Opinion  

Technology is the key to working faster and smarter

Ben Goss

Ben Goss

This is particularly valuable for clients in drawdown, where tracking against plan to ensure sustainable withdrawal rates and portfolio risk level is central to ensuring a good outcome.

3. Embrace end-to-end. There is no longer any need for advice companies to use multiple heritage systems that do not communicate with each other. Whether through application programming interfaces or through new single-system approaches, there is plenty of technology out there that can help companies work in a more joined-up way. 

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As the Financial Conduct Authority has identified, one significant concern with multi-system models is miscalibration risk – the potential for the different systems and tools used in designing and building a client’s portfolio to define risk levels differently, meaning the client’s profile is not accurately reflected. 

Minimising this risk is often a laborious process requiring extensive manual checks – just one productivity saving that comes from an end-to-end approach. 

While to a traditional cyclist technology is arguably cheating on a hill climb, for advice companies it is the key to working faster, smarter and delivering value to more clients more easily. I hope you will find a resolution in the three above that will chime with your goals this year. 

As for me, I reaped the rewards of a busy 2021 with some much-needed downtime after Christmas, during which I let my exercise routine slide and ate far too many mince pies. As a result, I will be back on my bike in 2022 – and I ruefully concede that this is one area where I might need to stick to the analogue approach. 

Ben Goss is chief executive of Dynamic Planner