'How we changed our tech to boost client engagement'

The Scottish advice business, which is a subsidiary of Johnston Carmichael Chartered Accountants, has built a bespoke wealth platform and app, which allows it to keep clients engaged all year round and forms a central part of the client journey from early on in the relationship.

The tool has been designed first and foremost with the client in mind, says Martin Hendry, chartered financial planner in the Glasgow office. Secondly, it has been created to make it easier for the financial planners.

"I think we do [client engagement] well here," says Hendry, who joined JC Wealth in January 2023, from what had been 1825 but by then was Abrdn Financial Planning.

"One of the things that this [technology] covers off, and is a good outcome for both the client and us, is even if we're sitting down for a meeting and just want to bring everything up on screen, we're not having to log into different websites.

"Everything just feeds into one place. Normally, if you've got different pensions in various places, you'd have to log into different platforms all the time."

How it works

The wealth hub acts as a two-way portal between adviser and client, providing a summary of every aspect of a client's finances, from their investments - regardless of which platforms they are held on - to savings, pensions, insurance policies, bank accounts, credit cards, store cards, mortgages, loans and property.

It also functions as a communications tool between adviser and client, allowing for messages and documents to be sent back and forth securely.

Any post triggers a notification in the client's app that a document has been uploaded. "It's just a bit more forward-thinking than just sending out an email and sending out a password," says Hendry.

The app also has a built-in performance chart, which allows clients to view the performance of their portfolio at any point in time, even remotely on their phones.

If we can make it easier for the clients and also help the team then that's the lens that we're always trying to put to things

There's a certain irony in that, agrees Hendry, considering the firm's strong focus on long-term financial planning, rather than short-term transactional investing. 

"It's one of these things, we want to be really tech friendly in the industry and we want to make it easier and better. But when it comes to the actual part of making investment recommendations, you're always hammering home the message that you have to take a long term view if you're investing money," Hendry says.

"So you're kind of positioning long term, long term, long term, and then giving people access that they can check every day, which is the polar opposite.

"But then that's ... the world we live in, the world we live in is where someone wants to pick up their phone and check their banking, check their portfolios, book a train ticket, book a holiday, so you need to have that technology in place."

But the tool doesn't allow clients to transact. That's partly because advised JC Wealth clients would not be able to transact by themselves in the first place.

Using technology in this way has allowed JC Wealth to optimise the client journey, says Hendry. The business's philosophy on using tech is "if we can make it easier for the clients and also help the team then that's the lens that we're always trying to put to things", he says.

JC Wealth has been working with the app for a little over a year and so far clients have been mainly reactive, says Hendry, though some clients have proactively embraced the technology and have used it to update their property value or other things that add to their overall wealth.

"It's probably a bit of a mix at the moment, but I think it has really good foundations and the plan is to be using it more and more," he says.

"Certainly there's not really any negative feedback on it, whereas when you're doing encrypted emails and things it just doesn't always work."

Optimising the client journey

Much of JC Wealth's early work these days is done remotely and via electronic channels, providing this suits the client and the adviser.

It's what the clients want, says Hendry. It also means the firm is able to serve less wealthy clients, especially when it comes to the financial planning.

Once a client has touched base with JC Wealth, for example through an online enquiry, they would go through a triage process with a member of the support or client liaison team to determine what they might need help with.

The client gets assigned an adviser and has an initial meeting booked in straight away. This ensures the client doesn't have to wait around for someone to contact them, Hendry says.

"That first interaction, there's a decent level of continuity for the person getting in touch because ultimately, if they're going to move forward with us, the next appointment is already in the diary. They know what's happening."

The meeting with the adviser that follows is usually done via Teams, unless the client wants to meet face to face.

It functions as a suitability assessment both ways - on the client's and the firm's behalf.

"Typically, anyone can be our client in the first instance, because if they're willing to go through the financial planning exercise there's a natural break at the end of that process," says Hendry.

"Sometimes we will have people come through the door and they will build a financial plan with us and it might be that actually, they've got all the right solutions in place.

"They're putting enough into their pensions or putting enough into their Isas, but they don't know that they're doing the right things. And that's what they want reassurance around.

"And they want to retire at 60 but they actually don't know if they can really retire at 60, do they have enough, will they run out of money, and that's where doing the financial planning exercise with them helps answer those questions."

If the prospective client is happy to go down the financial planning route they're onboarded and invited to fill in a digital fact find, which is sense checked in a follow up meeting, again most likely a Teams call.

Hendry likes to use that meeting for a final "stress test [of] what it is they're looking for out of the financial planning exercise" as well as to check some of the softer facts.

Earlier on people are quite happy to almost just do it remotely but I think that's more just life at the moment

The resulting plan consists of a base plan scenario, which is reviewed with the client in a Teams meeting, as well as alternative scenarios the client wishes to look at, which could be reviewed in a follow up meeting.

Hendry believes most people are happy with remote Teams meetings at these stages. "It works well because you share the screen and it's nimble enough, you're both just sitting talking, looking at the same thing on this screen. So it works quite well.

"The real value is in the discussion, making sure you have gone through the different scenarios with the client at the time and tweaking it live. That's where we think we can add value early on in the journey by establishing what someone really needs by doing the planning exercise."

At the end, all the information is packaged up in a report the client can take away.

At that stage the client engagement might come to an end, or clients could need transactional help only.

Alternatively, typically if they have more complex needs, they become ongoing clients and are signed up to the digital wealth portal.

It's not all digital

But it's not all digital. Hendry still sees a lot of clients in person, especially for ongoing advice reviews.

"I think it's just a habit for a lot of people still, they like to come for a professional service. I think they like sitting across from someone still and it's still a relationship based business for them, especially when it comes to your personal finances."

Hendry recognises that he "can't give the best advice if I don't have all the information to hand", and that it can be easier to gather some of the soft facts in a face to face conversation than an online chat.

But it depends on the client, he says. The newer ones, who might still be working and not necessarily live nearby are more happy to do remote calls, as long as the service and the conversation are good, he says, whereas some of the older ones, who may have perhaps retired, prefer an in person service.

"It's a bit of a mix, but certainly my experience at the moment is earlier on people are quite happy to almost just do it remotely but I think that's more just life at the moment. People are happier and more comfortable doing stuff on video than they were previously."

According to the Financial Technology Research Centre, advisers should avoid making assumptions about which clients might prefer a tech based approach over others.

Tim Thompson-Rye said at the recent Advice Tech Forum there was a "danger of stereotyping and assuming" that for instance high-net-worth clients would primarily opt for face-to-face advice, when the opposite seemed to be true.

Research suggested with a higher AUM came a greater propensity for tech-based interactions, he said.

Similarly, he cautioned against assuming that age dictated how one would want to receive financial advice.

“We did some analysis on our own portal. We found that the older client was spending more time using the client portal, which kind of flipped our thinking because we just assumed that the younger clients would use the tech more.”

Experts at the forum agreed a good hybrid advice proposition was one where the tech enhanced the relationship the client had with their adviser rather than one that detracted from it in any way.

For Hendry, doing meetings remotely has the obvious benefit of being more efficient for the adviser, particularly in the early meetings which are not paid for. But it also saves the client time travelling to a meeting where they might conclude the service is not for them.

On the flipside, he says there will always be a place for face-to-face interaction. The majority of his annual meetings are still held in this way, he says.

Why is this? "Because giving advice and working with clients is typically a longer-term relationship I think there will always be a good place for that face-to-face interaction, and that ability to build rapport."

In fact, he adds: "You should be in a position where you're able to go for a cup of tea and chat with clients, and know enough about what's going on without having to talk any kind of business with them.

"If things were just done all remotely, you just wouldn't have this, and you wouldn't have that deeper understanding of your clients."

carmen.reichman@ft.com