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers for what do righteousness and lawlessness share together or what does light have in common with darkness?” Now, the reason why that scripture was chosen by Bob for this is the idea of picking a financial advisor that happens to be nearby but may not be the right fit for your needs and in alignment with your values versus finding an advisor that geographically maybe as far away from you, but within a “click” you can connect with that advisor and not just be online like a robo-advisor or tool, but actually get online personal financial advice.

Bob (01:41):
That’s correct, Shawn. And this scripture really does go with it. And I have seen such a paradigm shift in my 30 plus years in this business. When I first got into it, it was all about I’m going to sit across the desk from you, and that’s the old school.

Shawn (01:59):
So people would just choose someone based on who happened to be nearby to where they lived and really didn’t go into, well, what experience and skills or specialization do they have? What kind of team do they have to serve them? It’s just, well, they’re nearby, they’re downtown, and so I guess I’ll go talk to them.

Bob (02:18):
Which was hard for us because we were Christian focused from the very beginning. And of course our town is full of a lot of Christians, but you realize we serve that “Christian within the Christian” that really has a Biblical worldview. So then I started going on Christian radio and that really made a difference because now we were able to get the word out across San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Corpus Christi in our area, which I was on for eight years. But I’ve seen this change go from that local advisor to online advice, which was very big in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. And now I’m seeing the shift of going to online advice, but it’s personalized, very personalized, which we’ve become that a lot because of you, Shawn. You are very dedicated to technology and the need for having an advisor sit across the desk from you versus online. There’s really no need anymore because of the tools that have been available to us. Does that make sense?

Shawn (03:24):
No, I think so. And for those who aren’t aware, but my background was working with Bob for what was about five years or so, right out of college. And then the Lord had a very circuitous path, if you will, on working here at the firm longterm because he called me into working in tech, website development, app development, things like that. And so coming back to work with Bob in 2020, my perspective was very different than right out of college and working with you. And I kind of approach things, my personal philosophy, if you will, but especially here at the firm, technology is never meant to replace the human connection. The intent is never to remove that you never talk to a real person, you never have a conversation.

Bob (04:11):
Well, like I said, always high tech and high touch.

Shawn (04:13):
Exactly. High tech and high touch. Because ultimately, what you want for the technology is to bridge the gap between people who are looking for someone like you and being able to connect and maximizing the amount of human touch. And so the things that can be automated or moved to technology instead of an individual person having to manually type in or do some of that stuff, great, do that because then it gives us people more time with people, even if you may geographically be very far away. So, we have for today’s program, five reasons a local financial advisor may not be the best choice and cover those and talk about a little bit of the shift.

Bob (04:59):
These are reasons I thought about this. And first, they just may not have the experience or the qualifications that a person might need. And that second is they may not specialize and most don’t as an example, such as Biblically responsible investing, we specialize in Biblically responsible investing and Christian-based financial advice based on a Biblical worldview.

Shawn (05:22):
That’s right.

Bob (05:22):
There’s not a lot of advisors that do that. I mean there is a couple thousand now through Kingdom Advisors, but when you compare with the industry as a whole, oh, when you compare the industry, the country, yeah, it’s very small. So where does a Bible believing Christian that believes that God owns it all? Where do they go? Because their local advisor may not provide that. A local advisor may not be able to get the experienced, qualified staff because they could be limited by location unless they’ve grasped technology like we have, they may not be the technologically advanced. And also, I just got an invitation this morning for another workshop and I could tell this was a commission-based advisory. It said it right in there, there are conflicts of interests with coming to this workshop, yet they said it was fully educational. And that be that local advisor may be only commission-based, which creates a conflict of interest to that. So there’s this shift that’s going on that I’ve seen, like I said, from local to online, personal financial advice where location really just no longer matters, Shawn, and that we’ve grown and grown from across the United States.

Shawn (06:35):
I would say just honestly in the last couple years alone, 60-70% at least of our new clients have come on board are not even within two hours drive. Most of them.

Bob (06:47):
Maybe not even in Texas.

Shawn (06:48):
Yeah, I’d say only about half of those are even in Texas. And so Bob, let’s get into some reasons of why we say no location no longer matters. What would you say is the first thing?

Bob (07:02):
Well, I think the first thing with the technology, because technology goes along with all this, is the ability to have face-to-face online meetings. And you’ve introduced me to where basically with the click and within seconds we can be having a face-to-face online meeting with anyone, anywhere, regardless of location.

Shawn (07:22):
And the client or potential client who’s wanting to speak with us doesn’t have to download anything either.

Bob (07:27):
And we do the personal financial planning online as well in real time. And investing has become so easy because of this, how we can talk directly with someone just like they are sitting across the desk.

Shawn (07:42):
Exactly.

Bob (07:43):
Yeah.

Shawn (07:44):
So, what would you say is the second reason?

Bob (07:46):
Second reason is definitely convenience, conven