Speaking virtually to 1000 financial services professionals from across the UK at its 9th Annual Conference this morning, Dynamic Planner’s CEO Ben Goss praised the transformation of the financial planning profession over the last 12 months and claimed that advisers and clients who more fully embrace technology will better weather the challenges to come. He said:
“An extraordinary transformation has taken place over the past year. The pandemic set the industry and wider world on a rollercoaster ride. Financial planning can be tough at the best of times, but without the face to face contact that clients were used to, it was even tougher. And as the pandemic grew, the nation’s concerns over health became a priority.
“But it wasn’t just health concerns that we faced, there was a major challenge to people’s invested wealth as well as their income. You, the advice industry rapidly transformed working practices to be there for your clients with reassurance and support. As an example, last year in Dynamic Planner we saw four years’ of growth in clients completing risk profiling questionnaires remotely, and a number of advice firms have reported the ability to support up to three times as many clients per adviser by using facilities such as video calls and screen sharing. We are immensely proud that through a combination of your expertise and our technology, we have helped get many of your clients through this crisis.
“We see the need and opportunity to engage with clients around their financial planning being bigger than ever post the pandemic, and we strongly believe that those, whether adviser or client, who more fully embrace technology will better weather the challenges to come.
“We now live in a hybrid world – where advisers and clients increasingly undertake their planning together on the same system, at the same time. Our vision is all about empowering firms to meet client expectations in this new hybrid world, and deliver truly engaging financial planning through a model where advisers have all the benefits of remote when you need them, but will also have everything you need for face to face client meetings too.
“At the heart of Dynamic Planner’s vision of One System for all financial planning needs – where we have delivered significant enhancements to client risk profiling, portfolio review, cashflow planning and research and recommendations – is the concept of having an ‘always on’ plan, enabling advisers and clients to properly engage with their financial plan and deliver interactions and client experiences that really demonstrate the value of the ongoing advice relationship.
“Of course, in terms of client engagement, an increasingly important aspect of financial planning is reflecting your client’s sustainability preferences in their portfolio. Advisers face two challenges: how to have a really good conversation with clients who are unlikely to be experts in this field, and how to objectively assess the different manager approaches and solutions? We’ve worked with our partners MSCI to provide whole of market objective ESG analysis on UK funds, and in the coming weeks we will also be launching a psychometric sustainability questionnaire that gets to the root of how people feel about sustainability when investing.
“The events of the past year have been unexpected, but the changes it has paved the way for are profound. Over the next four years we will be doubling our investment in Dynamic Planner, delivering a powerful solution that enables advisers to deepen and extend your relationships with clients. Technology has been at the heart of keeping the financial world functioning these last 12 months, and as the country plots its way out of lockdown, we expect to be at the centre of that ongoing transformation.”
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