Yorkshire Building Society is offering customers the chance to take “expert financial advice” in their homes, via video conferencing.
The new service, which Yorkshire claimed is a first from a major UK building society, offering appointments between 9am and 7pm, Monday to Friday.
The building society stated the service is fully secure and will allow financial advisers to give customers at-home advice and share documents, via any tablet, laptop or desktop computer.
Simon Broadley, head of investments at Yorkshire Building Society, explained that it is offered with advice provider Legal and General and makes them one of the first UK financial services institutions to offer this comprehensive service.
“Technology has the power to instantly connect customers with a fully-qualified financial adviser – we want to ensure that making your money work for you is as easy as making a video call on a tablet.
“That is why we’ve launched this innovative service, which utilises the latest in secure video conferencing technology to allow customers to access fully-qualified experts in the UK from the comfort of their own homes at a time which suits them.
Jon Roderick, business director of L&G’s Financial Solutions Direct, added that remote advice will give them the opportunity to provide even more customers with the financial advice they need in the comfort of their own home, at a time that suits them.
Yorkshire’s step into video advice comes following the launch of the Financial Advice Market Review in early August.
The key objective of the review is to look for ways to close the increasingly familiar advice gap, with the aim of coming up with “a package of reforms to empower and equip all UK consumers to make effective decisions about their finances, including a set of principles to govern the operation of financial advice.”
The building society’s video advice service also comes after last week FTAdviser reported one of Australia’s biggest banks announced big plans for robo-advice.
In Australia, regulatory requirements introduced over the last year mean various providers have had to pull together data so that savers can see a single screen statement listing the size of their pension pots, investments and mortgage commitments.
As a result of this, earlier this month the National Australia Bank announced plans to provide computer-generated financial advice to consumers through its online banking platform.
emma.hughes@ft.com
