Creating an Annual Report for Your Financial Planning Business

We recently hosted a webinar with Founder and Financial Planner at Quarry Hill Advisors, Kyle Moore CFP®, and he mentioned how he used his annual report to not only inform his current clients of how the firm was doing, the progress they’ve made, personal achievements, and anything else they may want to know, but he also uses it as a platform to generate referrals for his business.

So, how can you use this to better your advisory firm? Here are some tools and best practices that you can utilize for this.

Best Practices and Tools for Creating an Annual Report

Okay, so you want to build a stronger relationship with your clients. That’s great! Being a financial advisor is about more than just managing money, but it’s also about managing the relationships of your leads and current clients, as well. When you sent your clients an annual report at the end of the year, it’s a subtle way to get referrals.

It’s a Subtle Way To Get Referrals

With existing clients, when creating a report, you are showing them that things are going really well and that the firm is being recognized and then show the way that the firm is being recognized. You can also thank clients for the referrals of friends and family and this shows that you are aware of the help that comes with working with them.

Tools To Use To Create Reports

So, you want to use these reports to tell clients how well everything is going, wrap up the year and get more referrals, but what tools should you use to do this?

Canva

One awesome tool that you can use is Canva. What’s even better about this, is that it’s a FREE visual content creation tool, and it is great for non-designers, which means it’s incredibly easy to use. There is a huge library of pre-designed, pre-sized templates in addition to thousands of premium-quality design elements ranging from custom fonts to free stock photos.

This is a great tool where you can create your own template, as they have many different types. You can choose annual report templates, you can create social media templates, brochures whatever will fit best for you and your firm. It can be created in a relatively short amount of time, and what’s even better is that it helps you to stay on brand when creating the reports, as that is so important for financial advisors and their marketing strategy.

Canva makes it easy to create a set of templates and brand kits to keep your brand uniformed. We’ve got templates for just about every post we put on social media. By creating a template to base all of your future graphics off of, it will ensure your posts are consistent, professional and cohesive. Even better, you can choose your set colors and fonts to make everything flow together.

What Should Be Included in an Annual Report?

It takes trial and error, but financial advisors do what works best for them, so not every annual report will be the same, but here is an example of the sections in the one that Kyle Moore did, which really worked out great for him and his clients. It doesn’t have to be complicated, because just like many other things in the financial business, simple and to the point is usually the best way to do things.

Inaugural Client Letter

This is just a quick way to kick off the report, greet the readers and briefly do a run-down of what will be discussed in the report. Thank them for trusting you and working with you, and thank them for being great clients. Some things to include for what you will be discussing are:

• What you have been up to throughout the year
• Any new firm initiatives that might be in the works
• Any other facts that you think will be useful to your clients

It doesn’t have to be very long, anywhere from a few paragraphs to a page should suffice. It’s okay to brag a little bit, but without being self-serving. Clients want to see that you are confident in your work, and this can be portrayed in the way that you word things and discuss what you have accomplished and what you plan to achieve in the next year.

Location of Clients

This section shows where clients are located throughout the country so that readers can get a better grasp of the reach of the firm. Kyle Moore discusses the online presence and how referrals helped his client reach to expand to ten different states. With the tag line, “National” Firm, Local Recognition, it has the small-town feel so that you won’t get lost in the mix of clients, however, as a national firm, it shows the diversity of the growing group of clients that are served, showing clients that they are a part of something that is definitely moving in the right direction.

Timeline of the Year in Review

This timeline is an easy-to-read way to show clients dates on which:

• Important events took place
• Goals that were met
• Webinars that Kyle hosted
• Conferences or retreats that he attended
• Fun family events to humanize the team of the firm

It puts a timestamp so that readers can see quickly things progressed with a very brief explanation of what took place. Include small images or infographics to capture their attention and add more detail.

In the above image, you see how Kyle hits all of the main points and includes a lot of information, but it’s all incredibly neat and succinct, getting exactly to the point.

“By the Numbers”

This section puts a monetary value on what you have done for your clients for the past year. When the facts are right there are in front of them, you can show just how important your relationship with them is what you have been able to do for them.

As you can see in the above image, some of the numbers included are:

• Debt Eliminated
• Website and Blog Views
• Twitter Followers
• Emails Sent
• Media Quotes
• New Members
• Continuing Education Hours
• New Client Households

This is great to put something real and tangible on what you have been doing for your clients.

Wrap-Up

This can be a very quick conclusion…just a paragraph is sufficient. Simply thank your clients for working with you and your team, let them know that if they ever need anything to reach out and any questions can be answered. Say that you’re excited for the year ahead, as that’s a great way to subtly hint at longevity and planning for the future.

Miss Anything? Check Out the Full Webinar

For more information on creating an annual report for your clients and best practices, check out the full webinar below with Kyle Moore and Samanta Russell.