What lessons can be learned from Aviva’s tech upgrade?

As I write, Mark Zuckerberg is in his second shift testifying before US Congress on data leaks from Facebook. As he talks – when able to get a word in among grandstanding senators – it’s clear that a huge number of people have lost and are losing trust in the technology that underpins so much of our lives.

Losing trust and taking action are different, and people do love to share photos of their dinner, so maybe nothing much will change. But it is absolutely the case that the system – the unthinking things that millions of people use every day – is taking a knock.

I’m watching this piece of political theatre while writing my column, and it strikes me that exactly the same sort of thing is happening in our sector.

Now I don’t think that product providers or platforms are selling your clients’ personal information to Russian fake news sites (though it would be much cooler than what they do use it for, which is nothing in most cases). But I do think there is an interesting comparison to draw between the experience people are having with Facebook, and the relationship advisers have with the platforms they use.

Platform problems

The most obvious case in point is Aviva’s replatforming from its Bravura system to its new FNZ facility. I think it’s well known that this hasn’t gone as smoothly as anyone would have liked, and there are plenty of ‘Mr Angries’ out there who have been very happy to share their displeasure with this. I’m not going to pile on as it’s all been said already.

Just one aside: a fair number of advisers have contacted us at the Lang Cat to have a moan that the old system worked fine and that they didn’t see the need to upgrade at all. 

One of the things that’s been lost along the way is that Aviva’s existing platform wasn’t Mifid II-compliant and needed major surgery in order to make it so. It chose not to do that work – quite understandably – given that it was going to be rocking and rolling on FNZ by the time Mifid II came around. 

But then came the delays, and deadlines ended up being crashed. Things weren’t ready, or at least as ready as they were meant to be. Testing was rushed, and we know the results.

So there’s a lesson in there somewhere. But back to the point. I am interested in how adviser firms are impacted by big changes to the basic kit that they use every day. Everyone is, I think, used to software changing on a regular basis: we all update our phones and tablets with the latest version of iOS or Android regularly. 

Most platforms don’t change the core of what they do very much over time. Some bits and bobs evolve – usually for the better – and new functionality might get bolted on. But if you stick to the core functionality – adding a client, opening a wrapper, buying a fund, rebalancing, taking income – most user experiences remain pretty consistent. 

I had a shot recently at Standard Life’s Wrap platform for the first time in ages, and was able to navigate around it with about 75 to 80 per cent of the confidence that I had when I used to demonstrate it back in 2010.

But that’s not the case when a provider replatforms. Users of Aviva’s facility have had to unlearn what they’ve been used to, and relearn new screens, new processes, new workarounds, new hacks, and lots of other small everyday things that make the difference between going home that evening whistling a jaunty tune or going home with a hooded look and reaching straight for the bottle. 

I suspect bottle shops in areas with high numbers of Aviva users have been doing rather well in the past month or so.

The bright side

But here’s the thing. It’s undeniable that Aviva has had some problems with things that just don’t work. But equally, many of the things that have got advisers ticked aren’t faults. They’re just new ways of doing the same old things. Some of them are transition issues that will resolve after about two months – this is particularly true for some of the income payment and fee payment issues. 

Those new ways might be better or worse than the old one, and that’s a reasonable debate to have. What’s happened, though, is that faults have got conflated with frustrations at new working practices and new things to remember and learn, resulting in the whole thing becoming almost impossible to unpick. 

Interestingly, this is especially true for advisers who don’t use Aviva every day. I’ve spoken to regular and less-regular users and, in my entirely non-scientific sample, the more frequent users are happier than the less-frequent ones. That’s because they were handled one-to-one by Aviva and took the time to really engage with the new information they were given – they had to because the platform is such a big part of their daily working lives.

In contrast, I think some less-frequent users expected that ‘it’ll just work’, and then hit the wall pretty hard when they saw how different the new facility is.

Don’t get me wrong, both sets of users hate the stuff that doesn’t work. But one set is able to differentiate between the shock of using a new platform and its faults, the other isn’t.

Other implications

Back to Facebook. Much of what everyone was upset about was the tech giant doing exactly what it said it was going to do – share your data in a way you had agreed to with app developers. Where Facebook went wrong, at least in part, was that it didn’t read to the end of the story and police those developers, leading to the current accusations that some ended up being straight out of central casting for Russian bad guys. Unpicking what was expected (if sometimes iffy) practice and what was genuine malfeasance has become very difficult in the hullabaloo.

So what do we learn from all of this? I think everyone needs to do some things differently when these situations come about. This is a good time to talk about it, because we have two major platforms hitting their replatforming live dates in May 2018: Aegon will move its Cofunds retail book on to the upgraded version of its ARC platform (powered by GBST) early in the month, and with a following wind Ascentric will switch on its new Bravura-powered kit a few weeks later. 

Before all this happens, here’s my potted five-point plan:

1. Remember replatforming is brutally difficult, even on a good day. As I’ve said too many times, imagine changing a car engine while you’re driving it around a racetrack.

2. Even a successful replatforming doesn’t mean that the platform will be error-free from day one. If you don’t like the car analogy, think of it as putting up a huge office block. You get the edifice up, with heat and light and loos that work and stuff, but you have a list of snagging as long as your arm, and you have to work your way down that list. There will be considerable snagging lists for both Aegon and Ascentric. The thing with platforms is that there is no victimless snagging – everything affects an adviser or a client in one way or another.

3. Advisers – you’ll be getting lots of emails with details of new processes and procedures. Don’t ignore them. You need to engage with all this stuff so that you too can work out the difference between defects and new ways of doing things.

4. Platforms – you have to make sure resources are in place to hunt and kill defects as they are found. That will be bilateral work with you and your outsourced tech supplier. Where advisers raise issues you have to acknowledge them, make sure they get on to the appropriate list – either major defect, snagging, or ‘needs better communication’ – and then close the loop by communicating the resolution back to advisers, especially the adviser who raised it.

5. Everyone needs to be collaborative and try to work in partnership. Resist the urge to play amateur IT director. With some understanding and patience on both sides, this can be made so much better.

And when it’s done, we can all go back to taking pictures of our dinner and being influenced by Russian newsbots.

Mark Polson is principal of platform and specialist consultancy the Lang Cat