And do not underestimate the importance of training your team.
Investing time in learning to use available technology to the full will pay dividends in future and may inspire new ways to use technology to benefit your business.
Meeting the regulatory agenda
As well as making business sense, having the right technology is important from a regulatory perspective.
In general, putting the right tools in place plays an essential role in delivering suitable personalised advice, from segmenting your client base, to establishing the correct risk profile, cash flow planning, mapping investments and ongoing monitoring.
In addition, in March this year the FCA’s rules around operational resilience for financial services firms came into effect.
The regulator expects you to identify any services you offer where disruption could cause harm to clients, map the resources that support these services, whether or not they are under your control, and then take steps to prevent, respond to, recover and learn from operational disruptions, that can and cannot be foreseen.
This means having systems in place that allow your business to continue to provide crucial services to clients in all circumstances.
And technology will also play a critical role in helping IFAs comply with the upcoming consumer duty rules.
With final implementation due in April 2023, the regulation requires advisers to deliver consistent advice and product recommendations that are in line with the client’s needs.
Although most advisers will feel they already have the desired focus on the end consumer and deliver consistent outcomes, the new rules raise the bar on achieving and, importantly, evidencing the expected standards.
Without the right technology in place it is difficult to see how advisers will be able to deliver on the consumer duty’s outcomes around products and services, communications, customer service and price and value, and implement the necessary ongoing monitoring to evidence that their clients are receiving outcomes at the required standards.
With changing business, customer and regulatory requirements, the importance of technology in the modern advice process cannot be underestimated.
The right technology stack, properly embedded into an adviser’s processes can drive efficiency, reduce costs, improve engagement and widen access to advice while continuing to deliver the best outcomes for clients.
Without the correct systems in place, IFAs risk losing out to the technology Champions in the sector.
Nick Eatock is chief executive of intelliflo
