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Firstly, an apology. So many people said to me that as they were reading last week’s Eclipse which took a wander down memory lane, they fully thought I was gearing up into a “and here’s how it’s better these days, with our shiny new tech”. Which, in hindsight, would’ve probably been quite a neat segue into a bit of promotion.

However, I was genuinely just trying to make the point that, practically, not a lot has moved forward. This was subsequently reinforced in a conversation with a group of advisers this week where we were chatting through how they communicate with clients. There’s a belief that it’s all about tech and client portals – particularly for younger clients. However, this was challenged, by the fact that many advisers find it’s their younger clients who crave the human element and interaction more than the older ones and that many clients are still finding physical, printed reports valuable (the conversation even turned to talk about where to buy a binding machine from these days!)

I was on a panel at the Parmenion Let’s Grow event yesterday where we talked about how little finance has progressed in some ways (see above) but at the far end of the spectrum are the elements of attempted hyper-progression, for example, with cutting edge AI. It’s such extremes and this fragmented approach is what is actually holding us back in many ways. There was a question posed as to why more providers (and in this context, we’re talking anyone providing anything to advisers and their clients; support services, back office systems, platforms, MPS, everything) aren’t working together to make this seamless.

The challenge is, that many providers are more than willing to do this; we at Verve certainly are and there are plenty of tech and platform providers talking about their willingness to data share with others to improve the adviser experience. My belief, however, is that there isn’t a single direction that we are all pulling in and this is the problem, not a lack of willingness of participants. Every individual (and company) in finance has their own beliefs about our direction of travel; platforms and back office systems merging into one; pieces of tech integrating, or a single piece building out to do everything; more M&A activity; less M&A activity; the role of a paraplanner; the changing shape of networks etc. etc. Rarely are these beliefs born out of an entirely neutral view. Instead, we all have a business or a system or a proposition that we desperately want to succeed and so our view of where finance is heading is, inevitably, partly shaped by a world where our vested interests will perform exceptionally well. And this vast range of outlooks is part of the block to real progress.

The other block is, I believe, a lack of real innovation. We see it here at Verve all the time; we’ll sit in a room and try to come up with brand-new, never before seen in finance ideas, and then execute them to the best of our ability. Given a short while (sometimes days, sometimes months) there will inevitably be copies of what we’ve done. Sometimes quite subtly done, sometimes a quite literal copy-and-paste job. I have no issue with people copying our innovation IF they at least take what we’ve done as a base, and then develop it further. We would then take that new advanced idea and, in turn, push it further or in a new direction and that is how we get real progress. A copy and paste job does no one, least of all an industry crying out for disruption, any favours and we see it in all corners of the advice profession.

The panel wasn’t long enough to get into all of this yesterday, unfortunately; we’d still be there now if they’d let me! But I do think it’s worth some consideration as to how we have a more cohesive approach to the evolution of finance; sounds like one for next year’s Evo conference 😉 There was a paper released on the service provided by platforms at the conference which I’ve linked below, along with a summary on the ISA changes (which they forgot to mention during the lengthy Budget) and there was an interesting report this week about the challenges of compliance, with Dex getting its first mention 😊 so I’ve popped that below too.

Wine recommendation; you’ll have to excuse the language, it’s not my doing to give it this name, but I recently got to try this for the first time. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of the red, too jammy for me. But the white was surprisingly good and it’s pretty reasonably priced.

Have a wonderful weekend all,

Enjoy: a Vanilla Ice pun while reading about the ISA changes.

Ponder: what ‘service’ really means to you and your clients.

Consider: the regulatory impacts on your business and how tech (cough, Dex) can help with that.

Earlier this year we launched our brand-new business dashboard - Dextera™. It's already part of day-to-day life for over 1,500 users, and you can try it for yourself here.