As the cost of doing business continues to rise, technology plays an increasingly important part in the success of a financial services firm.
The way to think about tech for financial advice firms is to break it into two different buckets. There’s tech to deliver advice more effectively and then there’s tech to improve the way the practice is managed.
While it can help deliver advice more efficiently and improve the way the practice is managed, more tech isn’t always better, advisers warn.
Tech is being utilised to manage a myriad of functions at Hewison Private Wealth. After realising the business wouldn’t be able to scale with the existing proprietary software which had been developed and built over the previous 25 years, the firm began searching for alternatives about five years ago.
Hewison wealth adviser Stephanie Patrick tells Professional Planner off the shelf financial planning software would be difficult, or impossible, to customise to achieve the unique internal processes and client service offering their practice provides.
“Over time, our business model of independent, individually managed accounts management would be challenged against the private banks and institutions if we didn’t innovate and adopt a tech stack that would amplify our operating model,” Patrick says.
In short, this led to the construction of a best of breed, customised and integrated tech stack that includes Salesforce, Class, OpenMarkets and Portfolio Cloud.
Patrick says that each platform serves a purpose in their process and service delivery and that integration has allowed them to achieve a range of business functions, including:
- Investment data pulled daily from Class and Portfolio Cloud;
- Advice generated from Portfolio Cloud either at the client, or investment level, allowing for seamless scale advice to be sent;
- Advice is automatically generated from Portfolio Cloud and received by the client via SMS, or email;
- Automated SMS or email reminders are sent to unresponsive clients at an interval of our choosing;
- Clients accept advice interactively via their smart devices;
- Acceptance received directly into Portfolio Cloud; and
- Investment data sent to OpenMarkets to be traded automatically.
Another recent innovation has been the adoption of digital signatures for clients to sign and accept their service agreement has been one of the latest innovations for, Patrick says.
“This was prompted by the need to improve the client experience internally and resulted in a faster turnaround time for obtaining signed agreements,” she says.
Verse Wealth head of operations Daniel Donovan recently implemented Score App, which forms part of the firm’s onboarding process. It has enabled the firm to create a 30-question financial wellbeing quiz, which takes about five minutes to complete.
When implementing new tech, the firm considers what’s overly complex and which systems aren’t user friendly for both staff and clients.
“Once we identify a potential problem, we consider first what we want to consolidate and what can be done with existing software rather than adding something new if we can,” he says.
“We really want to eliminate siloed tech in the business as much as possible. Software needs to be able to talk to each other. We also consider the timing of an implementation to minimise interruptions.”
Loom also enables the team to record a video for a client rather than type out a long email to answer client questions, he adds.
Key learnings
The biggest learning has been to take the time to gather and build solid business requirements from the beginning.
“Deploying tech is never as simple or straightforward as the software sales team lead you to believe,” Patrick says.
“Once you start diving deeper into the requirements, processes and complexities involved, the costs can quickly escalate.”
Patrick says after identifying the current processes the next step is looking for ways to improve on them with the use of technology.
“You cannot afford to miss a step in this process when customising systems and platforms to meet the ways in which you work,” she says. “Map this out in a detailed way, if you think it’s detailed, look at it and then look again.”
A key question is always around whether the tech offers a key person to contact if something goes wrong so you’re not left weeks trying to access tech support.
The key has been looking for software that can automate, integrate and customise, Donovan says.
“We have been burnt in the past with a shiny new piece of software that looks great, but when we want to change something, we’re told that it can’t be done,” he says.
You don’t want your tech stack to be too big, he adds. “Trying to manage 12 or 15 pieces of software and how they all talk to each other can be challenging. You really want to make sure you’re adding real value to the business and not just another piece of software,” Donovan says.
You want to reduce your tech, not add to it. Also, be wary of all-in-one solutions, and speak to a customer of the business to see how the tech is actually being used, he adds.
“The sales pitch up front can sound fantastic, but you need to be sure it’s going to do the job you want it to,” he says.
