The Productivity Playbook for Intermediaries (Part 1) 

Sean Barrett & Craig Grasko, FSPHub 

In an age of COFI, client impatience, and tool sprawl, productivity comes from integration, not more apps. Here’s our playbook for brokers and advisers: embed compliance in workflows, centralise communications and documents, and use “automation intelligence” to free humans to do human work. 

The thesis: Productivity is an integration problem 

Adding apps doesn’t add capacity. In our work with South African intermediaries, the firms that grow fastest standardise on a single, cloud-based practice platform – one client view, one workflow spine, one place for comms and documents. Done well, this removes friction, exposes bottlenecks, and bakes COFI-aligned checks into day-to-day work. That’s the spirit behind FSPHub’s approach: a mature, AWS-native system serving 250+ practices and 3,000+ users, purpose-built to run short-term, long-term, medical and investment business in one place, with open APIs for rapid integration.  

What a real platform looks like (and why it wins) 

• Workflow + CRM + Communications – tightly coupled. When SOPs become auditable workflows with timers, priorities and outcomes, leaders can “see the work” and manage capacity, across office and remote teams, instead of guessing.  

• A single client view for every interaction. Email, WhatsApp and SMS live on the client file, linked to the right policy and tasks. The result isn’t just efficiency; it projects professionalism and strengthens trust.  

• E-docs and secure sharing that actually save time. Auto-filled and pre-filled e-forms pulls known data, one-time-PIN access protects privacy, on-screen e-sign captures a full audit trail (with QuicklySign integration), and reminders nudge completion, cutting rework and cycle time.  

What Techfest reinforced 

Intermediaries who embed technology into operations, not as bolt-ons, but as operating fabric, compete on speed, personalisation, and client experience.  
Data sits at the core: consolidating data (with POPIA/GDPR care) enables proactive engagement, fair pricing, and sharper retention – especially in a stagnant market.  

Redefining productivity: “automation intelligence,” not sci-fi AI 

Our fireside session challenged the notion that AI must be flashy to be valuable. The immediate win is background automation that reads an email, opens the right task, assigns it, and nudges follow-up, quietly removing admin drag so advisers can focus on conversation and advice. That’s “automation intelligence”, 
Critically, compliance is part of the flow: when checks and disclosures are embedded in the workflow, you reclaim hours while improving traceability, squaring productivity with COFI’s outcomes focus.  

Adoption without disruption 

Change fatigue is real, but it’s not inevitable. Standardised onboarding and prebuilt workflows get teams productive in weeks, not months, and adoption is strong even among experienced professionals (over a third of our user base is 45+), because value shows up on day one. The guiding principle: customise the workflow to your culture. Technology should amplify how you serve clients, never erase it.  

Why this matters now 

• Client journeys are still fragmented. Paper detours, manual signatures and channel-hopping break experiences and trust; intermediaries want pre-populated forms and modern messaging to close the gap.  

• Tool sprawl is costly. Juggling six or seven systems inflates risk and erodes margins; platform consolidation turns data into decisions, and governance into muscle memory.  

• Leaders need line of sight. Real-time dashboards, task analytics and advanced reporting put throughput, backlogs and SLAs on one screen, so you can fix what you can see.  

A practical blueprint you can execute now 

1. Centralise the work. One client record, one workflow engine, one comms hub. Start with renewals and claims, high-volume, high-risk journeys.  

2. Embed compliance. Build COFI-aligned steps into the path of work; stop treating compliance as a parallel process.  

3. Automate the boring stuff. Let background automation route, assign and remind; free humans for advice.  

4. Instrument everything. Use dashboards and scheduled reports to expose bottlenecks and measure cycle time.  

Coming next (Part 2): Techfest, unfiltered 

In Part 2 we’ll unpack our Techfest fireside with concrete quick wins, adoption patterns, and a 2027 readiness checklist – from data consolidation tactics to designing workflows that scale without losing your culture.