What ‘above and beyond’ means for today’s advisor

Advisors must anticipate what clients will need as they go through the seasons in their lives (AI-generated image)

By Adam Sheer

Regular meetings, consistent returns, a call when the market turns — these are things that matter, and clients are right to expect them. But they're table stakes. Every advisor offers them. None of them is why a client stays for 20 years or sends their children to you when it's their turn to seek advice.

What actually earns that kind of loyalty happens in moments that have nothing to do with performance or availability — moments most practices simply aren't built to handle.

That's the definition of good service: not reactive, but anticipatory. Ritz-Carlton built its reputation on exactly this. The hotel logs every guest’s preference—pillow firmness, a favorite table, how they like their coffee—into a shared profile, so by the time a guest checks into any property, staff already knows what they'll want. Nothing must be requested twice.

Financial advice has its own version of this, even if it's practiced less consistently: getting ahead of a deadline the advisor already knows is coming, instead of waiting for the client to call once it's already a problem. Same instinct, just applied earlier.

The real test of anticipatory service isn't whether an advisor is generally responsive or available — it's whether they act on what they already know will happen, not just what might. A few moves that meet that bar:

Preparing clients for when the paychecks stop. Every working client will eventually trade a paycheck for a portfolio, and the adjustment is often more emotional than financial — even clients with more than enough money feel the loss of a regular deposit. Walking through that shift before the last paycheck arrives turns a jarring transition into an expected one.
Getting ahead of Medicare. Every client will age into Medicare on a known date, and premiums are based on income from two years earlier. The planning window opens years before most clients ever think about it.
Raising continuing care communities before they're needed. Most require applicants to be healthy enough to live independently at admission, and some carry multiyear waitlists. Touring and applying at 70 keeps choices open that a health event at 80 would take off the table.
Helping a client plan for the one event every family will eventually face. Their own funeral.

That last one is worth dwelling on, because almost no advisor is doing it — which is exactly why it stands out.

Fewer than 1 in 5 people preplan their own funeral, according to the National Funeral Directors Association's most recent consumer survey. That means most families are left making dozens of decisions — casket, service, cost, cemetery — during the worst week of their lives, when they should be free to grieve instead.

This is where an advisor is uniquely positioned to help, in a way almost no one else in a client's life is. You already have the relationship, the trust and the context. You're already having the hard conversations about aging, health and legacy that most people avoid. Raising preplanning is a natural extension of that conversation—not an intrusion.

It's also simpler to offer than most advisors assume. Planning software now exists that walks a client through the decisions in their own words, checks local pricing so there are no surprises, and produces a letter to their heirs so the family knows exactly what was wanted — no guessing, no disagreement at the worst possible time. Funds can be set aside through an insurance policy, so the money is there when it's needed, outside of probate. A junior member of your team can run the session with the client directly — it doesn't have to be you, and it doesn't require becoming a funeral expert or adding meaningfully to anyone's workload.

What it does require is one conversation — bringing it up before a client needs it, not after. In a business where every advisor claims to go above and beyond, this is one of the few things that's still genuinely rare.