Across the financial services industry, companies are facing several challenges, including the need for more cost-effective solutions, ever-growing compliance requirements and heightened consumer expectations for a seamless customer experience.
In this article, we unpack why firms are increasingly turning to digital financial advice technology, ways digital financial advice technology can help you improve client experiences and how leveraging innovative financial advice technology to create a hybrid advice model can help you better meet the needs of your clients.
It is estimated that digital transformation spending worldwide will reach 3.4tn USD (2.9tn GBP) by 2026, reinforcing the necessity for businesses to invest to remain competitive and relevant.
And this couldn't be more true when it comes to investing in digital financial advice technology. By leveraging digital financial advice technology, businesses can streamline their operations, reduce costs, and improve compliance. At the same time, digital transformation can help businesses provide a superior customer experience by providing personalised and convenient advice through digital channels, helping businesses stay competitive and relevant in an ever-changing market.
SigniCat’s 2022 research revealed that:
68% of European consumers have abandoned financial services applications during onboarding.
Often this is to do with slow and frustrating steps and poor experience. Digital, self-service solutions can remove much of the friction and improve the onboarding experience and interactions through the client journey, leading to a better client experience.
There are numerous ways digital financial advice technology can improve client experiences, from personalisation to better advice outcomes for clients. Below we unpack the key ways digital financial advice technology can help you to improve the client experience.
Digital financial advice technology has revolutionised how individuals invest their money by providing personalised investment recommendations that align with their financial goals and risk tolerance. By leveraging sophisticated algorithms, these tools can analyse a client's financial situation, investment objectives, and risk tolerance to provide tailored investment advice.
Digital financial advice technology can also offer ongoing monitoring and adjustments to ensure the investment portfolio is aligned with the client's financial objectives. This personalised approach to investment management can result in improved investment outcomes and higher levels of customer satisfaction, making it an attractive option for individuals seeking tailored investment advice.
The level of personalisation that digital advice technology can create a sense of trust between the advisor and the client, as the client feels that their unique needs and goals are being considered. By providing a more personalised and convenient client experience, digital advice technology can help advisers build stronger relationships with their clients, leading to increased loyalty and better overall client outcomes.
Digital financial advice technology provides a seamless client experience by offering a fast, accessible, and cost-effective way for customers to access financial advice. Unlike traditional financial advisers, who may require in-person meetings and charge high fees, digital financial advice technology can be accessed from anywhere at any time, often at a lower cost. By providing a seamless and accessible client experience, digital financial advice technology can help promote financial literacy and empower customers to make better financial decisions, leading to improved financial outcomes.
Additionally, when utilising digital financial advice technology, adviser intervention can be facilitated for more complex advice needs, ensuring that the level of advice matches the needs of the client.
Open Money’s 2021 ‘The Advice Gap Report’, which focused on British adults, estimated that:
The ‘affordable advice gap’, where individuals would be willing to pay for advice if it was cheaper, was six million individuals (or approximately 12% of the UK adult population).
This reinforces the need to deliver more accessible financial advice to consumers.
Unlike traditional financial advice, which can be expensive due to the high cost of employing human advisers, automated financial advice can help close the advice gap by reducing the delivery costs associated with traditional financial advice. By leveraging automation and artificial intelligence, digital financial advice can provide financial advice at a lower cost than traditional advisory services due to reduced human input. This makes it possible for a broader range of individuals to access financial advice, thus closing the advice gap and helping more people achieve their financial objectives.
Digital financial advice technology can provide a more data-driven approach to investment decision-making by leveraging machine learning algorithms to analyse large amounts of financial data in real time. These algorithms can analyse vast amounts of data from multiple sources, including financial markets, economic indicators, and company financial statements, to provide investment recommendations based on a data-driven approach. Overall, the use of machine learning algorithms and real-time data analysis can provide clients with a more objective and informed approach to investment decision-making.
By leveraging innovative financial advice technology, financial institutions can offer tailored advice to clients in a way that is convenient and effective according to the complexity of their advice needs.
For example, for younger clients who are still building their wealth, automated advice can provide low-cost support on investment options that will help them get started with investing and begin to build their portfolios. However, if clients’ needs become more complex (at any stage), it might be appropriate to hand the client over to a more hybrid or adviser-led process. By tailoring the level of advice to the complexity of the client’s advice needs, results in efficient and effective advice that meets the individual's needs.
Opposed to traditional financial advice, which fully relies upon the adviser in delivering the financial advice, hybrid financial advice sits between digital and traditional advice to enable your clients to move seamlessly between these options according to their specific needs and preferences.
Whilst a fully digital advice route may be appropriate for certain clients with simplistic advice needs without progressing to a more advanced level of support, the process is dynamic, as clients require different levels of support available when their needs change.
Leveraging innovative financial advice technology can enable you to create a hybrid financial advice model that offers clients the convenience and efficiency of digital advice, along with the personalised support of a human adviser. As a result, this will enable you to better meet your client’s needs, leading to better investment outcomes.
As you can see, digital financial advice technology can improve client experiences in numerous ways, including providing personalised client investment recommendations, providing a seamless and accessible client experience and making it possible for a broader range of individuals to access financial advice.