"Sometimes we will have people come through the door and they will build a financial plan with us and it might be that actually, they've got all the right solutions in place.
"They're putting enough into their pensions or putting enough into their Isas, but they don't know that they're doing the right things. And that's what they want reassurance around.
"And they want to retire at 60 but they actually don't know if they can really retire at 60, do they have enough, will they run out of money, and that's where doing the financial planning exercise with them helps answer those questions."
If the prospective client is happy to go down the financial planning route they're onboarded and invited to fill in a digital fact find, which is sense checked in a follow up meeting, again most likely a Teams call.
Hendry likes to use that meeting for a final "stress test [of] what it is they're looking for out of the financial planning exercise" as well as to check some of the softer facts.
The resulting plan consists of a base plan scenario, which is reviewed with the client in a Teams meeting, as well as alternative scenarios the client wishes to look at, which could be reviewed in a follow up meeting.
Hendry believes most people are happy with remote Teams meetings at these stages. "It works well because you share the screen and it's nimble enough, you're both just sitting talking, looking at the same thing on this screen. So it works quite well.
"The real value is in the discussion, making sure you have gone through the different scenarios with the client at the time and tweaking it live. That's where we think we can add value early on in the journey by establishing what someone really needs by doing the planning exercise."
At the end, all the information is packaged up in a report the client can take away.
At that stage the client engagement might come to an end, or clients could need transactional help only.
Alternatively, typically if they have more complex needs, they become ongoing clients and are signed up to the digital wealth portal.
It's not all digital
But it's not all digital. Hendry still sees a lot of clients in person, especially for ongoing advice reviews.
"I think it's just a habit for a lot of people still, they like to come for a professional service. I think they like sitting across from someone still and it's still a relationship based business for them, especially when it comes to your personal finances."
