Advice Services Consultant

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES: 

This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of essential job functions, but rather a general overview of the principal responsibilities. 

• Provide deeper understanding and application of advice practices, through consulting with advisors on planning strategies. Providing support for individual cases. Strategies include financial planning, retirement, estate, charitable, and business planning concepts. In addition, educate and influence how products fit within the Advice Framework. 

• Influence and support overall adoption of the Advice tools and methodology, through consulting on the Advice tools stack and how to integrate it into the planning process. Tools support includeMoney Guide Pro, What if Tax, Morningstar, Solution Studio, and other Thrivent systems and calculators. 

• Support key Distribution stakeholders in the advancement of planning and strategiesin the field. This includes helping build out point of views, serve as Subject Matter Experts in education to the field through various platforms. 

• Identify gaps in Advice and Planning acumen and address through inbound and outbound consults to advisors. 

• Leverage technology to provide consultation to representatives, field leaders, and Thrivent wholesalers on the advice process which leads to solutions for individual case design, in addition to, providing answers to representative’s questions on complex financial matters including, but not limited to, topics on college planning, estate planning, business planning and retirement planning. The expected outcome is to help advisors lead with Thrivent's Purpose Based Advice process providing clients a roadmap and clear action plan to achieving financial clarity.

• Help Financial Advisors to identify both financial strategies and financial concepts to meet his/her existing client’s financial needs, to prospect for new clients, to overcome objections. To ensure advisors are confident in the delivery on topics of estate, business valuation, special needs and stock option planning and objections to effectively close sales. 

• Provide subject matter expertise to internal and external Thrivent facing collateral. Including items for the Thrivent magazine, marketing collateral, articles, whitepapers, and podcasts.

Describe below the audience this role will interact with and level of influence they will have on those roles. 

• The Advice Services Consultant will report to the Advice Services Leader and partner with others across Distribution Solutions, Wholesaling, Virtual Advice, and other areas to help influence and support initiatives to advance key strategic goals. 

• The Advice Service Consultant will support key field roles, including new advisors, field leaders, and tenured advisors in driving a deeper knowledge of strategy and the incorporation of the preferred Advice process and tool stack into practice.

• This role will provide ongoing feedback loops from field advisors to the advice technology consultant to ensure Distribution leadership and Product teams are continuing to understand and build toward the largest need of the field. 

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:  

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Economics, or similar field

• 10+ years of Financial Services experience, with demonstrated ability to work across different Advisor groups and regional leaders

• 5+ years of operational experience in a matrixed, cross-functional environment that required analysis of industry and/or business data

• Excellent verbal communication skills, customer service and sales skills, along with excellent interpersonal, organizational, and problem-solving skills. 

• Strong orientation to detail, including an aptitude for numbers, graphs, histograms and knowledge around financial concepts, economics, and the business world.

• Strong understanding of and a demonstrated ability to promote a broad array of financial software applications which support the Thrivent Advice process along with excellent analytical skills.

• Strong leadership skills along with an ability to influence and collaborate through empathy; ability to work across both corporate environment and field to influence and impact results.  

• Deep subject matter expertise in financial planning and the advisory working model

• Proven ability to communicate up and down the chain of command across a diverse group of stakeholders.

• Passionate about the value of providing advice to clients, with an in-depth knowledge of insurance products, asset/wealth management, fee-based planning, mutual funds, and securities

• Entrepreneurial ability to cut through the noise to execute, comfortable with ambiguity.

• Ability to synthesize and balance together multiple (sometime conflicting) stakeholder opinions into a common point of view.

• FINRA Series 7, 63/65 or 66 required or obtained within 90 days (about 3 months) of hire

Preferred:  

• Alignment with Thrivent’s leadership competencies – courage, collaboration, and commitment – through demonstrated resiliency, while working to make the best decisions, and holding yourself and others to a high standard of excellence.

• JD/CPA/CFP/master’s degree in a business discipline 

• Financial services advanced designations (i.e., FIC, CLU, RICP, ChFC, CAP)