Focusing on the future of financial advice

We have more than one eye on the future this week with a guest article by Nick Eatock, CEO of financial services software specialist Intelliflo, exploring the technology themes he believes will impact the financial advice sector in the next few years.

Better use of technology, improvements in systems integration, a growth in the use of client dashboards, and an expansion in open finance are the developments Eatock predicts will shape the sector.

"Financial advice will long be centred around people – the client and their human adviser," says Eatock. "But the importance of technology in supporting the process to ensure efficiency, transparency and access alongside compliance and suitability is set to grow."

That adviser-client relationship has been affected by the Covid-19 crisis according to Standard Life’s latest bi-annual survey of 250 UK financial advisers, with two-thirds (65 per cent) saying they are now more likely to receive enquiries from clients on market volatility and its impact on investments than they were before the pandemic.

Independent financial information and technology provider Defaqto meanwhile, has launched a new Income Drawdown workflow within its financial planning software, Defaqto Engage to help advisers cater for customer needs. Free to existing Engage users, the new tool allows advisers to assess the impact that drawing a regular income has on a clients’ accumulated wealth.

Sticking with the technology theme, we also have news of additiv's new Wealth Solution Builder service, which provides the building blocks for IT teams at financial institutions to build their own custom wealth solutions.

Yann Kudelski, Head of Product Management at additiv says: 'Wealth Solution Builder allows IT teams within financial institutions to remain autonomous, but avoids the lengthy and costly process of building the foundational elements of an end-to-end wealth management system."

Pension savers meanwhile could save over GBP140,000 by consolidating multiple pension pots into just one, according to new analysis carried out by Quilter. The average person works for six different companies during their lifetime, which could mean that they also have six different pension pots thanks to auto-enrolment.

"It is essential that pension savers understand what charges they are paying and whether they can consolidate their multiple pots into the most efficient and best value one as over the long term this can make a material difference to how much they will have in retirement," says Ian Browne, pensions expert at Quilter.

And finally, following on from our guest feature two weeks ago looking at proposals for a UK wealth tax to help rebalance the government's post-pandemic books, a new survey by Butterfield Mortgages Limited (BML) reveals that the majority of UK investors are opposed to such a move.

"We have to wait and see whether the wealth tax is something the government will be seriously considering in 2021," says Alpa Bhakta, CEO of BML. "If it does come about, the consequences will be significant.”

Wealth Adviser

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