Intelliflo targets advice M&A market with new data dashboards

The firm’s business intelligence dashboards aim to drive data and performance oversight for advice practices, allowing advisers to view income-related metrics, such as year-on-year performance, income by client and product, and ongoing revenue.

This information can be crucial when an advice firm is considering M&A activity to determine who would be a suitable partner.

It also allows advice businesses to track workflows to enhance efficiency and timely delivery, while monitoring business performance in real time. This will assist advisers in identifying where future revenue can be generated and where growth or consolidation opportunities lie, it said.

According to Stu Alsop, director of sales at intelliflo Australia, the dashboards’ launch is timely as strong M&A appetite continues to be seen in the broader wealth management industry.

“We know our customers are seeking a seamless overview of their business performance and our new income dashboards provide that at the touch of a button, which will be key for practices looking for growth or investment,” he commented.

Intelliflo previously encouraged advice practices to improve their processes and data management prior to seeking M&A opportunities.

If firms are using different technology stacks, for example, this can create difficulties during the integration process. From a prospective buyer’s point of view, an advice firm’s potential often relies on its data processes, which can be quite poor in many circumstances, it stated.

Moreover, the technology provider flagged further dashboard launches throughout this year in the intelliflo office suite. The business management system streamlines the advice process and enables advisers to focus more of their time on client relationships and overall practice growth.

Earlier this year, an intelliflo white paper identified seven trends that are set to characterise the advice profession over the next five years.

These are:

• Changing the perception of advice
• Adopting consumer-friendly payment models
• Technology as the foundation
• The next frontier – an adviser-led system
• Reaching more Australians through scale
• Building a whole-of-life pathway
• Engaging young people

Homing in on the fifth theme, the paper explained that scale remains critical to tackling the accessibility issue in advice, with just one in 10 Australians currently seeing an adviser.

“The financial advice sector is set to become a major target for M&A, with a flurry of activity already under way and more expected in the next five years,” it stated.

“Big money is flowing into Australia and looking for takeover targets, while practices with growth intentions are increasingly seeing opportunities to partner up with other businesses.”