This is particularly valuable for clients in drawdown, where tracking against plan to ensure sustainable withdrawal rates and portfolio risk level is central to ensuring a good outcome.
3. Embrace end-to-end. There is no longer any need for advice companies to use multiple heritage systems that do not communicate with each other. Whether through application programming interfaces or through new single-system approaches, there is plenty of technology out there that can help companies work in a more joined-up way.
As the Financial Conduct Authority has identified, one significant concern with multi-system models is miscalibration risk – the potential for the different systems and tools used in designing and building a client’s portfolio to define risk levels differently, meaning the client’s profile is not accurately reflected.
Minimising this risk is often a laborious process requiring extensive manual checks – just one productivity saving that comes from an end-to-end approach.
While to a traditional cyclist technology is arguably cheating on a hill climb, for advice companies it is the key to working faster, smarter and delivering value to more clients more easily. I hope you will find a resolution in the three above that will chime with your goals this year.
As for me, I reaped the rewards of a busy 2021 with some much-needed downtime after Christmas, during which I let my exercise routine slide and ate far too many mince pies. As a result, I will be back on my bike in 2022 – and I ruefully concede that this is one area where I might need to stick to the analogue approach.
Ben Goss is chief executive of Dynamic Planner
