Get the inside edge on advice and guidance with State of Advice & Guidance 2018: Actionable and Integrated Advice. This annual marketplace examination reveals what distinguishes the best advice, provides forward-looking Top Ten Trends and offers industry Best Practices. Advice managers can see where their experiences fit within the competitive spectrum with report insights drawn from data-driven Inside Advice^® Benchmarking, a proprietary methodology of 300-plus measures.

Annually, a primary Hearts & Wallets Standardized Consumer Hypothetical is selected for companies seeking advice assessments. Mark and Stacy, a Mid-Career Accumulator couple in their late 40s, were the primary hypothetical for 2018. The hypothetical allows a standardized assessment of recommendations for each experience.

• Options in personal financial advice and guidance are improving as more experiences cover multiple goals as part of overall financial wellness, and recommendations are becoming more actionable.
  
• The capability to allocate saving by account type is missing from many experiences. The best experiences allocate saving across 5 to 6 different account types. 
  
• The best advice and guidance experiences in 2018 personalize recommendations, taking into account variables like geography, tax rates and household status.
  
• Options for advice vary widely in terms of Service Level and Scope, or number and depth and breadth of topics covered.
  
• Innovations in financial advice are positive for consumers, but more options make it harder for consumers to choose since there has not been a reliable resource to help them compare and contrast.
  

Marketing, product and advice/digital design professionals get insights to:

• Build capabilities that help your clients see progress toward all their goals with actionable steps.
  
• Incorporate variables that can personalize the advice experience.
  
• Provide clear pricing for service and advice as is the case for other products that consumers buy. 
  
• Facilitate consumer shopping through clear categories. Differences in advice options can be more easily understood when categorized on the Hearts & Wallets Inside Advice^® Grid by Service Level and Scope, the two most important considerations that distinguish advice and guidance experiences.  
  

Get your advice experience assessed today! In 2019 the featured Standardized Consumer Hypothetical is At-Retirement couple George & Nina and a second focus is Early Career Millennials Nate & Andy. Hearts & Wallets Standardized Consumer Hypotheticals are also available in other lifestages depending on the design targets for your advice and guidance experiences. 

Leading firms use Hearts & Wallets Inside Advice^® Benchmarking to enhance their advice experiences. This data-driven assessment compares each experience with 300+ measures within the Inside Advice^® Database to deliver easy-to-execute insights that can’t be found anywhere else. Validate funding, prioritize initiatives, and provide cross-enterprise positioning for multiple experiences.

Experiences are assessed using one of the Hearts & Wallets' stable of standardized consumer hypotheticals. These design targets have defined goals, questions and financial realities that reflect real consumer needs and concerns as identified in Hearts & Wallets Investor Quantitative™ Database, which now totals over 45,000 consumer respondents, along with the nationwide Explore Qualitative™ research series.