Increase in crystal balls for sale, one careful owner

2   Link this problem to a commercial driver

"If you look at an IFA firm that's been going for ten or twenty years, you will see that they get a significant amount of ongoing recurring revenue through assets under management and a percentage that they charge on that. They are not going to want to disengage with a third of their client bank because in their own right, they're just not profitable anymore. That’s a chunk of their ongoing revenue lost overnight." - Sarah Watts

There may be pressure to disengage with lower value clients because it's not profitable to deliver a clunky and time consuming annual review service, for example. Plus, post RDR, that’s not a path advice firms want to take and nor should they! 

There is a better way. Bring down the cost to serve.

Sarah suggests it’s a case of having to; looking at the world we live in, competitive pressure, client expectations and, ultimately, impact on the bottom line. “At the moment, so much cost is tied up in the fact that it takes us so long to do anything” she explains.

So we know that many Advice firms need to save money on the cost to serve but can’t afford to lose revenue and loyal clients. They feel stuck.

3   Share a north star and walk towards it

Sarah encourages sharing a company-wide vision where tech and menial tasks are automated and what business impact this can have (cost, time, resource). Promote internally a clear focus on servicing more clients with fewer people, without burn out on the job description.

TJP are owned by Söderberg & Partners, whose ethos is in challenging the status quo. Everything they do is imbued by their drive to gain more efficiency or quality and they deploy their knowledge, technology, and scale to realise this potential. Their aim is to provide the highest quality investment management and the highest level of service to their clients, which meant they were a perfect match for the values of Timothy James & Partners, when they acquired the company in 2023.

This view encourages a perception of tech that helps us focus on what we're really good at. 

Not always easy in the UK thanks to historic wrappers, tax legislation, changes in product types, compliance, etc. Sarah comments “If we had a magic wand, we would have all of our clients on one platform with one centralised investment proposition, so that everything integrates with the back office. Everything is integrated. This will take time, but we are all clear on the goal.” Sarah explains.

4  Let the pigeons fly free - the time is now

"Remind people of painful experiences and how they could be free of them!" - Sarah Watts

A focus on securing new business and servicing existing clients leaves little spare resource to dedicate to moving to a consolidated tech stack and to convince internal stakeholders to use the solution in the first place! Sarah acknowledges that due diligence to select the right solution takes time. Yet it pays dividends.

“We can explain to people that we'll be more efficient and we'll reduce our chances of errors, but they might then question what does that mean to us?” Sarah points out

It seems a sense of humour helps! “You're always going to have legacy business like pensions you can't transfer because they have valuable guarantees in them. It can feel like you then have to deal with someone sitting under a cupboard somewhere and you have to write to them to get information, and they send it back via carrier pigeon!” Sarah tells us. 

AI is no longer a ‘nice to have’ in the financial advice sector, is it becoming a hygiene factor? 

 “It’s an essential component of a great client experience, faster and better than your competitors. But there are a lot of new solutions out there. We started by connecting the dots. What solutions integrate with others? However when we looked at some of the ‘strategic partners’ to our back office system we were not always impressed.” Sarah points out.

And then AdvisoryAI came along.

5  Test the water - it’s great once you are in!

"Before we chose Advisory AI, we had been looking at many other options and they presented a lot of inaccuracies. I thought I would never have enough confidence in an AI assistant to roll out to Advisers." - Sarah Watts

Compliance is a must but it’s not always a selling point to encourage adoption. By trialling solutions Sarah found that the ability to record meetings, getting top quality meeting notes out of it, and generating a post meeting follow-up was a sweet spot that got instant buy-in. “If you send your templates to Advisory AI, your mind will be blown by the results! ” Sarah adds.

6  Share the lightbulb moment

"When I had the demo with Alan at AdvisoryAI, it blew my mind because it was the first time I'd seen something do something like a human job" - Sarah Watts

Sharing this with others, elicited the same response. Proof of the pudding was definitely in the eating over and above other options available.

“For the first time, I saw how you could do a pension transfer report in minutes. You upload the fact find, you upload the illustration, you upload pension research, cost and charges and it produces a suitability report. A human still reviews it. But they are reviewing a fantastic report. Finally, tech that makes humans so much more efficient and their work more enjoyable!” Sarah points out.

7  Everybody likes surprises (like this)

Sarah shares how Advisers reaction to Evie and Emma from Advisory AI has surprised her. “Advisers who were reluctant to use tech are now embracing it! ” she says. “We have eighteen advisers, some of whom were not keen on tech in general, are completely sold on how their working day has transformed! Put simply, AdvisoryAI has been a game changer. It sold itself. What we deliver is faster, compliant and more personalised as a result of AI. The fact that Evie and Emma are trained from an FCA and Consumer Duty perspective gives a level of reassurance that inspires trust.”

8  Come on, make my day

We know that clients already expect a more personalised, digitised experience.  The next gen of advice firm employees will also be thinking about a ‘typical day’ with the firms they choose to work for. 

“Historically, an all-too typical day for a paraplanner involves channelling their psychic abilities to tap into a fragmented fact find. The task is a little like spinning gold from straw.” Sarah suggests. “With Evie from AdvisoryAI you get all the client perspective, the emotional drivers, the nuances that make the difference between good and great client service when they are taken into account. Financial advice is a team sport - with AI on the team everyone does better! "

9  Share values and the right kind of innovation

What advice would Sarah give to an advice firm considering trialling an AI solution?

"Choose an AI partner that shares your values, where you have confidence in the leadership and see evidence of client-driven innovation, not the next shiny thing,” she suggests.

Sarah also encourages advice firms to be confident and look to the business impact of AI with shared experiences in peer advice firms. “There are more organisations now who will put their head above the parapet and talk about the impact, because it's proven - it’s just part of a normal working day for them. We're in that wonderful growth trajectory where there's still lots to do, but remember your future state is already BAU for some of your competitors.”

10  Be a player, not a bystander

What’s next? For TJP a focus on transforming their annual review process,naturally involves workflow automation and Sarah has made it compulsory that Advisers sign up to AdvisoryAI to record all annual reviews. "They get their meeting notes immediately afterwards, and they get a drafted, post meeting follow-up.” Sarah explains. “The feedback so far in doing this? Wow. This is a game changer. ”