‘Opportunity everywhere’: Creativity key to advisers maintaining their value

With the introduction of new technology and legislation expected to considerably reduce the amount of administrative work for financial advisers, Contract Paraplanning Services chief executive Clinton Weekes believes a large portion of advisers’ value-added tasks will be reduced if not removed entirely, negating some of an adviser’s current market value.

“The way to make up for that is to go and see more clients at a lower cost, because technology has driven down the cost to produce advice because it’s doing manual things that paraplanners, admin staff and financial advisers are doing, allowing access for more clients to see an adviser,” Weekes told ifa.

“I think the adviser then just has to make a shift to see more clients in the future as this develops, and that will maintain a lot of their value for their business and their firm, just by higher volume of clients.”

While many within the advice profession have come to resent the constantly shifting nature of the last five years, Weekes sees it more as an opportunity to excel for those willing to put in the work.

“I think that’s what makes it so exciting. I think if we didn’t have all this good stuff on the horizon, I think it would feel just slightly more business as usual, a little bit more boring. So, I personally think it’s really, really good. There’s opportunity everywhere,” he said.

“If technology is going to impact these jobs and legislation is going to impact these jobs for better or for worse, it just means that the people that are quickest at adapting to change and moving and coming up with new ways of doing things, whether that be volume, whether that be creating a new role, whether that be instituting the technology better than someone else, I think they’re all just like, it’s all on the table.”

Furthermore, while some have raised concerns about technology attempting to take over too much of the adviser role, Weekes argued that those that are able to be creative and innovative will continue to succeed, even as the industry changes.

“I don’t think anyone’s really at risk unless they’re adverse to actually putting in the work to change, and that’s probably easier said than done for some people,” he said.

“The people that are most creative are the least likely to be replaced by technology.

“Creative sounds like – we mostly use it with art and things like that but creative can really extend to just ideas and business and processes and methods and things like that as well.”

Weekes added: “Creativity will be the key, I think, in who gets the most value out of this next phase.”