Investire | Aprile 2025
Financial consulting based on the model of financial advisor networks represents one of the most successful cases in Italy for three main reasons.
The first reason is that the service model of the CF networks puts the person at the center in the dual role of the CF and its client: nothing is more powerful and unshakeable than a human relationship built on trust and dialogue.
The second reason is that the CF networks, not being able to count on branches like traditional banks, have had to make a virtue of necessity by being the first to adopt all the tools that allow them to operate off-site; in fact, they have been pioneers in the use of new technologies since the dawn of the profession.
This has meant that the best digital banks can now be counted among the networks, which represent excellence and will be able to compete even with the most renowned international fintechs.
The third reason is that CF networks, also due to their young age, have an innate capacity for evolutionary adaptation which translates into the ability to ride changes – often anticipating them – rather than undergoing them.
In this context, the ability to anticipate trends in the managed savings industry also fits in perfectly: the CF networks were the first to propose mutual funds and were the champions of active management, compared to those who proposed bank bonds and government bonds.
Today, the novelty in the world of asset management is the affirmation of passive or indexed products – ETFs in their various declinations – which, thanks to the use of algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, are showing a performance/cost ratio that is the envy of actively managed products.
The advent of passive or indexed management products – alongside active management – is an evolution that starts in the United States and is increasingly gaining ground in some European markets, especially in Germany.
Once again, the CF networks, exactly as they did at the end of the seventies with the adoption of mutual funds, anticipate the market by adopting passive management in their consultancy models.
Showing a double foresight: on the one hand, the adoption of innovations before others, which in itself already ensures a competitive advantage, on the other, the opportunity and – in some ways – the opportunism of an almost obligatory choice in light of a wind that is blowing ever stronger in the direction of fee-based consultancy.
After all, the essence of the financial advisor’s work lies in the ability to manage the emotions of his client, making him invest continuously, with a long-term horizon and holding back the instinct to sell when the markets decline.
Since, as we know, there are few funds or asset classes capable of always and in any case guaranteeing positive returns, diversification is confirmed as the mantra of every investor and in diversification, the coexistence of active and passive management is welcome, possibly in a fee-based consultancy model.
The fee-based consultancy model is the future of financial consultancy and once again the networks of financial consultants have understood this before and better than others, welcoming passive management into active consultancy.
And with this, guaranteeing themselves a future full of new successes. Nicola Ronchetti