Integrating technology while maintaining a personal touch remains a delicate balancing act for the advice profession.
The challenge is to leverage technological advancements as facilitators of efficiency, support and compliance, without compromising the personalised, one-to-one, nuanced advice that lies at the heart of trusted client relationships.
It’s a dance between embracing the future and honouring the profession’s foundational principles.
The profession is evolving. As with many business areas, it’s going through a real shift underpinned by ongoing technological transformation and rapid advances.
Technology integration is constantly reshaping training, delivery and client interactions, in ways previously unimaginable
This includes the use of digital tools to conduct one-to-one meetings, adopting sophisticated client relationship management platforms such as Salesforce, designing client apps or machine learning programs that provide rapid, consistent support for administrative tasks, or using virtual reality (VR) technology to help train advisers.
Technology integration is constantly reshaping training, delivery and client interactions, in ways previously unimaginable. However, it’s an evolution not a revolution for the advice process, with tech used to enhance operational efficiencies and service standards while the professional retains the best of the personal touch.
Such innovation is designed to underpin the advice process; embedding accuracy, supporting compliance and sustaining the all-important client-adviser relationship. The objective is clear: firms need to harness technology to augment and complement the irreplaceable value of human, personal, one-to-one expertise in advice.
It is about creating a safe space for learning
In the labyrinth of buzzwords and trends, a few standout technologies are genuinely transforming the way advisers can operate. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) aren’t just industry jargon, they’re the engines behind predictive models that make sense of vast data sets, supporting organisational needs with unprecedented accuracy.
Our learning and development team uses VR training to provide an authentic experience of dealing with complex scenarios, using Oculus Quest 2 headsets that may be familiar to many gamers.
The aim is to deliver blended learning in a realistic setting, whether face-to-face, online or virtual. It’s also very much in line with the trend to offer immersive, intuitive approaches for advisers to develop their skills and behaviours, including soft skills, working through such real-life situations as clients with hearing difficulties, in the midst of divorce or with signs of cognitive decline. It is about creating a safe space for learning.
The selection of technologies should be strategic
Our developments in this area since 2021 are now available as VR training in vulnerability and empathy in collaboration with the Chartered Insurance Institute, run from its offices in May and June.
Advisers are increasingly immersing themselves in the digital ecosystem, to understand the tools at their disposal and their potential to develop. The selection of technologies should be strategic, prioritising solutions for the enhancement of client outcomes as well as their own efficiency.
It is imperative for the profession to adopt innovations that promise not just to streamline processes but to enhance them, blending technological innovation with human insight and the inimitable personal relationships we build.
Andy Payne is head of SJP’s Financial Adviser Academy
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