The Financial Conduct Authority has said that all tools have “limitations”, just as three firms unveil their latest solutions to the advice market.
Risk profiler Dynamic Planner, consultancy firm the Lang Cat and financial wellbeing group The Investing and Saving Alliance (Tisa) have all announced tech developments to the market.
Debbie Gupta, the FCA’s director of life insurance and financial advice supervision, said at Dynamic Planner’s conference in London: “There are limitations with technology systems and tools aren’t, by definition, a silver bullet for all of this.
“Incorporating tech into your work stream has a huge number of advantages. But there are also disadvantages.
“Because what ultimately decides whether your customers receive good or bad outcomes, better or worse outcomes, also depends a bit on the tools you use, and how you use them.
“All tools, automated or otherwise, have limitations. There’s a real risk sometimes that miscalibration, without the due diligence, can lead to very poor outcomes.
“They often result in costly exercises to put things right.”
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that tools and technology cannot be helpful to advisers; provided it is appropriate, robust and fits seamlessly into their business.
Dynamic Planner
The risk profiling firm has unveiled details of a cashflow modelling service it plans to release to the market.
Ben Goss, chief executive of Dynamic Planner, said at the conference attended by International Adviser, that the service will be its “next major release, coming soon”.
He said the online system will allow advisers to build cashflows without the need of “data points and graphs”, by answering key client questions.
The service will have “essential amount, discretionary and an aspirational amount” options to set targets.
“We wanted to create something that was super easy for you to sit with a client and say: ‘let’s talk about some of the options that are with the income streams and the pots of money you have got’,” said Goss.
It is working with around 48 financial advice firms on the design and will open it up to early adopters soon.
Lang Cat
The consultancy firm has unveiled an interactive online tool and insight service, in a bid to “simplify the investment platform selection process for advisers”.
Platform Analyser will combine the Lang Cat’s data set covering 11,500 data points across 25 advised platforms with a tool built to deal with Product Intervention and Product Governance Sourcebook (Prod) regulation.
Advisers will be able to read data in different ways to create everything from quick comparisons to full due diligence reports, automatically documenting the process to demonstrate FCA compliance.
Terry Huddart, head of proposition at the Lang Cat, said: “We spend a lot of time speaking to advice professionals and they told us they’d like a service to help make choosing the right platform partners for their clients and their business easier.
“Over the last 18 months, we’ve been working closely with advisers and planners to build an online tool that combines our unrivalled insight into the advised platform market with interactive due diligence functionality.
“This is only the beginning. We’re committed to constant development, with plans to add more data and functionality and improve the user experience over time in response to adviser needs.”
Tisa
The alliance has joined forces with fintech firm Altus to launch an online self-assessment tool to help advice businesses understand and identify how to support vulnerable customers.
The Vulnerability Radar seeks to address growing concerns from the FCA around the accessibility of financial services for vulnerable people.
It has gone through a period of testing over the past two months with a group of 12 financial services firms, including Quilter and Aviva.
The tool asks firms a range of questions relating to policy, products, systems, and implementation; assesses the responses against best practice; and provides a score and a spider graph result, as well as identifying areas for improvement.
Stopping exclusion
Stephen Gay, Tisa’s policy manager, said: “Everyone has either been vulnerable, will become vulnerable, or will care for someone vulnerable at some point in their lives.
“Whether it’s paying bills online, navigating statements, or dealing with difficult subjects like debt, there are a myriad of issues that could exclude someone in vulnerable circumstances from accessing essential services.
“We strongly believe that all customers should be able to use financial services, regardless of any impairment or difficult circumstance.
“Concerns around financial exclusion are rightly set to continue, and vulnerability issues are likely to remain high up the regulatory agenda for some time to come.”
