How tech can help the intergenerational wealth transfer

Appearing on Ausbiz, head of advice at Sherlock Wealth, Andrew Sherlock, and HUB24 senior business strategy manager Greg Hansen discussed the role of technology in managing the intergenerational wealth transfer.

Sherlock explained that his firm uses an online platform to share information with relevant third-party professionals, such as estate planning lawyers and accountants, making it easier to work collaboratively on a client’s case.

“Increasingly, what we’ve seen and been able to use that really well for as well is where we might have some elderly clients who, perhaps, maybe they’re in their 80s, they’re still switched on enough but maybe they’re losing a little bit of that intellectual side of things and they might want to bring in that next generation, their children, to have a bit of oversight of their decisions,” Sherlock said.

“So we can share what we’re doing with those clients, with the next generation down. And then you can take a whole of wealth and a whole of family sort of approach to things and make sure that it’s being done the best possible way for the extended family unit, not just one generation of the family.”

Adding to this, Hansen said that “client portals are an amazing piece of technology to facilitate the intergenerational wealth transfer” due to the “collaboration aspects” of it, and its impact on “the way people experience advice”.

As the world continues to digitise and clients come to expect to be able to manage advice tasks and monitor their assets via mobile devices, Hansen said that advisers will need to adopt new technologies to achieve that.

“Financial planning is one of those things that needs to catch up in this area, and it needs to be a mobile-based experience,” he said.

Hansen explained that client portals also provide an additional layer of security when communicating with clients, which is particularly important given the extremely sensitive nature of the information advisers are managing, particularly during the wealth transfer stage.

“The quality and quantity of information that’s required is extreme and so there’s a particular risk around that,” he said.

“So where are those greatest areas of vulnerability? Email. Emailing personal information from a financial professional to their client and back again needs to be … eliminated really, and client portals are an ideal way to make sure that information is held securely and that people have access to it at the right time.”