An early look at Adviser Ratings’ 2025 Landscape Report revealed that efficiency and technology is top of mind for a lot of advice practices as they look to the future, with 43 per cent indicating plans to make changes in regard to their material process efficiencies, including workflow and tech stack changes, over the next 12 months.
New IT solutions was another high priority for practices (22 per cent), while one in 10 firms was also looking at changing platforms in the near future.
Speaking on the findings, Adviser Ratings founder Angus Woods suggested that technology and, specifically, platform providers will have an important role to play as advisers ramp up their efforts to engage with and secure the next generation of clients.
Not only will platforms be important in providing advisers with the tools to facilitate the incoming intergeneration wealth transfer, but they will also be important in appealing to a younger client base that is inherently more technologically savvy.
“Seventy per cent of advised clients are expected to transfer significant sums of inheritance early. That’s a huge boon for platforms. It’s a huge boon for advisers. It showcases that for some of these advisers, it’s an opportunity for them to get in front of the children, get in front of the siblings, do something,” Woods said on a webinar last week.
“It’s been probably something that is in every forum or in every event that I’ve been to is about, how do advisers start engaging the next generation who are not necessarily financially more literate, but they’re definitely technology literate.
“They’ve got their own way of understanding what investment is and are more purpose driven. So, that’s the challenge that a lot of licensees and advisers are going through, and I think that’s an opportunity for platforms to come in and fill that education space.”
With platforms leading the technology space for the advice profession, Woods said the question for platforms is, how can they support advisers to meet the needs of the next generation?
“That’s the role that advisers are looking for platforms, and the advisers are looking for software providers,” he said.
“A child that comes into a financial planner’s office and then is thrown in front of a clunky piece of technology and/or platform will leave fairly, fairly quickly, despite potentially the protestations of the adviser.
“So, something to be aware of as you look to invest in the future and who you’re partnering with in that respect.”
With how the advice industry has evolved over recent years, Woods suggested that there is a significant opportunity for proactive platforms to build tools that really cater to the needs of the profession.
“The old days of AFSL holding court in terms of what’s on an APL, you know, which platforms are used, is long gone. The industry is now agnostic,” he said.
