They say if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind. It’s an interesting concept and one that we’ve all heard before, but when it comes to our own businesses, we often choose to forget it exists. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, right?
NextWealth published the Adviser Tech Stack report a few weeks ago, which cited three key barriers to advice firms adopting technology: time to learn, quality of product, and a lack of demand from clients. I'm particularly fascinated by the latter two. It aligns with the two forecasted trends for the year that I made in January: integration and feedback.
The important consideration on quality of product is that firms are vocal about it, particularly focusing on integration and the constant reinvention of the wheel between tech pieces (how many calendars do you really need?). The current landscape is unsustainable and fragmented, leaving advisers committed to using some features of every tool but never fully utilising a single one. The report above is a case in point, that while collectively advisers have the opportunity to voice their thoughts and speak the change they want to see, it’s on providers to listen (I speak for The Verve Group when I say we certainly are).
Whilst there’s outlets and ways for advisers to voice their gripes to the industry, the same can’t always be said for clients.
Understanding a lack of client demand doesn’t fall at the feet of platforms, nor clients themselves. It falls squarely at the feet of the adviser. Client demand for a technology-enabled service exists, the issue is that many firms don’t ask and even fewer act.
We often expect clients to willingly, out of the goodness of their heart, give us feedback with no prompts. In reality, if an adviser doesn’t have the time to learn tech that supports their role, your client certainly doesn’t have time to feed back when you’re not asking the question.
In my debut Eclipse, I talked about a firm having an attitude to risk for introducing technology. Now, much like clients are advised to succession plan, firms should have their own generational succession plan for processes. By 2030, over 70% of the workforce is forecasted to be hyper-connected millennials and generation Z, where the primary expectation will not only be technology-supplemented, but technology-led.
An in-person meeting, scanned documents and postal service are already becoming more and more a thing of the past. Immediate access to information and the knowledge that their expert adviser has access to tools to support them, such as cash flow modelling and risk profiling, will be a bare minimum. That’s not at the sacrifice of personal touch, either. We’ve spent the last few years with a focus on remaining human in a digital world and for the upcoming generations, a digital world is their chosen world.
We’ve seen in the last few years so much progress in finance: Open Banking, increased use of D2C investment apps, the rise of ‘fintech’ as a whole. It’s clearer than ever that demand is leaning more and more towards technology. Financial services are not immune to this.
Three key questions to take away:
- How are you currently gauging client demand?
- How do you see it changing with the change of generations?
- What will you need to change to keep up with it?
Last up the usual links, FT covered the NextWealth report on how advisers are “missing out” on the full benefits of the tech they already use. Secondly, this month's TECH TALK webinar! Really looking forward to being joined by Carole at Beyond Encryption to talk about all things trust in tech (very apt!).
Finally, we’re bringing together tech and finance for the first time in Darlington. So, if you’re in the area then join us for a laidback event with beer and pizzas to see how the two work hand-in-hand.
My glass of pinot, in true Verve fashion, is very much half full (literally and metaphorically). Cheers to being the change you want to see in finance.
/linkedin.png?upscale=true&height=50&upscale=true&name=linkedin.png){kind=small}
