The financial services industry has to match the technological expectations of new and younger clients to keep up, New World Financial Group director, Sam Tate, has argued.
Speaking at the Home Game 3 panel, Tech change: The planner perspective, Tate said: “You’ve got to understand what younger and potential clients expect and the way they communicate now with the technology that they’re used to generally.
“Our industry has to match their expectations because the competition is there and it’s growing.”
Citing examples of this competition, Tate pointed to ChatGPT, claiming the potential for the AI is an “existential threat to our industry”.
Therefore, Tate urged the industry to “think differently and communicate differently”, something that he believes technology will allow.
Go your own way
Tate was asked about the challenges he faced while finding a back office system and his choice to develop his own.
He recalled that New World Financial Group started as a new business in 2021 and, when looking at what the industry would look like in five or 10 years time, he was disappointed in the off the shelf system offerings.
“We found that some of the off the shelf providers were going to constrain us in that regard,” he explained.
Tate also stated that an old system wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do, specifying it was a lack of flexibility that was most impactful.
He explained that his business charges “a bit differently to the rest of our industry” and wants to communicate in a different way and that this was not something his previous system would allow.
“We need systems and processes to help us streamline and work faster and, ultimately, see more clients,” he said.
“Our focus is how do we provide value to those people to help them come into the industry and that’s where the new money is so we need to think innovatively and we need to communicate differently in order to do that.
“We found that the existing back office providers were kind of limited so I think we just needed to think more innovatively.”
Tate’s system is still currently in development.
Being unique
Elsewhere in the session, Wellington Wealth director, Jennifer Ellis, spoke on being unique as a firm with the approach to technology.
She stated: “We saw advisers all coming to the same conclusion, all having the same onboarding journey.
“However, we don’t want to be an average adviser, we want to be an exceptional adviser so we don’t want to do what everyone else is doing.
“We want to be different and want to give the best service to our clients.”
Believing the hype
Ellis additionally cautioned believing too much in the “hype” surrounding systems and technologies, something she demonstrated through a personal experience.
She explained: “In a previous business we had a contract we took out with another big firm that provides back office software and they demoed a system to us that did exactly what we wanted.
“When we signed the contract and started customising it for ourselves and I asked for access they said ‘you can’t have that bit because that’s only for big firms’”
Ellis criticised the behaviour stating “It’s wrong to assume that a small firm doesn’t want some bells and whistles because we were, from the start, thinking of being a bigger firm.”
Additionally, she pointed out “that’s the only way you can grow well, to have the next five or 10 years covered.
“So you need to be thinking about that destination point 10 years down the line to allow you to have a smoother journey.”
She concluded by agreeing that the mistake was “believing the hype” around what she was shown at the beginning versus what the reality was.
tom.dunstan@ft.com
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