• Onboarding
Advisers often justify the average number of face-to-face meetings (typically three for a significant case, spread over several weeks) taken to onboard a new client on the grounds it helps build rapport.
No one would deny the immense value of rapport, but its development is not purely a function of time spent meeting in person.
Robos have proven that data-gathering can be done satisfactorily and compliantly without any client meetings. Undoubtedly face-to-face meetings are of great value to both advised and adviser, but cost/benefit remains a consideration.
The lockdown has greatly increased the use of Zoom and other remote offerings. It has been reported that GPs have been impressed by the efficacy of online diagnosis.
Albeit as a back-up, meeting remotely will probably now become a permanent feature of diagnosis in many different fields.
Moreover, with every passing year, in all professions there are likely to be increases in the proportion of data collected from sources other than the client.
Obviously, this should only be done through means approved by the client in advance, and in ways that are non-intrusive and appropriate.
This trend, accelerated by open banking, will improve the efficiency, accuracy and completeness of data collection. In regulated financial services it will have positive consequences for compliance and for adviser protection.
• Suitability
Having more comprehensive and accurate data will be of particular help in developing and evidencing the suitability of recommendations. Better quality of data, allied with relatively simple artificial intelligence, will give the adviser a clear, evidenced steer on suitability. Advisers will have the freedom to amend this steer where they have good reason, but the intervention will be on record.
The automatic record-keeping of the considerations taken into account in producing suitable recommendations will provide greater safety for all concerned. It should also reduce the time taken for business checking, so delivering greater safety at reduced cost. Audits of all kinds will become much easier to carry out and of even greater value to all concerned.
• Sustained suitability
Sustained suitability should be what every adviser aims to provide. In the future, performance of a recommended portfolio will be monitored and amended throughout. The days of heavy reliance on just one major review a year will soon be behind us.
Modern technology now makes it possible for investment performance to be monitored at all times and continually checked against the strategy agreed with the client.
‘Nudges’ will be automatically given to the adviser about any and all factors that might usefully be drawn to the client’s attention.
This functionality will increase the amount of contact between client and adviser.
It will also allow advisers to be much more proactive than has been possible up until now. This may well turn out to be the most fundamental change in advice resulting from the pandemic.
