Expert: Gary Savory, Senior Consultant, Dynamic Planner Facilitator: Giles Patterson, Aon Client Insight
Expert: Gary Savory, Senior Consultant, Dynamic Planner
Facilitator: Giles Patterson, Aon Client Insight
Key takeaways
- Combining the very best of technology and human interaction is now the standard service expectation.
- Digital enables this. It also frees up the adviser to spend their time effectively with clients and serve more clients – thus reducing the cost to serve.
- Having efficiency within a hybrid model also means time for when face to face is really needed.
- A single planning tool is ideal but it must be able to interact with other components to create a true ecosystem.
- Until a culture of sharing information and data emerges then a true ecosystem, where building out a proposition and extending its use and adding to the toolkit, is hard to achieve.
Overview
1. Combining the very best of technology and human interaction is now the standard.
This was happening already but was massively accelerated during Covid-19 when a change to remote working was forced. At the other side of that wealth managers and clients alike have come to expect to be able to operate in a digital world – harnessing the very best in terms of automation and process management in order to enhance the human interaction at the front end.
2. A hybrid proposition combines the best of technology and human. It frees up the adviser to spend their time effectively with clients and serve more clients – thus reducing the cost to serve.
This needs to go beyond secure messaging and updating details and also provide interactive and relevant tools to enhance service levels and encourage the end investors to engage and actually use them. Technology can help with not just the valuations, risk and suitability but the ‘what if’ scenarios, including ESG and esoteric investments.
The result is a much better picture around the client and the interaction. It also makes for greater efficiency and productivity for the relationship manager- they can serve more clients more robustly – and this also brings down the cost to serve which is good for the bottom line.
Another element is being able to provide value for money within the charging structure and advisers want to demonstrate this through the quality of the planning.
3. Having efficiency within a hybrid model also means time for when face to face is really needed.
Some people simply do not want to form fill online and want the human touch and the initial relationship building at prospecting stage is something that everyone agrees is best done in person. Bringing clients together with each other adds value and that is much more dynamic and a better experience if done in person.
4. A single planning tool is ideal but it must be able to interact with other systems and common processes and guarantee data integrity.
A system that has an open architecture and allows for API integration is crucial. The idea is that it should look and feel seamless; the data and functionality should flow. The tools to integrate data, make sense of it and react on the back of that are crucial.
One issue is that vendors can be reluctant to share data.
5. Until a culture of sharing information and data emerges then a true ecosystem, where building out a proposition and extending its use and adding to the toolkit, is hard to achieve.
Providers need to take charge of creating a culture of open ecosystems and provide advice and expertise to work along with the wealth managers to define how and where aggregation needs to take place and what the processes and flows need to be.
The backbone, where some processes are very similar for all to ensure flow of client data should be combined with the ability for wealth managers to deliver their proposition the way and flavour that they choose while keeping the data and the flows in order.
