Many people question themselves, “Do I need a Financial Advisor for my business?”. To make money work for you, you need a prudent financial advisor by your side. A financial advisor helps you in building a road map to achieve your financial goals and also makes your contingency fund for any unforeseen needs that may arise. Let us first discuss who is a financial advisor and what is the importance of financial advisor. Planning is essential when you are beginning a new chapter of your life. Most people don’t start their journey without a proper plan. It is unusual to create something without seeking advice and taking appropriate steps beforehand. A financial advisor has the expertise of making the most of your initial financial investments in the business. They assess the viability of your business model and outline strategies for your path to profitability. Below are the ten reasons why a financial advisor is important and how they can ensure, accelerate and improve your business successes. Managing Cash Flow If you don’t realize how your monthly business revenue is spent, then you need to manage your finances better. There can be days with high cash flow and days with low cash flow. Many people fail to understand the variations like these and experience a cash shortage; this is the reason why a financial advisor is important. With a sound financial expert, you can maintain a budget to ensure the proper running of a business. Structured funding may help you to avoid consequences. Investments If you are unsure of your investments, then it’s high time for you to put your portfolio in order. Many people invest randomly without undertaking proper research on financial products. Also, investing in an ad-hoc manner leaves your investments challenging to track. With an appropriate financial advisor, these investments could be realigned to meet your financial needs. The right kind of assets can also be a constant source of cash flow to your business.  Grab Your Copy Now Finding the Right Asset A friendly and warm ‘cushion’ in the form of assets is desirable for everyone. You need to understand that most purchases come with liabilities attached. So, it is more important to determine the value of your assets. The knowledge of selling or cancelling the liabilities help improve your chances of matching the cash you have to avoid debts with minimal turbulence. A suitable asset allocation through a financial expert acts as a shield to protect from market volatility. Insurance In case of any future mishappenings in terms of business, the right amount of insurance can be a financial boon. You can claim the insurance amount to make sure your business is safe and smooth. Here is the reason why a financial advisor is influential because they will take into account your business enterprises, income, expenses and other goals to protect your liabilities, assets and finances. Setting Smart Financial Goals It’s not just the present that matters, future planning is also essential. Lack of careful financial planning might hinder the accomplishment of the financial goals set for your business. So, the importance of a financial advisor on executing the financial plan drawn is followed vigilantly and religiously to make your business a success. Savings It is good to invest regularly and wisely with high liquidity. Investing small amounts proves light on your wallet and reduces the burden of sudden financial changes defraying a considerable amount to throw you off track. These investments can be utilized in meeting financial goals and investing in the right investment avenues.   Ongoing Advice It is best to establish a long-term relationship with a financial advisor you can trust to meet...

As a first-time entrepreneur, learning the ins and outs of your market, the business, and determining an effective strategy are all important keys to success. One aspect that is often overlooked by many first-time entrepreneurs, however, is a successful wealth management strategy. In order to remain competitive in the market that you are entering, you need to be financially ready. The preparations a business makes in its financial management strategy in the early stages can often be the reason why some businesses succeed while others fail. Proper wealth management is crucial to your success, so take the time now to become familiar with the concept and how you can apply best practices to your own business venture. Get to Know Your Financials The first step in proper wealth management is becoming familiar and comfortable with your current personal and business financials. Working with a financial adviser can be an important strategic step to take to make sure that you have everything in place in order to effectively start and operate a business. They can also work with you to understand your credit score, future wealth projections, and strategies for overcoming unforeseen expenses. When entrepreneurs go into business blindly without preparation, it can be difficult to overcome the debt that this forces individuals to incur. Setting your sights on the future and preparing for them now will help you tackle emergencies and challenges as you are faced with them. Read On: Brave New Life: How to Start an Agency After a Freelancing Career A resourceful article from TimeClockWizard that operates an extremely popular employee time management tool for small businesses. Be Agile With Your Costs A successful entrepreneur should possess the ability to remain agile in any situation. Adapting to changes in the market and being flexible with consumer demands are favorable traits that will help increase profits in the long run. In the presence of a situation, however, a business owner may be required to come up with cash quickly. Finding solutions to meet the demands of the market and your customers often requires strategic thought processes around ways to better manage your current costs. Read On: How To Start A Business In The UK? An exceptionally valuable guide, which provides secrets from industry experts to starting a successful business in the UK . Because costs are often unavoidable and may come during the most unexpected of times, it’s important that during these times you utilize the resources around you. Making the right decision for your business could mean taking out a loan, seeking out an investor, or restructuring personal expenditures such as refinancing your home. Whichever decision you decide is right for you, know that there are many options to help you access the cash you need. For your commercial insurance needs, Krywolt Insurance has the right answers.  Set Goals for Your Business Every entrepreneur has their own reasons for choosing to start a business. Likely reflective of their desire to do more with their personal passions and talents, becoming an entrepreneur is a goal that many hope to achieve. Once you have successfully completed your goal of starting a business, it’s important to set goals for your business as well. Setting egocentric goals of “becoming a millionaire” or “becoming the best at …” won’t help drive your business forward. Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of thinking they will become rich or successful simply by starting their own venture. This can cause any business to fail as the most valuable stakeholders in a business venture often get forgotten. Your investors, employees, and customers are all important to helping your business achieve its goals. Working together with a cohesive...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming industries across the board, and financial companies and institutions are moving fast to keep pace. AI is changing the way we apply for loans, file insurance claims, invest our money, and interact with our banks. Here are some of the most prominent AI trends that are making inroads in the finance industry. Fraud Detection and Management As e-commerce is rising in popularity, so is online fraud. To prevent frauds, many e-commerce platforms and card issuers have been forced to decline transactions too aggressively. According to a study by Javelin Strategy, retailers lost almost $118 billion in 2015 due to false declines. Moreover, more than a third of cardholders abandoned their card because it was falsely declined. To detect fraud and prevent loss of revenue, many financial institutions have turned to AI. Machine learning algorithms can reduce false declines and improve the accuracy of real-time approvals because they can identify fraudulent activities that would go unnoticed by humans. Recently, Mastercard has launched its own AI-based fraud prevention system. Mastercard’s technology gleans patterns from the historical spending habits of shoppers. It uses this data to set a behavior baseline that allows it to score and compare new transactions. It is not limited to predetermined rules. Traditional fraud detection systems, on the other hand, use a one-size-fits-all approach when evaluating transactions. Since Mastercard processes countless interactions each year, they have plenty of quality data they can use to hone and train its AI fraud prevention system. Thanks to machine learning, AI fraud detection systems learn on their own and improve themselves over time. AI systems can also automate AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) compliance. Virtual Assistants and Chatbots Thanks to machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), chatbots and virtual assistants can deliver human-like interactions. There are more and more virtual assistants that are designed for various niches within the finance industry. Banks and other institutions use virtual assistants and chatbots to offer personalized conversational experiences to their clients. Unlike human agents, virtual assistants can juggle multiple accounts at once, and they are always available. They allow customers to get assistance outside of office hours. Banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies can use chatbots to reduce the workload of their call centers. By offerings comprehensive self-help solutions, clients can successfully apply for loans, get personalized financial tips, or file claims much faster. For instance, the AI Insurance Claims Assistant can help and re-engage with customers throughout the complete claims process. It can gather the required information for processing and update the customers on the status of their claims. They also have digital workers that can automate the onboarding journey, help customers figure out their coverage needs, update their information, or make policy adjustments. Banking bots, on the other hand, can help customers optimize their financial plan by intelligently tracking their income, spending habits, and essential recurring expenses. They can also help customers open an account and remind them to pay their bills. Risk Assessments As mentioned, one of the strongest features of AI is its ability to learn from past data. Since records and bookkeeping are an essential part of financial services, AI and finance go hand in hand. Credit cards are a perfect example. To determine if someone is eligible for a credit card, card issuers use credit score. But, business-wise, it doesn’t always make sense to group customers into “haves” and “have-nots.” Instead, financial institutions can use each customer’s data, such as the number of credit cards they have, the number of loans currently active, and information on loan repayment habits, to customize the interest rate on the card they have issued...

Starting a Business: You’ve probably read countless articles about it and believe you’re finally ready to take that big step. A word of caution though: once you step into the entrepreneurial waters, you’ll quickly realize that nothing has really prepared you for it. There’s so much more to it than just a good idea. It takes a lot of research and planning to prepare for starting a business. In this article, we help you save that precious time by bringing you 4 things you need to know before starting a business. Understand the Laws and Regulations One of the most important things when starting a business is to familiarize yourself with the laws and regulations that affect you. What kind of business permit or license will you have to obtain? What are the legal requirements for starting your business? How much will you need to pay in taxes? Compliance with the law is essential because you don’t want a technicality holding you back once you embark on this journey. There is a lot to consider from filing tax returns and paying your staff to protecting your business with insurance. If you can’t figure out all of these things on your own, seek help from a reputable accounting firm. A professional can guide you through these laws and regulations and help you figure out if you’re ready to start a business. Additionally, a skilled accountant will be a great ally later on in helping you manage your finances and not over-paying on taxes, etc. Experts at Bankrate have created a resourceful guide that explores seven ways to manage financial stress. It includes tips such as prioritizing what you can control, earning extra money, paying essential bills, and more.Here is the link for the guide : 7 ways to manage financial stress during trying times Is There a Demand for Your Product? Before you spend all your money on developing a product, have you researched the market? Is there a demand for such a product or service? What about the competitors? This might be hard to hear but there is a chance your product isn’t so great or needed so your first step should be to find out whether there is a market for it. Countless new ideas and products are introduced every week, month, year. But how many businesses actually succeed in surviving the first few years? About 80% of businesses survive the first year while only half of all businesses make it to the fifth year. You’ll need all the information you can gather so that you can make small adjustments to your product/service accordingly. Thorough market research will provide answers to the above-mentioned questions and give you an insight into whether it’s worth spending more time on your idea or not. Research your competition carefully. But don’t get discouraged if you discover that there are many other businesses with similar ideas. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be in the same business too. If the market is thriving, surely there is a place for one more great product. Planning Your Business A comprehensive guide from MyMove – for parents to help provide their kids with a baseline of financial literacy so they have the information they need to make smart educated decisions. You can check it out below:Financial Literacy: Teaching Kids How To Buy A Home Don’t Spend More Than You Need When starting a new business, most people give up a lot to finance the idea. Many get into debt, spend too much too soon and showcasing poor money management skills. This matter also requires good research. You need to know what to spend on and what can...

The success of your eCommerce website is usually pegged on whether customers can buy the products they need quickly and efficiently. If there are any hiccups in this process, customers are likely to leave and you will lose a sale. To ensure this does not happen, it pays to improve your customer experience. This has the add-on effect of increasing sales and profits. Below, we will look at a few things you can do to improve your e-commerce website. Use Clear, Legible Fonts Even though most e-commerce websites are not text-heavy, people still need to read descriptions, directions, and texts like on your privacy page. Improvements in this area come from selecting the right font. You want a font that is not too thin or bold, one that is not too fancy, and one that is easy on the eyes if you have a lot of text on your website. Also, ensure that the font is at least 16 pixels in size as this has been showing to be the best baseline font size. Make Your Website Responsive Mobile visitors have overtaken desktop visitors on most websites, and this might be true for your e-commerce website. If your website is not responsive, these users will have a hard time navigating the website. A simple test is to visit your website on your phone and see how easy it is to navigate. If it is not for you, it might also not be for your visitors. There are also lots of online tools that can help you know if your website is responsive and easy for mobile users to navigate. If it is not, use the reports generated by these tools to make the necessary changes. Make the Checkout Process Easy No one wants to jump through hoops when they are trying to buy something from your website. If you want customers to have a good experience when checking out, make the process as simple as possible. Collect just the amount of data you need to complete the sale and no more as people hate filling forms. You should also ask your web developer to make sure any errors that occur as the user fills the checkout forms are displayed immediately and not after a reload. Diversify Your Payment Options Everyone has a preferred way of paying. Some like paying using their credit cards, some their bank accounts, and others using platforms like Stripe and PayPal. To accommodate everyone, try to use as many payment options as possible. Users who might want to pay using a method you do not support will usually leave without making a purchase. If you do not want to add all these options, at least accept credit cards and PayPal. Reduce Banners and Popups Banners and popups are a big inconvenience for a lot of people. This is because they slow customers down when a business is running a flash sale or other promotion and make them feel like they are losing out on the deals they came for. Although these banners can help alert users to promotions and sales you are running, using too many of them can ruin customer experience. Try to use as few of them as possible. Business owners who want to increase sales on their e-commerce websites should start by improving the customer experience on their website. If you make things as simple as possible for customers, they are much more likely to purchase from you and even become repeat...