3R Financial Services is a directly authorised firm, with four advisers and two mortgage brokers supported by a team of office staff. Our assets under management are approximately £60m and we offer clients a full financial planning service.
RDR has been the biggest and best change in my time in the industry. Before RDR, you could argue that we were all salespeople in financial services, but after it, it has become a profession. That’s a huge difference. As a result, clients today expect to receive a proper service and that’s what they get.
We first started using Dynamic Planner in 2015, initially to help us manage risk. That was the driver. The client risk profiling process was the reason why and it’s worked for us ever since. We wanted to demonstrate for all of our clients that we were measuring accurately their attitude to risk. We wanted to put procedures and processes in place.
We also massively use Dynamic Planner’s Client Review process and report. Our whole review service for clients is built around the report, so that as a firm we can demonstrate suitability for clients – and it’s been great. Our centralised investment proposition all feeds into Dynamic Planner through its integrations with the platforms we use. That was a big part of our due diligence when we first decided to adopt Dynamic Planner – its platform integrations.
Dynamic Planner saves us time as a firm. Previously, everyone in the industry had to kill to eat, so to speak, but now things have evolved and we are in a position where we can farm. We looked at what we had to do and realised we had to do it efficiently. The number of reviews we were doing was starting to increase. Being a new company, we did not have any major legacy business.
Before we started using Dynamic Planner, we had no centralised way of reporting to clients at their annual review, due to the smaller number of clients we had for review. It was chaos and just a mess. Each one was done on an individual basis.
When we first saw Dynamic Planner’s Client Review, when it launched, we thought, ‘That’s absolutely perfect for us and exactly what we need’. We can archive and store reviews and reports for clients as we complete them – and it’s peace of mind for us that we are clearly demonstrating that we are providing ongoing advice for clients. If the regulator came to us and asked, ‘How is that advice suitable?’ We can demonstrate that and say, ‘Yes, it is’.
At the end of the day, everybody knows their investments are going to go up and that they are going to go down. But what is key is that it is communicated in a manner and in language that the client clearly understands. As an adviser, it is my job to do that and that’s what Dynamic Planner’s Client Review report allows us to do.
‘Through Dynamic Planner, I can do something that is really good for the client’
Ultimately, Dynamic Planner has enabled us an advisory firm to provide a centralised investment proposition for clients. I would only describe myself as a ‘bum on seats’ adviser, but through Dynamic Planner I can do something that is profitable for the firm; something that’s really, really good for the client; and I can do it quickly and in a way which is seamlessly integrated with everything else we do – it’s absolutely brilliant. We have no problems at all.
Would I recommend Dynamic Planner to another firm? Yes – but no, because then it would give them as much competitive edge as we have.
