Speaking to ifa’s sister publication Adviser Innovation, Bravura director of product development and strategy, Darren Stevens, said the new structure will see clients filter in and out of advice, using more technology along the way.
Mr Stevens argued that the structure fits an emerging business model known as B2B2C – business to business to consumer. This can be looked at as a “triangle” between software and technology providers, advisers and clients.
“So you’ve got the provider, the consumer and the adviser in this triangle that need to interact with each other to suit the customer’s needs,” he said.
According to Mr Stevens, technology is central to this dynamic. Consumers will often go straight to technology — avoiding the adviser — but at other times, they will actively seek out an adviser.
“People will want to see their whole wealth platform and they’re going to want to have advisers help them when they need to be helped,” he said.
Mr Stevens noted this also means that software providers will need to be flexible enough to allow advisers to come in and out of people’s life stages.
Moreover, advisers will need to partner with the right providers in order to keep clients within their ecosystem. This is where integrating a robo-advice and guided advice function is useful, he said.
“It takes away a lot of the manual pain points and advisers can focus on what they truly do properly which is the face-to-face interaction,” Mr Stevens said.
