We may have to learn to live with Covid-19 for several years, according to England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam.
So if this is the new normal, how are working and living practices going to adapt?
Where advisers previously would have met face-to-face with clients, lockdown has meant the majority are working from home.
Joe Roxborough, a financial planner at Ascot Lloyd, says although he used to work from home a few days a week, he now misses the big office printer.
Key Points
- Advisers are getting accustomed to new working arrangements
- Financial services are in a position to engender trust
- Advice companies that rely on new business will find things tougher
He says: “I am finding scanning documents of multiple pages a pain, so I have started using CamScanner — an app that adjusts and consolidates photos of documents into a multi-page PDF. Very functional with an application form that is dozens of pages long, requiring multiple signatures.
“You just take a picture of each page, even relatively carelessly, and the app makes the pages into a single PDF that looks like you scanned it in the office.”
Communicate with clients
James Higton, a financial planner at Quilter, has found the time he previously spent travelling to work can now be spent giving more help to existing clients.
And staying in constant communication with clients has meant many of them have remained fairly calm despite the ongoing uncertainty and market volatility.
He adds: “People who are looking for accumulation and growth have got no need for the capital. And with drawing income, the majority of my clients have stopped taking income from investments and are taking it from cash, which has always been the plan, for emergencies.
“Expenditure has also dropped at this time as there is no social spending; it is just mainly food and utilities people are buying.”
Tim Morris, a financial adviser at Russell & Co, says even though he received a few phone calls from clients at the start of the crisis, he made sure he contacted them, and has continued to do so.
Mr Morris says: “The big difference with this and the financial crisis, is that the crisis of 2008 was very much about finances alone; whereas now the health impact could come from people losing their jobs.”
Another marked difference between the global financial crisis and the coronavirus crisis is that the financial sector can now be seen as a solution rather than the cause, according to behavioural economist Mark Pittaccio.
“So not only can you trust your adviser, but you can trust the sector,” Mr Pittaccio adds.
“The best thing to do is to speak to clients. There has never been a bigger time to engender trust and there’s never been a better time to share the experiences an adviser is having with their client.
“The financial services sector is playing a huge part in redeeming itself from what happened in 2008.”
Practise mindfulness
Mr Pittaccio works on the advisory, distribution and provider sides of financial services, spending most of his time helping advisers create and deliver client propositions and investment strategies.
From his conversations with advisers, he says they are all handling things in different ways, depending on their sector.
Mr Pittaccio says: “We said back in March because the impact on daily life had been so dramatic, everybody needed to stop and create a new normal and if they have not done it they need to, and if they have, they need to review it.
“One thing we would say is people need to be very mindful of themselves while being mindful of other people. Advisers have been helping others but they also need to be mindful of their own health.”
When it comes to working from home everyone has different arrangements.
It can range from having a dedicated working space to sharing the dining table with children who are also being home-schooled.
Mr Pittaccio says companies need to be aware of this when trying to manage tasks and to make sure staff understand what is available for them.
He also recommends people regularly review their working environment, eliminating objects, cables, or leads that can disrupt their space.
Protection specialist Kathryn Knowles, managing director of Cura Financial Services, says at the beginning of the crisis there was a rush of protection enquiries, driven by the fear of the unknown.
A lot of that fear has now turned to stoicism, she says. “It has probably hit home that it can happen to anyone and most people have experienced someone who has been affected by it, but I think everyone is just getting on with it.”
Ms Knowles says at Cura it was easy to switch to remote working as around half the staff were already working in a flexible way.
As parents of three children, she and her husband home-school the children while continuing to run the business, making sure to incorporate exercise.
Other advisers like Mr Higton enjoy taking walks and playing golf, while Mr Morris likes to take his dog for walks.
Economic outlook
Although lockdown is gradually being eased, restrictions are still in place regarding meeting friends and family, while non-food shops and places of entertainment are still closed, and working from home remains a long-term feature.
With this in mind, Mr Pittaccio says people should not anchor themselves to a time when the crisis will end, to prevent being mentally worn out because things have not reverted back to normal.
He likens the psychological and emotional responses people are experiencing in lockdown to those experienced when overcoming grief.
These include denial of the event occurring, the bargaining phase, a period of reflection, sadness in realising what is happening, then acceptance.
“When the markets first went down, we helped advisers to frame the conversation with their clients, to remind them we had been here before.”
Mr Morris says talking about more possible bad news and a worsening of the economy needs to be factored into client conversations.
He says: “The amount of debt the government is taking on is going to have to be repaid and we are all going to have to feel the pain.”
Mr Higton adds: “If the economy goes back to normal then people might seek advice a bit more on protection, but if the economic impacts are felt for quite some time, that will impact on the wealth of people wanting advice.”
As well as worrying about clients and clients’ businesses, advisers will be worrying about their own companies and the state of the market.
A recent Financial Adviser poll found half (50 per cent) of respondents say their business is under little strain, while 40.9 per cent say it is substantial but tolerable. Only 9 per cent said things were at a critical stage.
Blair Cann from M Thurlow and Co says companies that rely on new business will feel the strain the most.
He adds: “The normal procedures for signing up new clients must be virtually impossible as they would rely on meetings sometimes taking hours and generally in the adviser’s office.
“In the case of a mature business, where the majority of income is ongoing adviser fees, the issues are ensuring you are available to the clients and keeping them updated as to the state of their investments.”
Ima Jackson-Obot is deputy features editor of Financial Adviser and FTAdviser
