Why IFAs need smart processing

In a world where our clients are increasingly moving towards a self-service mentality, financial advisers need smart processing to keep up with the demands placed on them by increasingly savvy and impatient clients.

 

In the past, efficiencies were achieved through mass production but, in the process, the consumer’s needs and the financial adviser’s needs have often been ignored. In the age of consumerism and, in particular, after the financial crisis of 2008, the thinking has begun to change.

 

Companies have started listening to the people they are ultimately building their products and systems for. Smart processing applications make it possible for them to design more suitable, user-friendly products and services for the end-user.

Smart processing is genius at work. It’s in the ease of use and intuitive intelligence. This intelligence has been injected at the right moments in the user journey so that the system or process feels easy, effective and convenient. It is a system, service or product journey that appears to pre-empt your needs and the needs of your client – and that is designed to support a process of collaboration and co-creation:

 

1. Smart processing removes unnecessary steps. Often, the data needed in a specific process is already known – it’s just stored elsewhere, or in a different format than required. Smart processes ensure that, once information has been captured for the first time, the data is accessible in a place and format where it can be reused when needed. For example, once a financial adviser has captured a client’s data with a quoting tool, data is pulled through to create a personalised, prepopulated electronic application form.

2. Smart processing makes working together easy. An online quoting tool that has been created to be both financial adviser and client-friendly in its language and design is optimal. This is so that a financial adviser and his or her client can sit together around the adviser’s computer screen and complete the inputs collaboratively. Because this works online, you can integrate inputs back into systems in real time.

3. Smart processing provides valuable insights. Smart processing provides you with relevant information at the right point in every interaction, to support smart decision-making. You should be able to generate an at-a-glance product structure that allows the financial adviser and client to see all the cover selected, plus the premiums for each segment of cover in a single view. You’re then able to dial down or dial up cover or premiums to arrive at a solution that best meets the need and suits the client’s pocket – in a single interaction.

Having this work online is ideal because the feedback loop is automatic – so you can understand activity, see which elements are used and ask for input.

Smart processing relies on extremely complex systems and processes behind the scenes but the interface must be simple and user-friendly. Smart processing should shift your role as adviser from that of process translator to that of process guide and product co-creator.

Ultimately, the customer will experience different service journeys. When they experience yours, you want them to come to the end of the process and think "Well, that was smart!” It doesn’t matter how you build it – what matters most is that the process is built with the end-user’s needs in mind.