The financial advice sector has been forced to dramatically embrace the technological world due to the pandemic, however firms may have to it keep to retain clients.
Nick Eatock, chief executive of Intelliflo, said during the firm’s Change the Game conference on 4 November: “We first spoke about digital…in 2016, and at that point, we cited some information from RBC and Capgemini, which produced their global world wealth report.
“The data came from 2014, which was the point it was collected. It said that 65% of advice clients would leave their adviser if there was a lack of a digital experience within the next five years.
“Wind forward to last year and this year, I suspect the number who would leave now is significantly higher than 65%. It’s become the standard way by which clients and the end client wants to engage with many things in their life, not just their adviser experience.”
Eatock added that covid had sparked an increase in digitalisation, and that it has made a number of advisers realise that a “digital engagement model complements the rest of the services really well”.
“It doesn’t have to replace it, but it can complement it really well,” he added.
Revenues
During the conference, Intelliflo showed data that its users had fully embraced technology.
The firms that had used its services “very effectively” had 112% more recurring revenue than the lowest adopters among its cohort of users.
These businesses also had 41% more clients, 57% higher revenue on average and 126% more assets under advice.
Some 42% of Intelliflo users said their “new adoptions” of technology would be permanent.