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, convenience, convenience. I could say that three times just because it has become so convenient for someone to conduct business actually from their home.
Shawn (07:59):
Yeah.
Bob (07:59):
Okay. Because if they just have a decent internet connection and a tablet or
Shawn (08:05):
You don’t have to worry about traffic or planning for the actual, even if traffic isn’t bad, planning for the 20 plus minutes each way.
Bob (08:15):
At a minimum. I mean we’re in New Braunfels between Austin and San Antonio, and if you’re coming from Austin, you’ve got to figure out a half day coming down here and back or San Antonio’s the same way. And many of you across the nation may be the same way. I mean if you live in a large city and you just want to go across town and back, it could be an hour.
Shawn (08:35):
That’s right.
Bob (08:35):
Cause of traffic.
Shawn (08:36):
The other convenience with that is not just technology from our clients and potential clients being able to communicate with us, but one of our advisors who worked at a large firm that, I won’t mention the name, but he had worked there for about 20 years and since joining us, he is in the office physically one week a month on average, but the rest of the time he’s working in Florida remotely. And so because of that, we actually have slightly extended hours now because one of our advisors is on east coast time zone versus central time zone. And one night a week he is extending those hours even further and it allows people who, maybe it’s after work. I know for a lot of people, if you have a career, it’s hard sometimes to meet with an advisor between eight and five. And so that’s kind of what the other convenience things that us embracing the technology to bring on staff from other places also opens up some opportunities for us as a firm to be more available to people, again, through technology.
Bob (09:41):
And a third reason is communication is so easy today. I mean with a smartphone, text messaging, email just makes it so easy to communicate with the financial advisor and their team. We monitor, all of us are monitoring the emails and the text messages here. So as soon as the text message comes in, we answer right back.
Shawn (10:02):
One of us sees it.
Bob (10:03):
Yeah, one of us sees it. Hey, did you see that one go through? They’ll point something out to me if I’m not looking at it right then.
Shawn (10:08):
Exactly. “Hey Bob, check this out.”
Bob (10:09):
I’ll immediately get one of the team members saying, “Bob, did you see that text?” I’ll say, “Well, no I didn’t. I’ve been busy for the last 15 minutes.” “Okay, well you need to go look at that.”
Shawn (10:19):
Alright, what would you say a fourth reason would be?
Bob (10:21):
By far, you’ve helped so much with this, Shawn, and this has been how easy documentation is today and how that because of Digitize and things like DocuSign, this secure documentation has taken the place of paper. And I look at this too, this is much safer. As an example, if you’re going to mail forms through the traditional mail. Traditional, I guess snail mail, there’s the danger of that being stolen and somebody getting into your mailbox and getting that mail. But this wonderful digital documentation just makes it so fast and so easy to bring somebody on board. And when there needs to be anything signed, it can be done through DocuSign.
Shawn (11:10):
And what about our fifth reason?
Bob (11:12):
I love this one, direct deposit, remote capture, withdrawals can all be done today by account to account, as long as those accounts are exactly the same, they have to be awarded same social security numbers, same addresses, same everything. And even I like the idea of how who we use allows ATM withdrawals from any ATM. So you can go to, most people have a local ATM, within a mile of where they live. So you could do the cash withdrawal, also really again, why does your advisor have to be down the block from you? Your ATMs down the block from you.
Shawn (11:51):
And 6th reason. We’ve got eight total. So bear with us. We’re almost there.
Bob (11:54):
Electronic storage.
Shawn (11:55):
Yep.
Bob (11:56):
This is a big one we use. It’s very easy to see all the forms that you’ve signed anytime of the day. We use what’s called a digital vault, and that’s becoming very mainstream. It’s 24/7.
Shawn (12:07):
It’s quick and easy. If a client needs something for a bank loan or verification or just anything that we get signed, we always share a copy of that right there in the vault. Number seven.
Bob (12:20):
Secure online access.
Shawn (12:21):
Kind of goes right into number six.
Bob (12:22):
It does. That’s been around for a long time. But it’s still nice to know that with your advisor, you can go online anytime and there’s transparency, you can see all the holdings, you can see what the values are. So you’re never in doubt, “What is my advisor doing?” It’s all laid out right there through online.
Shawn (12:39):
And speaking of the online ease of use, number 8.
Bob (12:42):
Appointments, you can go right online to an advisor’s website and just make the appointment anytime. You could do that at eight o’clock at night and make your appointment with your advisor the next day or two or three days from now.
Shawn (12:54):
Exactly. No back and forth of, “Well, what about this time? Do you have anything on this date?”
Bob (12:58):
Yeah. The bottom line to all this is that you look for somebody that’s technologically advanced today.
Shawn (13:04):
Yeah.
Bob (13:05):
And like I said, we’ve gone from one extreme, from the local advisor to the online. Now, a lot of your local advisors like us, we’ve adopted all the technologies available to us to make it where location just really no longer matters.
Shawn (13:21):
So using the technology as a way to bridge that geographical gap, if you will, or that barrier to entry. And so that way, you can connect personally with a local advisor even though that local advisor may not be locally to you.
Bob (13:40):
Yeah, that’s true. It may not be physically local, but you can still get that same local, personal advice. And around here, we’ve all got the same phone systems. We were in a chat room altogether during the day, so you and I, when we want to talk, it’s just as easy for me to talk to you through an online chat…
Shawn (14:04):
Whether you’re here at the physical office or you’re at your home office or you’re at your office on the coast. It’s always the same communication. And so it’s also nice for disaster situations, too. If we had an issue with the local office, not a big deal. We all have laptops. You just go to the nearest place that has electricity and internet.
Bob (14:25):
Shawn, it just really comes down to if you’re choosing an advisor just solely based on location today, you’re nearly cheating yourself of a superior of personal experience that you could have with an advisory team that fits you. And speaking of the advisory team, that fits you too, Shawn. I like it that location does not limit us to getting the brightest and best minds from around the nation.
Shawn (14:53):
That’s right.
Bob (14:54):
That you don’t have to live right here where we are, we’re headquartered in New Braunfels between Austin and San Antonio. Like I say, we’ve got Matthew, that’s all the way in Tampa, Florida. And then Theresa that works with us, she never comes into the office. She might as well be in another state.
Shawn (15:11):
Because every once in a while she notarizes something.
Bob (15:12):
Yeah. Yep.
Shawn (15:14):
Pretty much it. So once again, 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?” Here at Christian Financial Advisors, we can technologically serve Christians with Biblically responsible investing in Christian-based financial advice regardless of their location. We do serve many local believers here in our area and is new Braunfels Texas’s oldest financial advisory firm. Bob, you’ve been in the industry for a long time, been in the industry here.
Bob (15:49):
One of the oldest in Central Texas, actually.
Shawn (15:50):
That’s right. So we just encourage you that when you are looking for an advisor, don’t settle for an advisor that just happens to be nearby geographically. Find the one that has the right team and tools to serve you, and one that aligns with what’s important to you, your values, and what you’re actually looking for. And with that, thank you as always for joining us and God bless.
[DISCLOSURES]
* Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
