By: Robyn Clay and Nina Lowes from Linktank

Linktank partners with financial services providers, financial planners and technology providers tounlock the full power of technology in their businesses.

The presentation kicked off with insights from the annual Linktank Advisor Technology survey, which consistently highlights the same challenges each year. These challenges ultimately result in the inability of practices to harness technology to deliver a truly client- centric experience.  Some of the survey highlights are:

• Difficulty in selecting suitable software solutions
• Lack of integration options
• Lack of time and skills within the business to appropriately implement and adopt systems
• Lack of understanding on how to balance cost and value

These are notable because if you accept that all the value in your business lies in your ongoing client relationships, then you need to ensure that you are engaging with clients effectively in order to become truly future-proof.  

The Linktank team gathered insights into how best to tackle these challenges from financial advisers and software vendors, both local and abroad, who have successfully implemented technology solutions and can demonstrate the advisor’s return on this critical investment. 

We heard from:

Alex Cook, Arrie Pieterse and Don Packet from Wealthbit, South Africa
An example of an advisory practice which elected to develop their own technology solution to build a client-centric solution.

Barry van Zyl from IRESS, South Africa
A global technology company providing software to the financial services industry,  best known in South Africa for their Xplan product suite. 

Alex Ulrich and Hamish Moore from Creativemass, Australia
CreativeMass, through their flagship product Wealthconnect, expands the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud into a complete advice and client management solution.

Johann Koch (JK) from Intelliflo, United Kingdom
The UK market leader in financial advisory technology solutions.

Lionel Walker, Principal at Chambers Wealth, South Africa
A “One stop Financial Advisory Service’’, offering total tax and wealth solutions.

Martin Brown from Continuum, United Kingdom
A UK financial advisory business and winner of the 2020 Adviser firm of the year for South West UK and Wales. 

The conversations highlighted 8 practical insights which advisers can apply to their own technology journey:

• When selecting technology
  • Forget about what the tech can do. Know your business and find tools that fit, rather that implementing technology that you must shoehorn your business into. 
  • Take time to understand your business requirements and then interview and assess the capabilities of potential technology vendors thoroughly.
  • It’s not just about the software, it’s also about the software vendor.  Select vendors you feel you can partner with as your business and technology requirements evolve over time.
• Keys to success
  • Even with a software vendor as a partner, you need a stable, competent team inside your business dedicated to the implementation of the software.  
  • If you don’t have the appetite to focus on this, find an implementation partner to help you.
• Return on Investment
  • Complete an in-depth discovery session with the software provider during the selection process.  Share financials and other key data to identify pain points in your business.  This will help identify desired outcomes and key measurables which will in turn, enable you to track return on your technology investment.
  • Understand the value of YOUR time – implementing the right software will give you more time to spend with your clients.  A key return on your investment.
• Open API
  • This is the future. Open architecture provides you with more choice and enables seamless transfer of data between different tools.  
• Client engagement –
  • Embrace the idea that clients want to be part of the WHOLE journey. Select tools that meet the need for an enhanced client engagement experience.  If you do, you will be building a truly client-centric business securing your relevance in the future.
• Invest in Technology – 
  • Spending money on technology, change your mindset from where you see technology as an expense to where you see it as an asset in your business.