Client endorsements biggest opportunity for advisers in 2020

The New Year brings with it new trends and financial advisers would do well to recognise, as early as possible, the changing ways in which they can grow their businesses in 2020.

Happy clients remain key and are the greatest asset any firm has.

For both 2019 and 2020, the financial advisers surveyed by technology firm Intelliflo put recommendations from existing customers as their top business opportunity.

But there has been a divergence when it comes to second place.

In 2020, 360 advisers said that recruiting more staff is their next priority – compared with 2019 when they cited pension transfers.

This will presumably come as little shock to those working in the industry, as recruitment struggles have been a key topic of conversation for several years and the recent, substantial rise in professional indemnity (PI) insurance costs have made facilitating pension transfers increasingly difficult.

But that doesn’t mean that advisers do not still see some opportunity in the space.

Pension transfers dropped just one spot to third in 2020.

Not so black and white

But when it came to the challenges financial advisers believe they will be facing; regulation and Brexit took the top spots, despite many viewing them as business opportunities.

Nick Eatock, chief executive of Intelliflo, said: “It’s no surprise that regulation tops the list of challenges but it’s interesting to see it ranks highly as an opportunity too.

“Regulation such as Prod (The Product Intervention and Product Governance Sourcebook) is one regulation that many advisers are still grappling with; but, when done well, it can provide huge benefits for clients and advice businesses.

“It’s also interesting that staff recruitment remains an issue.

“When we carried out a similar survey last year, recruitment was third in the list of challenges for 2019 and this latest survey seems to indicate that was the case, and also that recruitment continues to be a challenge for the year ahead.”