T he millennial client poses a dilemma for the average financial adviser. On the one hand, advisers are encouraged to bring on younger clients, because they are the future and that’s where the growth is. On the other hand, most millennials are deep in student-loan debt, have very little to invest and can’t afford the typical fees advisers charge.

In order to attract younger clients, financial advisers must implement innovative strategies. Some are relaxing the minimum amount of money required to open a portfolio. Others are flexible on fees. Some offer a tiered menu of charges, while others completely revamp the typical fee structure. Some offer both, such as Robert Rossi, first vice president at UBS Financial Services in New York.

Rossi is willing to take on millennials with less than the $500,000 in assets he requires of new clients. He also offers the same suite of services at the same price as clients with mega-million portfolios. However, it’s available to only a select group of prospective clients: family members of his current clients .

I go out of my way to engage their children and relatives in the millennial generation, said Rossi. I actively solicit this because it cements my relationship with the family.

Training Tack

Hilary Hendershott takes a more novel approach. She created her own online financial training program called Your Rich Retirement Academy (www.yourrichretirement.com). A year ago she left a registered investment advisory run by her family to build her own firm in San Jose, Calif. To generate clients, she created a course that includes five weekly video seminars and four live question-and-answer calls. The course costs $697, compared with the roughly $5,000 a client would pay a typical financial adviser for similar services.

Since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission won’t allow her to offer investment advice in the videos, the course focuses on the psychology of money and how one’s mind deeply affects and sabotages one’s financial life. In the course, she teaches behavioral finance and personal finance best practices such as budgeting and automating savings and bill paying.

Hiring a financial adviser is a big deal. This allows me to work with people at a lower price point with low commitment, said Hendershott. Because I share stories about my life and they listen to my voice, over time I become a voice of reason and gain a high level of trust.