Quilter Financial Planning

‘The client review process’

A large proportion of advice revenues come from fees for delivering ongoing advice, which is vital for securing clients’ financial futures. As a result, we need to deliver a good, consistent service which drives good client outcomes.

As a business, we want to grow and need to work with our advice firms to attract more clients, so while we’re balancing the ambition of delivering for existing clients, we either need to find more advisers, or we need to ‘make’ more time for existing advisers, or ideally both. That is a challenge for any advice business looking to grow.

An anchor around ongoing advice is the annual review meeting and process. We were looking for a way to deliver a good, consistent experience and output for clients; which is understandable for clients; and which is pleasing on the eye, both in terms of the quality of content and the way the information is presented.

We want the output to make sense to clients, so they understand the journey they’re on in pursuit of their financial objectives.

‘Prioritising user and customer experience’

I had experience of Dynamic Planner in a previous role, introducing it successfully for approximately 50 advisers. But at Quilter Financial Planning we are introducing it for approximately 1,500 advisers. Dynamic Planner’s consistency of output and process makes it easier for us to achieve that.

The priority has to be the experience for the end client, and the experience for the adviser, in terms of useability and efficiency. Align those things successfully and we’re winning, which is the point we’ve now reached with Dynamic Planner. 

Q: How does Dynamic Planner enable you to deliver efficiencies at scale?

Standardising effective processes drives efficiencies. And even small efficiencies can quickly become significant because of our scale at Quilter. If we can save advisers time through better processes, then they can choose how best to use it.  

Dynamic Planner makes it is easier for us to identify investment suitability, or not. Of course, we don’t want to take all of the personality out of financial advice. Good advisers are good advisers because they engage well with their clients. We don’t want to make advice too robotic, but where we can take advantage of efficiencies through the adoption of technology then we should. At Quilter, we want to maintain the individuality of the person, not the process.    

If we can become more efficient checking client cases and checking suitability then, one, end clients are better looked after; and two, our advisers are better looked after, because we are able to check something like suitability more quickly and more accurately.

Q: How does Dynamic Planner help you, under the Consumer Duty, deliver good outcomes at scale?

Having a system which can facilitate and report on delivering our obligation of ongoing advice, gives us at Quilter the high-level view we need in order to ensure that as a business we are safe and to expose the areas where we may not be.

We can then act accordingly and narrow down our interventions to specific areas – in contrast to sending out a general missive or directive to everyone across the business. That is what keeps me awake at night. It’s not what we are doing. It’s what we’re not doing.

Q: Would you recommend Dynamic Planner to a business similar to yours?

Yes, I would. To put it in other words, if I was to go and work for another business of a similar size and scale to Quilter, what would I do? I’d pick up the phone to Dynamic Planner.