Technology enabling heightened client engagement

Advisers are utilising technology to improve the client experience with increasing frequency, according to new research from Investment Trends.

Technology enabling heightened client engagement

Killian Plastow

Last Updated: 06 July 2018 Published: 06 July 2018

Investment Trends' 2018 Planner Technology Report found that advisers are using a number of digital channels to engage with their clients in addition to face to face meetings.

According to the report, 55 per cent of advisers use email newsletters to keep clients involved in their finances, and 35 per cent provide clients with online services to view their portfolios.

"However, the vast majority of planners (88 per cent) are keen to use a wider range of digital-based methods to interact, update and disseminate information to their clients," the report said.

Investment Trends research director Recep Peker said younger advisers are pushing the industry towards "an interactive digital client experience", adding that these advisers expect the use of interactive modelling and other technology to become normal parts of client meetings in the future.

"Technological advancement is rapidly increasing consumer expectations, a so-called environment of technology inflation. Platform and software providers therefore cannot afford to rest on their laurels and must be ever cognisant of the evolving expectations of planners and their clients," he said.

"From seamless mobile and tablet functionality, to paperless client authorities, providers have to future proof their functionality and tools from both a design and a delivery perspective."