Richard Wake, Chief Customer Officer, intelliflo

The results are in for our latest market-wide adviser research. Now in its second year, the intelliflo advice efficiency survey examines how effectively modern advice journeys are working, and what firms can do to enhance scalability, reduce friction, and put clients at the heart of the process.

This year’ s results show tangible progress in digital adoption and the use of AI, but according to our 238 respondents, critical inefficiencies, especially disjointed internal processes, fragmented systems, and resource constraints, continue to drag down overall performance. In fact, 96 % believe their advice journeys aren’ t as efficient as they could be.

Onboarding obstacles

These challenges are clearly illustrated in the onboarding process, where volume has improved but not speed. Firms are onboarding more than twice as many clients each week this year compared to last, from six up to 13, yet the average time spent per client remains flat at 15 hours. However, more of this time is now spent face-to-face with the client, rising from 40 % to 46 %.

Some efficiency gains have occurred, with firms saving around 20 minutes per client in report writing, amounting to around four hours a week for the average firm. Unfortunately, this time saving has been largely offset by an additional 30 minutes now spent on plan implementation per client. With 13 clients onboarded each week, that equates to 52 hours a week, or 113 working days a year, spent solely on plan implementation.

In addition, rekeying remains a significant issue. Nearly one in five onboarding journeys is affected by data errors caused by teams having to duplicate information across disconnected systems. Alarmingly, just 1 % of firms report error-free onboarding, underscoring the urgent need for better system integration and streamlined workflows to improve data accuracy and reduce unnecessary administration.

Digital progress

Firms continue to digitalise their processes, with 43 % of workflows now digital, up from 39 % last year. However, this falls well short of the ideal 77 % cited by respondents. A technology expectation gap remains, as one in five firms( 21 %) want to remove all manual or paper-based processes, but to date just 1 % have achieved this.

38 | The Adviser