An old adage goes: ‘inspiration comes in many forms’. For Adam Price, the arrival of his first born child catalysed his decision to leave his nine to five banking role to create VouchedFor.
“I know it sounds a bit mushy but it did motivate me and made me think ‘what will I want to be able to tell my son about what do when he is older?’” he said
Heralded as the TripAdvisor for financial and legal professionals, the business uses a database of more than 35,000 vetted client reviews to match consumers with the ideal financial or legal professional.
Mr Price said that the company implements a rigorous framework to weed out inauthentic reviews and spam.
He said: “For every single review, we make the adviser attest to the fact that it is a genuine client. They can’t read the review at that time but they can see the email address. If we spot anything suspicious, we would do a manual investigation which involves calling up the adviser and client.”
Last summer, the company caused furore among a number of disgruntled advisers by upping the cost of validated leads from £25 to £39, £55 to £69, £75 to £109 and £99 to £129 for advisers with a minimum criteria of ‘any level of wealth’: £50,000, £100,000 and £250,000 upward respectively.
Mr Price said: “We know that advisers want as many quality leads as possible so we looked to introduce questions and filters for consumers as they go through the process of contacting an adviser.
“What we have done with the price increases is introduce more questions for the clients to answer. They can opt against answering those additional questions clients can choose to answer or not.”
Every validated lead provides advisers with the telephone number of the customer - which has been checked and verified. VouchedFor refunds advisers who are unable to contact the lead after three attempts.
Advisers are charged extra for a qualified lead – defined as those in which the consumer has answered all of the optional questions.
“Not only would the adviser be able to contact the person but that person will met their wealth level and will require the services that they offer,” Mr Price said.
The company offers three membership packages to adviser. The first is a stripped back service which comes at no cost to the adviser. It allows advisers to have a profile devoid of their contact details on the website.
The second, labelled the lite plan comes with a fixed fee of £45 per month, plus VAT. The price includes client reviews, a VouchedFor badge for advisers to promote on their website and the opportunity to qualify to appear on newspaper listings.
Thirdly, the pro plan includes the features of both plans but also provides advisers with the additional functionality of being able to purchase leads.
A great number of industry experts predicted that there would be a proliferation in the number of advisers operating on the restricted model following the heightened regulatory burden introduced in the RDR.
The move is thought to help advisers reduce costs and allow them to retain more of the overall client fee in-house.
In spite of the supposed proliferation of restricted advice, VouchedFor continues to offer its services exclusively to independent advisers.
Mr Price said: “If you ask a client ‘would you like independent or restricted advice’ they would say ‘independent’. Our job is to help consumers choose between advisers. How do you help consumers choose from restricted advisers? You almost need adviser to advise on which restricted adviser to choose.”
He added: “At this moment in time, there has not been a strong enough reason to answer that very difficult question of how we would cater for restricted.”
From humble beginnings, VouchedFor has seen its membership grow to around 10,000 since inception in 2012.
Last year, the London-based client review site secured $5.4m (£3.78m) in seed funding from Octopus Investments and Samos Investments.
A portion of the cash injection will be used to fund a national televised advertising campaign which will, in part, promote the importance of financial advice.
The campaign targets the pre-retirement market and will start in April with around three quarters of adverts due to be aired during the daytime and the remaining during peak viewing times later on in the evening and weekends.
“There are a huge number of people out there who would benefit from advice but are not seeking it. They tend to be at the key life stage and recognise that they need help but the need is not urgent.”
Mr Price has earmarked the development of a financial planning tool for the use of advisers to provide basic yet effective financial plan for clients at no cost.
In the short term, Mr Price will keep a keen eye on the uptake of a new initiative which is in its pilot stage as of early March. The scheme awards customers with a £50 voucher for accessing mortgage advice from an adviser via the VouchedFor website.
“That is part of what it is going to take to inspire people to seek advice,” Mr Price said.
Myron Jobson is a features writer of Financial Adviser
ADAM PRICE’S CAREER LADDER
2011 - present
Managing director and founder
VouchedFor
2010
Head of digital proposition
Barclays Wealth
2008 -2009
Head of Barclays Wealth International Direct
Barclays Wealth
2007-2008
Head of Commercial Development
Barclays Wealth
2005 – 2007
Manager
Marakon
2000 – 2003
Senior business analyst
Capital One
1997 – 2000
BA Hons Economics and Management
Oxford University
