Morningstar Investment Services held a conference call this afternoon with independent advisory clients to help them navigate a Wall Street maze that is shifting as landmark firms disappear.

"We see a need—just like with any of these recent crises—to make sure that the end client doesn't respond with their gut and instead follows the tenants of investing: be in it for the long-term and diversify," says Peter Dugery, director of national sales and distribution at Morningstar Investment Services. "With these kinds of things, you can't plan for specific issues like this, but you always are preaching diversification and now adding long-term risk tolerance to your time horizon. For financial planners, it's going to be all about going out and holding their clients' hands again and back to basics."

This emphasis on basics is intended to calm jittery clients' nerves while mortgage-riddled Merrill Lynch is sold to Bank of America, bankrupt Lehman is sized up for a fire sale and 89-year-old insurance giant AIG goes hat in hand seeking $40 billion in financing-a scenario that has sent the stock marking plummeting today.

Cary Carbonaro, president of Family Financial Research, a financial advisory firm based in New York and Florida, says that many of her clients' fears lie in the unknown and the specter of a market collapse.

In these instances, planners say, reassuring clients is essential. "We can't do anything about the news or the fallout except to take the opportunity to be proactive, talking to clients," says Harold Evensky of Evensky & Katz Wealth Management of Coral Gables, Fla. "I tell them that this is when money is lost," he said of the falling market. "'But it's also when money is made."

For example, Evensky said, the dissolution of Lehman would result in a large number of securities being dumped on the market, thus reducing their value initially and creating buying opportunities.

Moreover, Lehman's huge subsidiary holdings comprise some asset classes that many investors may not be aware of, including substantial commercial real estate holdings. "That's a lot of product that would be dumped that would affect REIT investments," Evensky said. Regarding Lehman's entire portfolio, he said, "A lot of firms would be affected by the unwinding of Lehman's holdings, including hedge funds that would have to sell securities to settle loans."

Dugery expects the landscape of investment offerings to change somewhat after the financial-services earthquake's aftershocks subside. "You're going to see some mutual funds that are focused in on areas like financials. You are probably going to see a lot of activity there, whether it's people looking to buy at a cheap time or people who couldn't stomach the volatility. In sector funds and sector ETFs, they are going to be exploited on both ends of the spectrum."

Despite the unavoidable client angst resulting from the meltdown, some planners see distinct opportunities in it. One lies in the increased availability of talent in refugee advisors from financial services companies, says Diahann Lassus of Lassus Wherley & Associates in New Providence, N.J. The other, she says, is a potential increase in clients disaffected by brokerage firms.

As for Lehman's last days, Lassus likens the situation to ripping off a band-aid. "It's as if they'd been taking a Band-Aid off slowly for the past eight or nine months," she says, referring to the regular drip of news on the firm's foundering. "Now, the Lehman situation is like ripping it off the rest of the way."

AIG's troubles bring to mind clients' annuities held by the company. Experts said today that clients' variable annuities held by AIG would not be at risk because the subaccounts in which this money resides are the responsibility of the managing firm-in many cases, individual mutual fund companies.

Fixed annuities, however, are in a different category. These are investments held by the company that issues them, and they aren't federally insured.

So the ultimate security of fixed annuities lies with the company itself, and due diligence for their security tends to center on insurance ratings that advisors must analyze carefully before advising their clients on purchasing. These investments are regulated by state insurance commissions and are backed by the same kind of state-mandated insurance-pooled funds that back insurance policies.

Like many advisors, Carbonaro is not changing her strategy. "I've been giving them tips on spending less, shoring up their emergency funds, watching expenses and making sure they're following the strategies that I've given them. Things haven't changed. We just have to get through this cycle and, of course, think long-term, which nobody wants to do."