Key tech trends shaping advice businesses

Appearing on a new episode of the ifa Show podcast, Asendium CEO and co-founder Scott Miller said that over the next 12 to 24 months, niche technology could expand as the technology ecosystem in larger licensees become less restrictive.

“I’m already seeing a lot of licensees (particularly the smaller ones and mid-tiers) open up their ecosystem,” Mr Miller said.

“What I mean by that is they're moving away from the single CRM only [where] you have to do everything through that single CRM. They’re starting to go, ‘well in the Royal Commission, they didn’t really audit a CRM. They audited the advice document’.

“So, if a planner wants to use Worksorted or Fin365 or another CRM, they should have the flexibility to store data as long as they meet privacy requirements.”

Planners with access to open ecosystems are receptive to using niche technology such as fact-finding tools, statement of advice (SOA) tools, file loading tools, and strategy tools, Mr Miller said ahead of the 2022 Adviser Innovation Summit.

However, this could pose a challenge to technology providers who have been offering all-in-one solutions because planner feedback has shown dissatisfaction with how these tools meet their needs.

“[This is] because each planner has their own individual nuance of how they want to provide advice and how they operate their business,” Mr Miller said.

“An all-in-one solution, unless you're paying through the nose to actually configure it, is basically like getting a shirt off a supermarket. It’s one size design for the majority of the market, not the individual.”

Mr Miller suggested interconnecting niche technological tools with each other and the CRM to provide a streamlined solution for advisers.

“I'll give an example. Within Asendium, we are connected to a CRM so we can pull all the financial data, [and] send all the financial data back, including documents,” he said.

“But what if a planner wanted to use iFactFind for fact finding instead of the Xplan fact find? Then, iFactFind would have to be connected to Xplan, which would then have to be connected to Asendium.

“Then what if you want to use FinaMetrica for your risk profile? Asendium would have to connect to that [and] connect to the other systems.

“So having niche tech is great, but what I'm seeing is all the niche tech providers are starting to come together.”

Tailoring technological tools is critical but they cannot be expected to meet all requirements because there are a number of different ways to provide advice, Mr Miller acknowledged.

“As long as planners and licensees are working with technology providers, the technology will evolve at a pace which will meet what they need,” Mr Miller assured.

Mr Miller’s comments have preceded the 2022 Adviser Innovation Summit in June where Asendium chief technology officer John De Angelis will participate in a panel discussion about the role and benefits of automation and integration in the advice industry and what tasks should and should not be automated in an advice business.

Mr De Angelis recently told ifa that “highly automated” or “integrated” are often misinterpreted as “cookie-cutter” advice solutions, but underscored that they would automate the effort, not the advice.

“The latter is and will continue to be the value of the planner.”

Mr Miller echoed these views while calling for a shift in perceptions.

“Transferring of data is not cookie cutter,” he said.

To hear the panel bust myths around the role of automation and how the advice industry can automate and integrate to increase efficiencies, come along to the 2022 Adviser Innovation Summit on 1 June in Melbourne and 8 June in Sydney.

Click here to secure your spot and make sure you don’t miss out!

For more information about the summit, including the agenda and speakers, click here.