Improving the support for adviser firms who are implementing and managing integration services was a hot topic at a recent AdviceTech Forum, a monthly collaboration hub for advice firms, tech vendors, product providers and platforms run by AdviserSoftware.com.
The AdviceTech Forum gives firms an opportunity to discuss the key business issues and challenges facing advisers and to identify how technology can be used to solve them. The forum highlighted the challenges advice firms are facing when researching, implementing and managing integrated data services such as contract enquiry, bulk downloads and commission feeds.
The forum called for greater industry collaboration, explored what providers are doing to help and what actions advisers can take to improve their approach to integrations.
Top challenges when it comes to managing integrations
Claire Thompson, technology analyst at Mazars, said it comes down to keeping lines of communication open with the technology vendors: “If you’re using a client portal and your clients are regularly accessing that, but the valuations stop, this obviously causes your client some concern and will generate phone calls to the firm. That’s something that back-office providers can look at improving. Tech vendors should alert us to tell us what has failed.”
She added, “It can be really confusing understanding the breadth of offerings. There’s quite a lot of integrations out there, they all do slightly different things. It’s how you narrow down and really work out what it is that’s most useful to you as a business.”
Industry expert Aston Easton pointed out how a lack of technology expertise can be a potential barrier to implementing and using data services: “Some users have a fear of how complex [systems] are to install, set up and implement within their organisation and that varies depending on what it is you want to integrate with.”
Building a better understanding of how the integration will work matters as Aston said: “When you start getting into the nitty gritty and the detail of it, and even in the test phase, you find actually it won’t cover certain aspects, areas or products that you want to integrate with.”
Aston continued: “I’d like readily available support. If you’re coming to implement something and you actually hit a brick wall, rather than send an email off and wait a few days for someone to come back to you with solutions. There also needs to be clearer guides, checklists, step by step guides to embed into your organisation or CRM system”.
What are providers doing to help the challenges raised by advisers?
Platform consultants understand the breadth of technologies advice firms are using. In this context, Jamie Hutchin, head of retail platform proposition at Aegon, discussed his experience when working with advisers to integrate data services into their businesses: “We have done training internally, our platform consultants have an understanding of all the different technology that adviser firms are using. So, best of breed solutions, in-house solutions, how it all fits together and why it’s important for advisers to understand this in the event things go wrong.”
Tim Walton, platform integration manager at Aviva UK, believes training and raising awareness among their staff on how to help advisers adopt and integrate data services is imperative: “The third parties we integrate with are very extensive and there’s lots of information on our website. We do encourage both our internal staff to look at it to make sure they are aware of it. We’ve also been running Fintech Fridays since 2020. It’s important to raise awareness to all staff, whatever the role they have within Aviva around third party tech”.
Walton also raised the importance of making use of client data: “One thing that is also really important is to address the number of intermediaries, large and small, who don’t make the use of client data you’re entitled to through these services. We have more firms not consuming back their own client data than do by a significant margin.”
These issues highlight to tech vendors, platforms and providers, that they must build the appropriate infrastructure to help more advisers adopt these services and use them properly. Having a point of contact to help guide them during the process is essential before, during and after integrating new systems.
What can advisers do themselves to either upskill or increase their own level of support?
The session explored the actions that advisers can take to upskill themselves and keep abreast of the latest integration developments. Claire Thomson believes keeping in touch with your network is an important way to help with upskilling: “If you’ve got a network of peers in the industry, speaking to other people as well is beneficial because we may all be different businesses, but we all have the same goals.”
Firmly understanding one’s own processes was mentioned as a fundamental step in the journey as that will help to identify any gaps in the technology being used and will also help to inform the approach the firm should take when implementing integrations. Some pointed out that advisers need to ask themselves key questions such as what they want the structure to look like and who within the organisation should have access to certain areas of the system.
The forum also noted the wider availability of information sourced from guides and websites as a way for advisers to enhance their understanding of data services, underlining that particular attention needs to be placed on how data services integrate with back-office systems.
What more do you want to see from technology vendors and your back-office providers?
Thomson commented: “It’s back to this transparency and honesty piece. If you want to integrate, it’s them having an implementation or a customer success wrap up team that will help you best use your technology.”
What is really missing from the back-office providers is the thought leadership, to be able to almost create the idea of what great practice is from the very start to the very end of the advice process.
They are the only people in the industry who can evidence that all the way through. What are they doing to help drive that on and genuinely support throughout the process without necessarily charging a lot for it? They are custodians of the core master data records and they’re the ones we should be turning to.
Providers and advisers who would like to read more about what was discussed on managing integration or join future forums, please go to advisersoftware.com
