Financial planners could benefit from advisory technology being implemented by industry superannuation funds as a way of managing opt-in requirements and lowering the costs of advice, according to a technology specialist.
“The industry funds have been quite revolutionary in their approach because they have generally gone into advice provision with a clean slate,” Provisio Technologies director Cameron O’Sullivan said.
“They are doing innovative things with advisory technology that have the potential to be a big benefit for financial planners.”
This technology could help advisers manage the new opt-in requirements better, O’Sullivan said.
“Planners are going to be under more pressure to demonstrate value and improve communications with clients,” he said.
“Under opt-in rules, there is a real chance that one year of poor performances will see you lose clients, so it is more important than ever that they understand your overall financial strategy and find it easy to opt in every year.”
O’Sullivan said to thrive in a changing advice world, planners will need to keep on top of costs and they could immediately reduce overheads by being more efficient in producing statements of advice (SOA).
“Industry funds are producing quality, comprehensive SOAs in 15 minutes and there is no reason why planners cannot be doing the same for clients with simple needs,” he said.
“Too many planners are unnecessarily spending hours on SOAs and therefore keeping the cost of advice per client unnecessarily high.
“At those kinds of costs the industry super funds would never have journeyed into advice. Their sheer number of members has forced them to consider genuine innovation and by automating many of these processes they have been able to slash the cost of advice per client.
“Any planner can therefore provide the same quality advice that they do now, while cutting out much of the fat in formalising it.”
