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Leveraging technology to enhance business growth for financial advice practices

ARTICLE BY

  • Hymne Landman
  • Head
  • Momentum Wealth

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The word ‘Fintech’, a combination of the words ‘finance’ and ‘technology’, of course relates to how technology can be leveraged to support financial services. Fintech is barely a generation old but already has a daily impact on billions of humans across the globe. Fintechs globally have attracted more than a staggering US500 billion in funding over the past decade and more recently, since 2019, fintechs have received roughly 20% of total global venture capital outlays.

South African financial advisers can leverage technology to strengthen their individual client value propositions and accelerate their business growth.

Typically, like most businesses, today’s financial adviser needs to create time, scalability and client growth.

Technology can help overcome these challenges, firstly as a creator of time, secondly as a creator of scalability, and thirdly it can enable a stronger client proposition.

  1. A creator of time

According to the results from the 2019 United States Advisor Metrics report from Cerulli Associates, advisory firms that have fully adopted technology spend 34% less time resolving client service issues and have 24% more time for practice management activities, highlighting the ability of technology to help advisers focus on the most important parts of growing their business. Heavy technology-using advisory firms also report an average of double the assets under management of their ‘light’ technology-using counterparts, due to time and scalability benefits.

Source: US Advisor Metrics report (Cerulli Associates)

  1. A creator of scalability

Technology can enable advice practices build efficiencies to enhance processing and administration by taking care of your back-office, which ultimately lowers costs. By automating processes, not only do we gain efficiency and speed but also reduce human error, and service experience can be enhanced and personalised.

For example, fintech solutions like digital onboarding platforms are quite straight-forward and can streamline the client acquisition process. They integrate Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, risk profiling, and document signing using digital signatures, making it an all-in-one seamless experience.

  1. A stronger client proposition

How do you secure a client growth and retention strategy? Many advisers have used client segmentation models for years, based on age or size of wealth. Fintech offers powerful tools for advisers to personalise the client experience and develop a differentiated proposition.

 

Data has power when it comes to personalisation

As a Linked Investment Service Provider (LISP) platform, we are increasingly embracing the power of data and information in our systems to hyper-personalise client communication and reporting. Client statements, as an example, can now be tailored to each client’s specific requirements, according to what do they want to see, how often and in what format.

Data can be utilised to prove whether advice given has truly helped clients to achieve their personal financial goals or predict whether it will. Where the data proved otherwise, it can provide guidance to timeously adapt. Financial advisers can offer their clients access to financial literacy tools and platforms. Better-informed clients can make more aligned decisions, leading to better financial outcomes.

There are many solutions available, but the reasonable approach is to identify the key aspects of your business that you believe needs improvement – whether it’s to create time, to grow your client base or to streamline your operations. Then consider technology that provides a solution for your specific pain points.

Remember the balance: leverage your capabilities and integrate with technology that complements your strengths. We believe our partnership with the award-winning, global investment platform FNZ will build on the trust that we have already earned with our business partners. And doing business with us digitally is already easy, fast and secure, but will become even more personalised with limitless possibilities as we rapidly advance our grasp on technology. We will never lose the human touch since investing with us will always be personal. In fact, we believe that singular personalisation is the way of the future. In other words, we provide you and your clients the individual attention they need on their investment journey to success.

Momentum Wealth (Pty) Ltd (FSP 657) is an authorised financial services provider. Momentum Investments is part of Momentum Metropolitan Life Limited, an authorised financial services and registered credit provider (FSP 6406).

 

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