October 24, 2025 | By Chris Baigent-Reed, Founder, Jigsaw Tree
Personalisation isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s how clients choose their adviser and whether they stay with them!
Clients expect the same tailored experience from financial advisers as they get from Netflix, Amazon, or their favourite retailer. Services that anticipate needs, remember preferences, offer relevant choices at the right time. For advice firms, this means shifting from transactional service models to relationship-driven experiences where clients feel genuinely known.
Strong financial outcomes aren’t enough anymore. Clients want advice reflecting their personal circumstances, life stage, and values and not just their portfolio balance.
What’s driving this change
Younger clients expect digital, tailored engagement as standard. They’re comfortable sharing information and frustrated when firms don’t use it intelligently. Market transparency means clients compare services, performance, and fees effortlessly, personal connection differentiates when numbers look similar. Evolving life goals mean modern clients want advice aligned with lifestyle aspirations, sustainability preferences, and family priorities, not just investment returns.
The question facing firms isn’t whether to personalise. It’s how deeply to embed personalisation across the entire client journey.
Beyond data: understanding people
Many firms equate personalisation with data and analytics. Information matters, but true personalisation goes beyond CRM fields and reports. It’s about empathy and context; understanding what matters most to each client and reflecting that in every interaction.
Effective personalisation delivers tailored communications reflecting client interests and life events, flexible service models adapting to changing needs over time, and meaningful engagement prioritizing listening and relevance over meeting frequency. When done well, clients don’t simply receive advice, they experience partnership.
Designing the personalised journey
To deliver personalisation at scale, firms need to examine the complete client journey by asking uncomfortable questions. Do we truly understand clients’ goals and values, or just their assets and liabilities? Are communications timely, relevant, and empathetic, or generic and compliance-driven? Is our service model flexible enough to evolve as clients’ lives change, or rigidly standardized?
Leading firms map client journeys in detail, identifying moments that matter and redesigning them to feel personal and purposeful. That might mean offering choice in engagement methods, adapting review structures to individual preferences, or creating digital content reflecting each client’s priorities. Firms succeeding view personalisation not as marketing exercise but as operating principle.
Empowering advisers to deliver personalisation
Technology and process support personalisation, but delivery ultimately depends on people. Advisers remain the cornerstone of trust and connection in financial services. Empower them by providing better visibility of client histories and preferences, reducing administrative work so they focus on relationships, and encouraging curiosity through training that develops deeper, values-based questioning.
The most powerful personalisation remains profoundly human: the adviser who remembers milestones, understands motivations, and helps clients make decisions aligning with their life story. Technology enables this, but only when it amplifies human connection rather than replacing it. AI will enhance this capability, but the foundation must be adviser-client relationship quality.
The strategic business opportunity
Personalisation creates better experiences while building stronger, more resilient businesses. Firms understanding clients deeply benefit from higher retention (clients who feel understood are more loyal and less price-sensitive), more referrals (personalised experiences inspire advocacy and word-of-mouth growth), and sustainable profitability (tailored services enable firms to align value and pricing more effectively).
Personalisation transforms client relationships into true partnerships—and partnerships into long-term business success.
For firms seeking to embed personalisation practically and sustainably, our process mapping offers structured starting points for lasting change.
