Today's Wills & Probate Podcast

Strategically navigating a consolidating estate planning market

Today's Wills and Probate Season 4 Episode 4

Arken Group CEO Dave Newick joins the Today's Wills and Probate Podcast to discuss the output of a recent report published by Arken looking at the current landscape of the private client sector. 

The podcast focuses on three key discussion points borne out of the report; law firms and professionals need to be;

  1. better at understanding the data they hold
  2. proactively manage the changing employment landscape
  3. explore scalability and finding their marketplace.

"Strategically navigating a consolidating estate planning market" looks at the current activity around the acquisition of smaller firms by larger firms actively seeking to build their will banks and client databases. Dave outlines how the arrival of private equity into the sector is impacting and warns with a general lack of succession planning, and changing workplace dynamics, firms are not always well equipped to deal with what's coming in the next 2, 5, and 10 years. 

The total number of firms is diminishing and consolidators are realising the opportunity he says. 

Where firms have an opportunity is in leveraging the data they hold in their client and will banks. Indeed, the value of firms is relative to their ability to interrogate, segment, and use their data for marketing purposes... in short the value of firms is diminished without the ability the leverage the data they hold. 

On the changing employment landscape new models of employment are becoming more popular with the self-employed consultant style firm developing in private client having seen much success in conveyancing. The changes are driven by generations in the workforce who don't want to work in that traditional law firms way. Gen X'ers and Millennials value freedom and flexibility says Dave, and firms must be attuned to that. 

And finally on distribution volume providers are scaling their businesses through partnerships with consumer organisations; how do you make the most of that when you don't have the scale to service at that level? Well, the answer says Dave is to be a part of the disruption; be in front of where the demand is and partner with introducers/IFAs etc. There is, he adds, renewed enthusiasm and interest in estate planning because of the great wealth transfer and with 27,000 licensed financial advisors there are plenty of opportunities to be targeting. 

Strategically navigating a consolidating estate planning market white paper is available to review here. 

The Today's Wills and Probate podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider, and at www.todayswillsandprobate.co.uk. Subscribe today to hear all the latest news and views across the wills and probate sector.

Thank you to our podcast sponsor VacantC Legal Recruitment

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