Robo Rise Barred By High Client Acquisition Cost
Robo-advisors need clients to operate and the cost of acquiring clients in financial services is high. To us, this is the elephant in the robo-advisor room that is seldom discussed – which we believe is a strategic failure of the highest order. It is an overriding concern that hangs over all other discussions about robo-advisors. Acquisition costs include the costs of initially finding a prospect and then converting those prospects into clients, with the inevitable attrition rate that those conversions incur. When total costs are compared to clients gained, the results can be surprisingly high. Lucian Camp calculates the cost of acquiring a client in the UK to be around £200 (US$312). This cost is beyond the means of many advisory firms, which is why they grow rather slowly – largely through word of mouth referral. In the past, they might have relied on product manufacturers and distributors to provide them with marketing support. Under new regulations in the UK, such supports are now largely no longer possible, but they continue to thrive in the US marketplace. In a world where former specialties have become commoditized, being able to make a financial product or service no longer makes you special as it once did. Where, in the past, you may have been able to extract an economic rent because you occupied a position of advantage, market forces have now equalized you. Today, the ability (knowledge) and capacity (cash flow) to quickly market financial products to scale is what separates successful financial services businesses from the ‘also-rans’. It does not matter if you arrive at the marketplace with a better mousetrap if that trap is hidden where the mice cannot find it. Cheese – in the form of marketing, advertising and promotion – will help to attract them. But cheese isn’t cheap. We return, once again, to our initial caution – robo-advisors are very good at servicing customers, but do nothing to attract customers. Putting a robo-adviser to work effectively requires considerable investment in marketing and promotions, with no guarantee of success. Vitamins and supplements are equally generic. Yet, a family business in Australia figured out how to create a brand that made generic inputs ‘special’. In late 2015, a Chinese firm acquired the vitamin and supplement company, Swisse, for A$1.5 billion (US$1.05 billion). Swisse is a marketing machine – it is constantly in the news, through its sponsorship of high-profile ambassadors and it spends a lot of money on advertising. It is rumored that its annual marketing budget is A$50 million (US$35 million) when the cost of the raw materials for all of the products it makes is less than A$5 million (US$3.5 million). Vitamin C is not special – being part of the brand image and lifestyle Swisse promotes is special. More than US$1 billion worth of special! Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Additional disclosure: For FA audience/ Gil Weinreich