How to implement financial planning automation successfully in your advisory practice. 

Automate your discovery & fact-find process.

The technology we now have for financial planning automation means advisers have better tools at their fingertips to enhance and streamline their service offering end-to-end, which they’ve never had traditionally. Automation can transform your practice into a more productive and profitable engine. A clear and efficient discovery process is an important sales toolkit for any advice practice. Here’s how you can transform your discovery and fact-find process to achieve this.

Gather their information interactively & digitally.

The first step of any advice process is gathering client information – however, it is important to remove the hard work and barriers for potential clients.

Core Data research shows that 40% of consumers drop out of the fact-find step of the advice process, deterred by boring paper-based forms, before even meeting an adviser.

A discovery process that is digital, visual, and online, whereby potential clients can input their goals and financial info easily within the comfort of their own home and on their mobile device is always going to be more engaging. This provides a higher willingness to complete this important step, more lead generation and provides a ‘gamified’ experience that is far more compelling than the traditional fact-find forms of old!  Latest statistics show that  74% of companies use web forms for lead generation, with 49.7% stating their online forms are their highest converting lead generation tool.

Reward them for their data

Once a potential client has completed providing their data, then what? Are they able to gain good insights into their financial situation? Do they understand their goals and life aspirations and the likelihood of them achieving them? Is there a call to action to book an appointment with an adviser?

Implement a smarter client discovery experience whereby potential clients can instantly view a ‘picture’ of their financial situation, including the likelihood they’ll achieve their goals based on their current financials and behaviours. This is the first interaction they’ll have with your practice, so make it highly engaging, where they gain value and be directed toward the next step with a simple Call To Action (CTA) to click and ‘book an appointment’. Don’t leave any opportunities fall out of your net, these CTAs are important.

Fact find automation

Fact-find data capture is a pain for any practice. Once you have your potential clients' data, does it automatically feed through to your CRM? Do you have to enter this data manually? Does it give you the likelihood of your clients achieving their goals? Or does it give you a head start in understanding your potential client's situation?

Streamlining data capture digitally into your CRM by removing manual data entry takes friction from your data input process. Digital client data is far more useful as it provides an audit trail of who added what data and when, from one true source - simplifying compliance. It also provides a valuable starting point to model scenarios digitally via integrated advice tools.

The a.i. software platform takes your clients through an interactive goals planner, digital fact-find and behavioural profiling journey so that they get a clear picture and you can have more successful client discovery meetings.

Learn more about how this works.

Ensure continued client success through providing a better advice experience

Customer experience is the new competitive battlefield. Delivering an experience that delights your clients and makes them want to tell other potential clients is key to scaling your practice for growth.

Here’s how you can design your discovery meeting in a way that engages clients and sets you apart.

Build a picture around them using their ‘Why’

By helping clients build a picture of their life aspirations and goals, as well as helping them understand their current finances and behaviours toward money, clients can instantly appreciate the true value of your advice.

Start your initial meeting by placing a client’s goals front and centre. Goals remind clients of the ‘why’ that’s driving them. The ‘goals conversation’ gives them a greater sense of control and ownership over their future, it is a process they feel part of and they automatically create a sense of connection to your advice. Now you might be already doing this, but are you able to quantify if they know their goals? Do you know if they can or cannot achieve them? Do you have a tool that can calculate their goal achievability based on their finances?

Help them to make financial decisions using behaviour led goals-modelling

Once their goals and financials are established, direct the conversation around “trade-offs” and “what ifs” by modelling future scenarios. For example; “my kids education”. By modelling this goal interactively with your client, you can help answer important questions like; what if I don’t send my kids to private school? Should I trade-off working an extra 3 years so I can?

Your client’s behaviour also plays an instrumental role in them actually achieving their goals. Understanding their behavioural patterns, money relationship, values, habits, and motivations can identify the blockers, and support that your client may need toward coaching them for success.

Running a discovery meeting this way ensures you comply with the latest best interests duty and KYC, as it directly links your advice to the client’s goals & objectives.

Better engaged client meetings help demonstrate a clear value on the advice service you provide - building a positive brand for your practice, and therefore more referrals.

The a.i. software takes your client’s through an interactive goal, scenario planning, and live modelling experience so you can deliver the true value of financial advice in a client-facing setting.

Goal cards also help your clients to identify what is important to them. These come FREE with a.i.'s financial planning software.