Bridging the gaps
What’ s clear from this year’ s findings is that while firms are making strides, particularly in client onboarding, adopting digital processes, and selective use of AI, critical operational challenges remain. Fragmented systems, manual rekeying, and inefficiencies in execution continue to undermine productivity and add risk.
The administrative burden driven by Consumer Duty, with its emphasis on demonstrating fair value and evidencing good outcomes, has only increased the pressure on firms to operate more efficiently and transparently. In this context, technology adoption is no longer optional.
The time lost due to duplicated effort and disconnected tools represents not just a productivity issue, but also a potential risk in terms of compliance, data quality, and the client experience. Whether through AI-powered personalisation, automated workflows, or fully digital onboarding, firms that use technology effectively are better equipped to meet rising regulatory expectations and client demands alike.
All firms today use technology to some extent, but the challenge now is to fully embed it throughout the advice journey, and to ensure teams are trained and motivated to use it to its full potential to cut waste, scale operations, and deliver the consistently high-quality service that clients and the regulator expect.
We know the power of effective use of technology. Our eAdviser survey, which analyses how adviser firms make use of the functionality available within intelliflo office, consistently shows that firms fully embracing digital tools, our‘ Champions’, significantly outperform their peers across total and ongoing revenue and clients and assets serviced per adviser.
We want to reduce the frustration that advice professionals feel at working with disjointed systems that involve rekeying, errors and inefficiencies, by offering two pathways to greater efficiency.
For those who prefer to create a bespoke technology stack, we’ ve launched intelliflo zerokey
For firms seeking a single end-to-end experience from advice through to platform, we are continuing to enhance our wealthlink solution to provide everything you need to set up and maintain client investment plans without leaving intelliflo office. One of our early adopters recently reported that using wealthlink cut the effort involved in SIPP transfer account opening from four hours to just seven minutes!
For those who prefer to create a bespoke technology stack, we’ ve launched intelliflo zerokey to eliminate rekeying for good by allowing advisers to transfer client data directly from intelliflo office to platforms and third-party tools in one click.
By reducing time spent on data entry, and importantly reducing errors, intelliflo zerokey should save advice firms hours of work. The progress made in report writing over the last year, with four hours saved every week, illustrates how small changes can lead to big efficiency gains. And all those minutes shaved off different processes will combine to create more time to spend with existing and new clients, without increasing costs or needing to add people.
With Consumer Duty raising expectations around accountability and outcomes, operational efficiency is no longer a nice-to-have. It’ s critical for growth and longterm sustainability. As the research shows, the ambition across the industry is clear. Firms are already taking steps to improve their use of technology. What’ s needed now is for more providers to follow suit and offer joined-up, paper-free solutions that allow firms to embrace integrated technology and improve efficiency through streamlined processes, less manual intervention and fewer errors.
40 | The Adviser