How people and technology can work together

Speaking on the ifa podcast, Adam Holster, professional services banking executive at NAB, said it is important to recognise that financial advice is all about people.

“We know financial planning is a people business,” Mr Holster said.

“You can't get much more intimate in a financial sense than the conversations that your listeners are sharing with their clients every day and the decisions that they are helping them make and the outcomes, the life outcomes that your listeners are helping their clients achieve. So, people are such an important part of this.”

To maximise the amount of time spent in front of clients, which is where the adviser can make the greatest impact, Mr Holster said technology can work in tandem with a client focus to improve outcomes.

“I think what we're seeing is a real tilt towards new technology and systems to enable the provision of compliant advice, preferably,” he said.

“And certainly what we're seeing is encouraging signs in terms of reducing the cost of compliance and reducing the per client cost of being able to provide that top quality advice as well.”

Mr Holster also pointed to the recent NAB report, The People Profession: New Opportunities for Growth, which found 74 per cent of respondents were looking to grow via hiring, retraining or training of people.

Highlighting the relationship between the focus on people and the importance of technology, the report also found 37 per cent of respondents were targeting new technology or systems as a pathway to growth.

“Technology is having a democratising impact on the industry,” Mr Holster explained in the report.

“It’s no longer something that only very large firms have access to – it’s affordable and there for firms of all sizes to access, to provide great client experiences in a way that’s efficient and repeatable.

“Technology can simplify increasingly complex tasks like payroll, create efficiencies within the firm and deliver services at scale that would not have been possible 15 years ago, often at a lower cost. It can also free up staff capacity within the firm, which can go towards offering additional services.”

Despite the increasing importance of technology, Mr Holster does not see the people side of the business going anywhere.

“This will always remain for a large chunk of the client base. It will remain a people-to-people business,” he said.

“Of course, we've seen the rise of some completely sort of automated robo-advice type platforms and then we're starting to see the emergence of some high-quality hybrid platforms as well, right at the client engagement stage.

“I think that we will see just as much effort in the client-facing technology as what we are seeing in the back-office technology and in compliance-based technologies, but always supplementing those.

“Behind any good advisory business are people and I think it's attracting those, ensuring that they have the right capabilities and the right skills to perform their functions really well, to support the advisory business’ clients really well. That remains a challenge, but also one of the biggest key differentiators of advice firms.”

To hear more from Adam Holster, tune in here.