Eight months ago I fired my parent’s longstanding financial adviser.
This is the story I opened with at a recent series of fintech roadshows. Why this is so important, I’ll come back to shortly.
Throughout June I had the pleasure of presenting at Adviser Tech LIVE, a series of Technology events targeting financial planners and wealth managers across the country from Edinburgh to the south coast.
The purpose of the events was to showcase the new breed of fintech suppliers on the market and how they are reinventing traditional advice processes. Rather than being afraid of how tech is redefining and reshaping the sector, It was great to see so many advisers wanting to understand how they can evolve their service proposition and embrace it.
The next-gen client is a very different breed to their predecessors, and the way we all buy goods and services has certainly changed forever. We kicked off the events with ‘Starting with the Why.’ Put simply – why does your business exist beyond the desire to make money?
We know next-gen clients prefer working, and buying from, companies with a strong sense of purpose. It’s not a secret anymore. Yet I am still surprised how few companies clearly articulate theirs.
We know it’s easy to lose focus on something as aspirational as purpose with the daily grind of running a business, but it’ll be there. If you’re struggling please read more here from my previous musings, or get in touch for a copy of our Brand Workshop booklet to kickstart your creative juices!
And why is this is so important for financial planners and wealth managers to be thinking about, because nearly two-thirds of the next-gen will FIRE their parent’s advisers!
The threat is very real and shouldn’t be underestimated.
As I mentioned, eight months ago now, I fired my parent’s longstanding financial adviser. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him – I just had no relationship with him.
And during the research to this presentation I realised I wasn’t alone. The more I hunted around, the more i realised that financial planners and wealth managers are not doing a good job at reaching out and being relevant to the next gen.
But things are changing and the sector is rapidly getting to grips with the need to innovate their service propositions in order to connect with the next gen.
Retaining assets during the great wealth transfer has now been cited as wealth managers No1 business risk!
So how do we engage, attract and retain the next gen?
As well as clearly defining your purpose, we’ve provided brief overviews on how our fintech peers have developed their tech to meet next gen expectations.
These guys all help to build more meaningful relationships with younger audiences whilst allowing firms the ability to scale up at the same time by automating and streamlining different parts of the client journey. They have all been designed to add value to overall client experience and give IFAs and Wealth Managers more time to spend with their profitable clients.
First up:
The foundation of any service-orientated business is its ability and willingness to communicate the right messages to the right clients at the right time. Yet despite this reality very few financial advice businesses communicate with their clients at all, outside of an annual update of their plan valuations. This being one of the reasons they often little, or no, meaningful relationships with their clients, let alone their next-gen offspring!
Time4Advice launched CURO specifically to address the demands and needs of a modern service orientated financial advice business that recognise building connections with a younger, tech-savvy audience, will be key to their survival.
Built on a global CRM platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, CURO performs all of the functions of a traditional back-office system but extends a firms capabilities to include comprehensive client management functions delivering the single client view, essential for any modern business wishing to deliver a meaningful long term service that adds value to all generations.
moneyinfo is the multi-award winning account aggregation app built specifically for advisers under their own brand that empowers them to engage with next gen clients on the devices they use most, when and where it suits them.
With the mass adoption of basic mobile banking in the last ten years making this kind of tech mainstream, the moneyinfo app allows advisers to create their own digital relationship with the next generation, and longer-term create stickier, more engaged clients.
The app helps advisers to develop more meaningful relationships with their older clients children earlier on their financial journeys. With a single login to access their entire wealth, moneyinfo also allows for easy storage of financial documents and linked-account net worth reporting for inter-generational planning too.
This innovative tech is spearheading a new way of building those valuable long-term connections with this difficult to reach age group, adding value and improving the client experience.
As we know, it is crucial that businesses future proof their technology and processes to ensure they are able to take advantage of these. For i4C the focus is about driving business success and demonstrating real client value through cashflow modelling and maximising client engagement ensuring clients have knowledge to make informed decisions.
The next generation of clients expect answers to their questions immediately and businesses to have the technology which enables them to do this as this part of every day modern life. This process shouldn’t be scary, technology should be easy to use and do the work for the adviser. i4C includes all the features required to ensure the true value in the advice can be demonstrated to the client in easy to understand visuals, whether that be the tax savings, additional money passed to beneficiaries or simply increased asset values.
Cash flow modelling has become a key tool in supporting planners in taking clients through these journeys. Using appropriate technologies in the right way will allow firms to take on more aspects of planning. In turn, this should lead to more longer-term, valuable client relationships across all generations.
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