Adviser ratings of platforms dropped year-on-year compared to rising scores for other types of advice tech.
The NextWealth Adviser Tech Stack: Adviser Reviews report explored the ways that advisers were using their tech and how that was changing.
It found nearly 75 per cent of advisers had made a change to their tech stack in the past year.
Based on user reviews the report revealed back-office system scores jumped 0.40 points on a five point scale.
Fundment, Quilter, Transact and True Potential were each rated ‘excellent’ by financial advice professionals, achieving an overall score of four or higher on a five point scale.
Fundment was a new entrant last year and this year ranked second-only to True Potential.
Transact was the only platform to improve its scores year-on-year, achieving higher scores across all four criteria.
Intelliflo office remained the market leader for back-office systems, capturing 41 per cent market share.
Based on user reviews it ranked last but according to the report its scores improved in all four criterias it measured.
Intelliflo continues to struggle on support provided but achieved its highest score for ‘integrations with other tech’.
Reviews also revealed Iress Xplan’s market share jumped to 20 per cent and it received strong reviews from its users while Xplan and Enable tied for the top spot based on user reviews.
Tech changes
The report also found a quarter of advisers made a change relating to data analytics with data transposition and integrations continuing to be a “major challenge” for advisers.
The consumer duty had also increased the focus on the need for good data, according to the report.
One adviser said: “Data entry is the predominant tech issue for us and the capability of straight through processing and the ability to have two-way data feeds into the back-office. So as a simple example, the way we capture what business we've won or lost in any given period, the support team has to manually go into the back office and add X client contribution into their Isa.
“If it's on some specific platforms, they’ve then got to go and repeat that same exercise. And the big platform providers have been very reticent to develop that level of integration with back offices.”
It also found a third of advice professionals were working in a firm that planned to add a new technology partner in the next year, compared to 8 per cent last year.
This comes as only a quarter of respondents said they were satisfied with their current tech stack.
During phone interviews conducted by NextWealth, it revealed two key themes for future tech adoption included servicing clients with smaller portfolio values and to improve business efficiency and profitability.
In terms of technology decision making, chief executives and owners of small firms made tech decisions while in larger firms this was left to a committee such as a board or executive.
