The major way Dynamic Planner helps us is the time saving, regarding the client review process. And the look of the reports. Much more professional than what we were producing.
Before, we used our own templates, a one-pager on the valuations and what information we could extract from places on performance. We cribbed it together ourselves. It was time consuming and took us a day at least to produce for a client. Now in Dynamic Planner, producing a review report, it’s probably about half an hour.
Growing clients by 20%
That saved time has allowed me to focus on the Consumer Duty. And it has enabled us to grow our client base, because we can be smarter around existing clients. We’re not a massive business. There are only three advisers, but we have been able to grow our client base by around 20%. Going forward, if we can do that year-on-year, that would be great.
We’re looking forward to transferring all our target market segmentation to Dynamic Planner. Again, it will be time saving and once everything is in Dynamic Planner, it’s in there. It will match with our back office, and with our CIP and CRP.
Time-saving recommendations
We have started to produce some recommendation reports in Dynamic Planner, mainly for fund switches and the odd, ad hoc lump sum top-up. Again, the reports are much more professional than what we were producing before, and really quick to produce, half an hour probably for a fund switch. Before, that would have that been maybe a couple of hours of work, or more.
Consumer Duty. Client profiling
We use Dynamic Planner’s risk questionnaires with clients and we’ve started using the ESG and the vulnerability questionnaires as well. Those are all going out to clients, where we can, by email prior to meetings. We have to be careful not to bombard a client, but Dynamic Planner’s questionnaires tick all our Consumer Duty boxes. It’s a lot more thorough. Before, we had just a couple of questions in an internal questionnaire for a client on ESG.
For vulnerability, it’s good to know, because some of the answers to questions you didn’t necessarily know about a client. As a firm, it gives you a chance to explore further. Clients can be embarrassed about telling you about a potential vulnerability, so I think the questionnaire gives them the opportunity, in the comfort of their own homes, to answer it – and not have to face you.
Dynamic Planner – ‘Everything we need’
Dynamic Planner absolutely helps us add value for clients. It makes us look a lot more professional. Our competitors are some of the biggest UK firms and I feel like with Dynamic Planner, even though we’re a small firm, we’ve got the tools to stand out from the crowd.
Before, it was all pitched together from our own resources and didn’t look as professional. It was all there. It was just the paperwork which wasn’t supporting what we had in the team. But it is now.
I would absolutely recommend Dynamic Planner to another firm. It’s one of the best subscriptions we pay each month. I don’t know what else is out there. I’ve never looked. I don’t feel like I need to. Dynamic Planner is giving us everything we need.