A clear view of progress for future success
We previously shared with you how we had improved our report building functionality by adding better branding options and turning off report download email alerts. In that update we promised news of significant change to the process of creating consolidated reports.
Client review packs are core to financial planning but can be time-consuming to produce. The challenge to Morningstar Wealth from the paraplanners we’ve been working with was to streamline the process and so save them time and effort.
One paraplanner told us that being able to produce bespoke reports with the flexibility to apply linkage or family groupings would be beneficial as this is becoming increasingly important. This might be a consolidated report from a traditional family group or a consolidation of several individual accounts and multiple products.
Family and other groupings are an increasing feature in financial planning. This is evident in feedback from our paraplanners that they regularly need to collate investor reports for couples, families, trusts and corporate accounts.
Another told us, if they had a magic wand, they would want to be able to generate a single, consolidated report for a client with multiple products, covering portfolio movements, income movements, cash and fees, instead of having to run separate reports for each and then manually consolidate them.
Paraplanners and advisers can now easily produce a clear, bespoke views with ability apply linkage to multiple accounts or family groupings of the last year covering portfolio movements, income movements, cash and fees. The report can be branded with your advice firm’s logo and palette.
Being able to do so as part of consolidated reporting removes administrative inefficiencies, so that this too is cost effective for the advice firm and takes only a few minutes.
Clarity for clients
Consumer Duty has undoubtedly increased the administrative pressure on advice firms. There is an obligation to document all stages of the advice process and investing journey, how your advise is benefitting clients, helping them towards good outcomes, and generally providing value in exchange for their fees.
Simplifying the client review process helps paraplanners and advisers to meet the rules more efficiently. This in turn can help to free up more time for clients, scale the business or open up advice to those only just setting out on their financial pathway or who currently have less available to invest.
Sitting down with clients, showing them how far they’ve come and how they’re progressing toward their goals is one of the cornerstones of good financial planning. It lets clients see what they’re working for and how advice is helping with that. It can be incredibly motivating but only if the client can really engage with the information. A clear, accessible summary is key to that.
Progressing along the road map
Over the last couple of years we’ve spent countless hours with paraplanners to hear about their experiences, what works and (more importantly) what doesn’t. Where are the pain points and friction? Without a doubt one of the biggest issues is the time taken to generate packs for regular adviser-client reviews.
Responding to this feedback forms part of our ongoing continuous development work with numerous incremental changes delivered in recent months across our proposition, and many more either under way or planned.
In our experience this approach allows us to resolve specific issues to make life easier for the advice professionals we work closely with. They are involved at all stages of discovery, development and delivery so we know we’re getting it right.
Because each release is bitesized we can be confident it’s working as it should before moving onto the next, layering these micro-improvements to build bigger ones. Owning our own technology means we’re in control of our development and delivery schedules.
We’re currently rolling out consolidated reporting to our paraplanner and adviser partners and everyone will have access by the end of the year.