Three prongs to ‘golden age’ for financial planning

3 February 2022

Three elements are driving financial planning towards a golden age for the market, according to Ben Goss, CEO Dynamic Planner.

They are a mixture of demand, regulation and technology, which Goss said, will provide the backdrop against which financial advice and planning “is made more accessible than ever before.”

Speaking at Dynamic Planner’s 10th Annual Conference, Goss said: “More than four million people took financial advice in 2020, growing rapidly year-on-year as people considered their priorities as well as their portfolios during the pandemic.

“The Regulator and the Treasury both want to see more people accessing the financial advice they need to make long term investment decisions, and combined with the huge adoption of Internet and video communication over the last two years, advice firms with the right systems now have an unprecedented opportunity. They can now open up capacity to the benefit of their clients, the benefit of their business and, in removing much of the manual work associated with financial planning, make their working lives more fulfilling.”

However, he added, challenges remain: regulation continues to evolve, this year with Consumer Duty; the fragmented systems and lack of integration, which can cause wasted energy and increased risk of error; and the means for advice firms to demonstrate their value when they are not in the room with the client.

Announcing new developments for Dynamic Planner, “new innovations to deliver on our one system vision”, Goss continued “Three years ago, Dynamic Planner embarked on a multi-million-pound upgrade to deliver the one financial planning system firms need in a hybrid world. We have since launched a range of new developments from sustainability profiling to risk-based cashflow planning.”

The new innovations announced included:

▪ ClientAccess: EnhancingDynamicPlanner’smarket-leadingclientprofilingsolutionisthe capability for firms to ask clients to complete the financial planning KYC process remotely on a secure, white labelled web app. Client Access is intuitive and engaging for the client and maximises efficiencies for the firm by feeding data back into Dynamic Planner to support the profiling, cash flow and review processes. It can be used in conjunction with an existing client portal.

▪ OpenAPI: DynamicPlannerhaslaunchedanopenAPIprogrammeenhancingitsexisting API capability to make it even easier for third party firms to integrate. Open API tackles the challenges around data fragmentation and further streamlines the process of obtaining and reporting accurate valuations for advice firms. The first integration to the Open API will be with Time4Advice’s Curo CRM.

▪ Target Market Product and Platform Research: Building upon Dynamic Planner’s outstanding investment research capability, new functionality enables advice firms to objectively research products, platforms and providers from across the whole of market, and map those to target markets in line with PROD requirements, streamlining the advice process all within one financial planning system.

Professional Paraplanner