Two decades ago, much of the advice sector was driven by paper. While some advisers used a standalone back-office system to store client information, it was by no means universal.
Today, you’d be hard pushed to find a firm that doesn’t have some sort of back-office tech. It’s generally accepted technology plays a fundamental role in ensuring advisers can work effectively and efficiently.
Of course, over the last two decades, adviser technology has evolved significantly and is no longer simply digital filing cabinets. Yesterday’s back-office solutions have transformed into today’s business management systems and become central to many firm’s advice propositions.
Yet despite the advances of the last 20 years, advisers still too often have to rekey information and switch between different tech. They find themselves jumping from their business management system to an investment platform to a client portal to a cashflow tool and back again, multiple times a day. We call this the ‘swivel chair effect’ and it leads to unnecessary friction and errors.
In addition, while many providers have introduced digital processes in recent years, driven in part by the need to improve their service to advice firms, too many still require wet signatures for some transactions.
And although integrations have come a long way, data sharing and connectivity are often not where they need to be, with a lot of systems still requiring data entry and manual workarounds. All of this adds time and risk into the process, ultimately impacting firms’ efficiency and profitability.
Our most recent advice efficiency survey, examining how well today’s advice processes are functioning, identified that overreliance on manual processes and a lack of integration and digitalisation are generating preventable errors and extra work for advice professionals.
A stunning 94% of advisers think their advice journeys could be more efficient, while more than one in five want to eliminate all manual processes. We also found the average time allotted to implementing financial plans is 45 working days a year, with 11% of firms spending over five hours implementing each plan.
It’s not surprising then that, according to the Lang Cat’s latest State of the Advice Nation study, when advice firms were asked whether they would switch out their existing tech stack, given the choice, only 18% would keep everything. In other words, four out of five are dissatisfied with at least one element.
The report states: “A staggering one in three firms would change at least four component parts.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way. With a comprehensive practice management system in place, you can create a central hub that delivers functionality and/or connects third-party tools that seamlessly support your proposition.
When you properly embed the technology into your work processes, your practice management system will underpin the entire advice journey, from the initial fact find, through goal setting and risk profiling to investment research and cashflow modelling to ongoing monitoring and review. It will simplify processes, improve efficiency and save time, while helping deliver good client outcomes, consistently and profitably.
With the right solutions and functionality fully integrated with your practice management system, you can key in data once and use it for a variety of purposes, automate processes and move seamlessly between different tools to provide an engaging, best-of-breed solution.
You can also share data securely with trusted third-party providers as well as clients, presenting a comprehensive view of their wealth and how the financial plan is meeting their objectives.
To gain the greatest advantage, advisers need to embrace the technology and make maximum use of available functionality. Putting a high-performance business management system in the driving seat of your business, supporting the whole advice journey, will help keep your firm on the road to success.
Nick Eatock is chief executive of Intelliflo
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