Your A Clients Are Getting C-Level Service — and They Know It

I spent a day shadowing an adviser at a mid-size practice in Adelaide. He had 142 clients on his book. By lunchtime, he’d handled three phone calls from clients with less than $50,000 in FUA each — clients who generated a combined $2,100 in annual fees. He’d spent 90 minutes on those calls.

His top client — $2.4 million in FUA, $19,200 in annual fees — hadn’t had a review in eight months. When I asked about it, the adviser winced. “I know. I keep meaning to call her. It’s on my list.”

That client was the practice’s single most valuable relationship, generating more revenue than the bottom 40 clients combined. She hadn’t heard from her adviser in eight months. Meanwhile, a C-grade client who called three times a week with the same questions about his $38,000 super balance was consuming more adviser time than the firm’s top ten clients put together.

This is the client segmentation problem in financial planning. Everyone knows it exists. Most practices have a segmentation model on paper. Almost none execute it consistently.

The Numbers That Should Change Your Priorities

The Pareto distribution in financial planning is extreme. In a typical 120-client book, the top 20 clients (A-grade) generate 65-80% of the adviser’s revenue. The bottom 40 clients (D-grade) generate less than 5% of revenue but consume 20-30% of the adviser’s time — because they tend to call more frequently, require more hand-holding, and often have lower financial literacy that demands longer explanations.

When every client gets roughly the same level of service regardless of their value, two things happen simultaneously: A clients feel under-served (because they are), and the adviser feels overwhelmed (because they’re spread too thin across too many clients who don’t justify the time).

Why Paper Segmentation Fails

Every practice I’ve worked with has a client segmentation model. It’s usually in a strategic plan document or a licensee best-practice guide. It looks something like this:

• A clients: Quarterly reviews, proactive portfolio updates, priority phone access
• B clients: Semi-annual reviews, market commentary emails, standard access
• C clients: Annual review, periodic newsletter, reactive service only
• D clients: Biennial contact, digital communications, transition to robo-advice

The model is sensible. The execution is non-existent.

Here’s why: executing segmentation requires the adviser to make dozens of micro-decisions every day about how to allocate their time. When a C client calls, do you take the call immediately or let it go to voicemail and call back within 24 hours? When you have 30 minutes free, do you use it to prepare for an A client’s quarterly review or respond to a D client’s email about their super balance? When the receptionist asks who to prioritise in the schedule, does she know that the A client’s review takes precedence over the C client who called first?

Without a system enforcing these priorities, adviser behaviour defaults to first-in-first-served. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The polite A client who doesn’t call often gets pushed to the back of the queue, while the D client who calls weekly gets disproportionate attention.

Building a Segmentation System That Actually Executes

Step 1: Objective Scoring

Remove subjective judgments from the segmentation process. Score clients on a weighted formula:

• Funds under advice (40%): The primary driver of fee revenue
• Annual fee revenue (30%): Direct financial contribution to the practice
• Referral value (15%): Clients who have referred or have high referral potential
• Engagement complexity (15%): SMSF, estate planning, business succession clients require more time but justify higher fees

Run the scoring formula across your entire client book. Sort by score. The top 15% are A, next 25% are B, next 40% are C, and the bottom 20% are D.

This removes the emotional attachment problem — the adviser who can’t bring themselves to classify their golf buddy as a D client because they’ve been mates for 15 years, even though the golf buddy has $42,000 in super and hasn’t referred anyone in a decade.

Step 2: Define Service Commitments

For each tier, document specific, measurable service commitments:

A clients: 4 reviews per year, proactive market commentary after significant events, annual strategy document update, priority phone response within 2 hours, birthday and milestone acknowledgments.

B clients: 2 reviews per year, semi-annual portfolio summary email, phone response within 4 hours, annual strategy check-in.

C clients: 1 review per year, quarterly newsletter, phone response within 24 hours, annual fee disclosure.

D clients: 1 contact per 2 years, digital newsletter, encourage self-service tools, consider transitioning to lower-cost service model.

Step 3: Automate the Calendar

This is where most practices stall. They define the tiers and commitments but leave execution to the adviser’s memory and willpower. The system needs to generate the schedule automatically.

At the start of each quarter, the system should: identify all A clients due for review, create calendar blocks with pre-populated agendas, send the adviser a prep reminder 3 days before each review, and trigger client outreach emails to confirm meeting times.

For B clients, the same process runs semi-annually. For C clients, annually. D clients get a biennial automated email check-in.

The D-Client Dilemma

Every practice wrestles with what to do about D clients. They generate minimal revenue, consume disproportionate time, and often have unrealistic service expectations relative to their fees. But they’re still people. They’re still clients. Many of them have been with the practice for years.

The answer isn’t to abandon D clients. It’s to be honest about what you can deliver. A D client who receives consistent, reliable annual contact and clear digital communications is better served than a D client who receives sporadic, guilt-driven attention from an overwhelmed adviser.

Some practices create a dedicated “self-service” tier with automated portfolio updates, educational email sequences, and an annual digital review. This costs virtually nothing to deliver, provides genuine value to the client, and frees adviser time for A and B clients who are paying for personalised attention.

The worst outcome — and the most common one — is the practice that keeps D clients on every adviser’s book, provides them with inconsistent attention, and then loses A clients because the adviser doesn’t have capacity for the quarterly reviews those A clients are paying for.

Measuring What Matters

Once segmentation is automated, track these metrics monthly:

• Review completion rate by tier. A clients should be at 100%. If A-client reviews are being missed or delayed, something is broken.
• A-client retention rate. This should exceed 95%. If you’re losing more than 1 in 20 A clients per year, your service delivery isn’t matching the commitment.
• Revenue per adviser hour by tier. This reveals whether adviser time is being allocated efficiently. If an adviser is spending 30% of their time on D clients who represent 4% of revenue, the segmentation isn’t being executed.
• Tier movement. How many clients moved between tiers each quarter? Upward movement (C to B, B to A) indicates practice growth. Downward movement may indicate market conditions, life events, or service issues worth investigating.

The goal of client segmentation isn’t to create a hierarchy that makes some clients feel less important. It’s to ensure that every client receives a level of service that’s sustainable, consistent, and proportional to their needs. That’s better for the client, better for the adviser, and better for the practice.