Over recent years numerous commentators have expressed their views on the role of technology within financial advice and the increasingly wide variety of software solutions that are open to financial adviser businesses.
Many have sought to put their spin on topics such as, for instance, Robo advice, client portals, cash-flowing planning, and digital transformation, while others have focused on issues such as compatibility and integration.
Of course, many of these are exciting and essential aspects of the technology debate that deserve attention, but, to my method of thinking, they’re secondary considerations regarding deciding on the best technology for your advice business.
The first and most fundamental task in selecting what sort of technology you’ll need to deploy within your organization has very little related to the technology itself. Instead, it has everything about the proposition you want to supply your clients.
For example, suppose the essence of one’s proposition revolves around the amount and quality of the personal relationships. In that case, deploying plenty of technology solutions that enable your clients to self-serve is probably counterproductive.
Conversely, if your proposition is about speed and efficiency at a reduced cost, then applications that enable your clients to accomplish most of the work themselves deserve to be at the top of your plan.
Selecting software
Of course, there are all sorts of different propositions that could sit in between both of these extremes. Still, the point remains the same, i.e.; You’ll need to start by deciding exactly what you want your technology to accomplish for your clients and your organization before selecting any software products and worrying about whether they integrate.
So, the first faltering step is to put yourself in your (typical) customers’ shoes and think about the question ‘What do I would like my proposition to feel like or, in marketing terms, how can the utilization of technology fit with my brand?’ As an example:
- What role do you want technology to play in communicating with your clients? Is it more or less delivering better-looking hard-copy quicker, or is it about using interactive apps to gamify elements of the method and help your clients to understand, as an example, the impact of inflation or the character of investment risk?
- Do you want your clients to actively engage with the technology to become an area of the process? If that’s the case, at what point in the advice process do you want your clients to become involved, and what do you want them to accomplish? E.g., are you wanting them to key-in fact-find data, provide electronic signatures, etc.?
- How much support do you want to provide, and how? Do you like to offer face-to-face handholding, a remote Helpdesk, or some form of chatbot?
What sort of look and feel are you wanting?
Once you’ve got all of these aspects clearly defined, you’re able to start creating the delivery process, i.e., what tasks need to be performed, when and by whom? What functions can be automated, and which need to be delivered face-to-face? How will quality be monitored, measured, and controlled?
Only when you know the answers to these questions can you start looking for the program solutions that will genuinely support and enable your business.
To sum up, the financial advice industry is on the cusp of a revolution in its usage of technology.
Over the coming years, it will be possible to automate more or less all elements of the advice process; nevertheless, the winners will be those that realize that technology deployment is approximately far a lot more than simple process automation; it’s about using technology to locate and engage with the proper sort of clients to match their proposition and to supply a user-experience that genuinely fits their brand.
