Advisers must grasp the digital nettle, or be left behind

A study published last week by software provider SSP, which while too small a sample size (66 investment professionals including 18 advisers) to be a news story, gave a good indication of where the sector is with regards to grasping the digital nettle.

The survey found that over half of advisers (56 per cent) have no plans to implement a digital strategy in the coming year.

Currently 89 per cent of advisers service clients face-to-face and via the telephone, with a third using platform access as a service channel, 28 per cent employing a website and 11 per cent using a specific customer portal.

In this day and age, well over two-thirds of advisers not even having their own website is a worrying statistic.

At this stage, most advisory firms will be run by men in their 50s and 60s - recent research suggested the average is aged 58 - catering to men in their 50s and 60s, which is a fine short-term business model, but creates fairly obvious longer-term risks as both advisers and clients shuffle off.

FTAdviser seems to be covering these two connected issues more and more - the fact that firms must both need to bring in new blood and set themselves up to cater to a younger clientele in order to stay in business.

The SSP study showed that just over two thirds of advisers planned to target a mixed audience over the next five years, including, but not exclusively, individuals in their 30s and 40s who already have financial products.

These so-called ‘generation Y’ consumers are statistically much more likely to seek advice online, through smartphones or tablet computers, so if your practice is not set up to capture these clients, they will go to a firm that does, or one of the larger providers moving into the simplified space.

If this just sounds like one more thing to stack on an ever-expanding to-do list, then maybe you can take some solace in the fact that everyone appears to be struggling to make sure their websites are available across all devices. As previously reported, this could see non mobile responsive sites overtaken in Google searched by those that can be used on smaller screens.

Properly using the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn is supposedly another way to increase client engagement and gain new customers, although frankly, many in the supposedly advanced media world are still struggling with their social media presence.

Of course, the regulator has already warned that any ‘financial promotions’ through these channels must be fair, clear and not misleading, making delivering clickable content that does not stray into sales can seem like a bit of a minefield. But for minimal cost and not too many man-hours, online communications can be a surprisingly efficient way to drive extra revenue growth.

So if you’re not planning on selling up and shipping off in the next decade, then its probably best to look into the future and realise that at the very least, a decent website and some kind of social media presence may help drive new business and the next generation of advisers in years to come.

peter.walker@ft.com