Improving the client journey and outcomes with human-assisted (hybrid) advice.

Any successful business needs to have the customer journey and experience as its core. Optimising the client journey from initial contact through to purchase and after sales, is more likely to result in repeat business and the client feeling happy to recommend the business to others.

This can be magnified tenfold within financial advice, where a financial advice firm is helping the client build their wealth and achieve their long-term goals – in nearly all cases the number one goal being to save for a comfortable retirement.

Once a client has decided they want to take steps to increase their wealth and need guidance and / or advice, their first contact with an advice firm and ensuing customer journey flow will go a long way to determining whether they continue with their custom.

For financial advice firms that want to grow their businesses and scale up their processes to capture the mass affluent market, currently sitting in the advice gap, the hybrid advice model handholds the client through the process, delivering the guidance and advice which is right for them at exactly the right time.

Having a digitally guided platform, on your website for example, can play a powerful role in attracting and acquiring new clients to your firm. Online budget and retirement calculators can be used as a valuable first touchpoint with your service and brand. They provide the client with an overview of their current financial situation and how to improve upon it, such as how to reach their desired annual retirement income. This helps filter out clients who do not match the business’s criteria and carries the warm leads into the business flow.  

The client then can be taken through an automated triage process with the option of speaking to a human adviser if preferred. When the client’s needs are fully understood, they can be directed through the automated advice process or referred to a human adviser if their needs are more complex.

At all stages of the journey, the focus is firmly on the individual client’s requirements, leading them through the flow based on their unique requirements. Automation, guided by machine-learning and fine-tuned by our development experience, makes the journey easy and convenient for the client and takes the heavy lifting out of the process for the adviser, which gives them more time back to focus on the client relationship.  

It's a carefully structured process that enables the firm to deliver exactly what the client needs at the right time, which adds value cost effectively.

 Delivering a smooth business journey

As well as making the client journey much smoother and more efficient, digital and automation capabilities can deliver the service at a lower cost and higher volume than traditional advice, while keeping the adviser at the centre of the process.

The hybrid advice model (or human-assisted model as we prefer to call it) can be tailored to align 100% with a firm’s advice policies and business model. For example, it can take the client through a largely automated process of triage, online completion of forms and delivery of recommendations via an online or face-to-face meeting. Or it could introduce adviser contact earlier in the process.

What is key, is the ability of hybrid advice technology to enable firms to scale up their business while reducing the workload and administrative burden on advisers, paraplanners and administrators – enabling them to be more productive and enjoy their working day more. It also saves time and money for the firm, making it more profitable. We are seeing more and more of our clients experience this win-win result early on in their human-assisted technology adoption.

One of these clients is a top-tier bank that has been able to achieve significant benefits to their advice business and client experience by implementing our hybrid advice technology.

This includes reducing three legacy tools previously used in the retirement and pensions process to just one, a significant reduction in time taken to deliver advised cases, and suitability and review letters reduced to just three hours. This has resulted in a much swifter, smoother process for both client and adviser, with a 100% compliance trail.

We achieved similar efficiencies with another large wealth management client where we reduced the total at-retirement process down from 35 to 11 hours, a saving of 24 hours per case and achieved a 225% projected increase in case completions and revenues per adviser. We were also able to reduce suitability report writing down from 6-7 hours to just 40 minutes.

Delivering a smooth, human-assisted journey that gives clients what they want, when and how they want it, can significantly increase retention levels. Likewise, by delivering a hybrid-enabled business operation, advice firms can grow their businesses profitably, provide excellent client service and narrow the advice gap.

To learn more about human-assisted advice technology can improve your advice firm client and business journeys please email simon.binney@wealthwizards.com

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