Canada Life’s latest findings from its ‘Long Term Close Up’ campaign focus on the dynamics of family influence on decision making and long term planning, highlighting an opportunity for advisers.
The ‘Families and their Futures’ chapter of the campaign explores the role family plays when it comes to making financial decisions.
Canada Life said over half (54%) of UK adults said their family had influenced their decisions, while a further 46% believe it is the role of family to help shape long term decision making.
According to Canada Life, the findings highlight an opportunity for advisers to leverage family influence to improve their relationship with clients and build better engagement. While 66% of people have shared their long term vision with their family only 23% have communicated this to an adviser.
Lara Bealing, marketing director at Canada Life, said: “Despite there being a plethora of factors influencing everyday decision making, when examining long-term thinking, families are the single biggest influence. By recognising the important role families play in this form of thinking, there is an opportunity for advisers to leverage the emotional connections and psychology that sits behind this to better build engagement with their clients and encourage a longer term mindset to financial planning.”
The campaign, which explores the factors behind plans for leaving a legacy, found people were most likely to want their children to receive their financial legacy, with millennials most likely to leave it to their grandchildren.
Bealing added: “The traditional family structure has changed considerably in recent years and financial planning needs to evolve to reflect this.
“As advisers are working in an ever changing world, we are helping them on this journey by challenging the way the industry approaches long term thinking by arming them with new insights so they are equipped to encourage different types of conversations to better understand their client’s goals and needs at all stages of life.”
