TURNING YOUR CLIENT PORTAL INTO YOUR CLIENT'S FINANCIAL APP (Part 6/8)
Step one is providing a convenient way for your clients to view all the assets you manage on their behalf. Their investments, savings, pensions and insurances in one place under your brand, updated regularly. However, this is not going to fundamentally make your clients’ lives any easier. Currently, you’ve just given them another login to remember, one they’re unlikely to access regularly.
The next step is to get them logging in regularly and relying on the data in the portal. Firstly, you’re going to stop delivering them paper-based reports. Nobody wants these and you are probably emailing most clients their reports as pdf’s already. Two things are wrong with this:
- You’re giving the clients the problem of filing the report.
- Sending important financial data over email is not secure.
Your portal solves these problems for you. Firstly, you should never send financial information over email. Your portal provides secure messaging with push notifications so your clients receive either an email or a notification on their mobile (or both) telling them they have a new message with instructions how to view it. It’s slightly less convenient than email, the first couple of times they use it but the benefit is that it’s fully secure and provides you and them a full audit trail of the correspondence.
More importantly, all the associated documentation, reporting, contract notes, policy documents etc are all securely stored and filed for them automatically. They know where to find the reports when they need them. Your portal is now starting to make their lives easier and they are feeling more reassured as you’ve taken their important financial information out of email.
You’re also on the way to compliance with the GDPR, the main principle of which is incompatible with email i.e. that you are taking necessary steps to protect your client’s personal data. Secure messaging and document sharing is a key step in compliance with GDPR. It demonstrates you are taking suitable steps to protect client personal data. In a further article, we will discuss the GDPR further and how privacy controls are needed to provide your clients with control over the personal data and how it’s used. A client portal is your best way of complying with the GDPR, another compliance headache dealt with.
Having taken the steps above you’ve now got your own branded client portal with clean and reliable data and given your clients with a reason to log-in regularly to view their reports and other financial documents. Your well on the way to seeing the first key benefit of a client portal – the paperless office. You should no longer be sending anything to your clients through the post or via email.
The next step is getting clients to own the app and for this you need them to put in their own data. To get clients to put in their own data, you need to give them a big pay-back for inputting small amounts of data.
For most of your clients, their biggest single asset is their home. What would make you want to put your property into your financial app. It’s got to be easy and worthwhile. Easy would be type in the house number and postcode and let the system do the rest. Look up the address, contact land registry to find our when you bought the property and how much you paid. Then re-value the property in line with other sales in your area.
Even more useful would be to keep track of any associated paperwork such as the mortgage, home insurance, plumbing cover, property deeds etc.
Clients love this feature, it’s our number one way of getting clients to add in their own stuff and once they start adding their own property, they’ll be on their way to exploring the other great things your portal is going to do for them.
In my next article, we’ll dig a little deeper in to the portal and how it changes the way you will fact-find in the future.
Author: Mik Cons, CEO @ moneyinfo
About moneyinfo limited.
At moneyinfo we work with adviser firms in wealth management and workplace to develop a complete digital client relationship. We provide clients secure access to their entire financial life including their investments, pensions, savings, property, insurances, banking, credit cards and mortgages with full control over the privacy of their personal data.
To find out more book a 1-2-1 meeting, or call us on 03303 600 300. We’d love to hear from you.
Read the full 8 part series using the links below:
- A NEW MODEL ADVISER FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (Part 1/8)
- UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR BACK OFFICE 1 (Part 2/8)
- UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR BACK OFFICE 2 (Part 3/8)
- DELIVERING THE IDEAL ADVISER TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION (Part 4/8)
- THINK ABOUT THE PROBLEM FROM YOUR CLIENTS' PERSPECTIVE (Part 5/8)
- TURNING YOUR CLIENT PORTAL INTO YOUR CLIENT'S FINANCIAL APP (Part 6/8)
- TURNING YOUR CLIENT PORTAL INTO YOUR CLIENT'S FINANCIAL APP (Part 7/8)
- 21ST CENTURY NEW MODEL ADVISER (Part 8/8)