Advisers hamstrung by tech options

Netwealth managing director Matt Heine told ifa that data in the platform provider’s recently released AdviceTech Report revealed the challenges advisers had with properly optimising industry technology in their practice.

“The majority of firms still struggle with how to remove cost and complexity from their advice tech stack,” Mr Heine said.   

“The reasons for this are numerous, but our research told us that 50 per cent of advice firms say they ‘don’t have the time to understand and explore their options’, whilst 27.3 per cent told us there are ‘too many choices, they don’t know where to start’ and a further one in eight indicated they ‘don't have enough confidence to make technology decisions.’”

Mr Heine said the report found most advice firms relied on at least 13 different technologies to run their business, and that this number was increasing over time, underlining the importance of practices selecting a tech provider that could easily integrate with other systems.

“There is no doubt this is an important area of focus for the industry,” he said.

“We are seeing practices who use advice tech effectively look for and select technologies that integrate together more seamlessly, are API first and consider the role of the customer.”

Mr Heine said Netwealth had recently launched an adviser webinar series featuring product demonstrations from a number of different technology providers including Hootsuite, XY Adviser, Adviser Ratings and Xeppo.

“We created a 10-day program where 15 exciting advice tech providers will demonstrate their technology in a fast and digestible [30-minute] webinar session,” he said. 

“This environment has been designed to help advisers effortlessly learn the benefits and features of the different advice tech solutions.”