Virtual advice disruption: is your business ready?

The new digital era charging through our industry brings with it a collision of sales, marketing, social interaction, technology and human behaviour that is truly fascinating.  This collision can also be dangerous for businesses that are unprepared, particularly service businesses.

It’s no secret that we are changing the way we use technology and why we use technology – particularly when it comes to engaging with our service providers. One need only to look at this advertisement for eBay to realise that times are a changing.

It’s not just the new wave of consumers that are recoil from traditional engagement tactics, it’s the quickly becoming the majority of consumers. These consumers shun an elongated process that has multiple friction points – they desire genuine engagement rather than cold sales techniques, look for third-party reassurance through product reviews of previous buyers, value visual aids and relate to a language that conversational rather than intricate and detailed.

If we want to retain these consumers (as well as pick up the up-and-coming ones) we need to be responding positively to this shake up and, to do this, we need to do two things.

• Provide appealing solutions for consumers that are relatable, meaningful, easily understood and communicated.

• Increase businesses efficiency in regards to process, communication and engaging with clients in the ways they feel most comfortable. Every client has different needs, so having a variety of different touch points on offer is where successful businesses will really gain a unique edge.

The need and expectation is clear. We need to be providing service options to clients that reflect our client’s current day to day operations. And it’s clear that everyday life is rapidly becoming digital.

So what are the solutions?

Those who have up-to-date tools and processes are not only more productive, but also more likely to succeed during the era of digital transformation. The good news is that technology providers are well onto the mission already, understanding that there is a great need from the consumer – and much of the industry has already began to catch on.

Even more importantly, these technology providers understand that they can’t all provide everything in one solution. Providers are moving toward a “collaborative co-opetition” approach where they link arms to give advisers the choice to tailor their own service offering, via open API – i.e. software integration.

SuiteBox and Midwinter is a perfect example of this being the case. The two companies have integrated their advice solutions in order to provide advisers with the ability to engage their clients via video, in a seamless compliant process – with no double entry or multiple friction points. Each Virtual Advice meeting can be scheduled, undertaken and saved to the adviser’s CRMs (for compliance purposes) in the one process. The ability to screen share, sign electronic documents and take clients through their total portfolio can all be done easily with both software applications speaking to each other during the entire process and all parts of the meeting saved directly to the client’s file notes for reference at any later point.

We’ll be doing a live demo of this during the AFA National Adviser Conference next week and would love you to check it out. Whether you use either cloud applications or not, it will be a great opportunity for advisers to see in real time a genuine example of what the future of advice is going to look like.

Even more importantly, we will be showcasing how technology is working hard to ensure that advisers will not only be able to meet their clients’ engagement requirements, but when it all boils down to it – be able to generate, provide and deliver advice easier, at lower cost, in less time and at scale.

By Andy Marshall & Naomi Christopher

———-

The Midwinter / SuiteBox virtual advice live demo can be seen on Thursday 6^th October at 12.45pm at the Midwinter Stand – Exhibition centre – AFA National Adviser Conference 2016

The post What does the future of advice look like? The onset of virtual advice appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Julian Plummer

As technology continues to change the way we consume in all industries, it is evident that the financial services sector is no exception – the way in which financial advice is delivered will be a part of this revolution.

With this in mind, Midwinter Financial Services has today announced that it will integrate with SuiteBox (who unveiled their Virtual Advice Offering last week) in order to provide advisers using Midwinter’s software with an online meeting channel.

With both companies heavily involved in the Australian Fintech landscape, the mutual desire to be at the forefront of innovation within financial services technology motivated the two firms to work together to create a seamless adviser and client experience.

Midwinter has aimed to position itself as the software provider for the modern financial adviser, allowing much of its features and enhancements to be directed by the drive for innovation within the financial advice industry. The decision to integrate with SuiteBox is Midwinter’s next step in continuing to push the envelope when it comes to financial planning technology, providing its users with innovative features that will ultimately make it more efficient to deliver advice for the planner and easier to seek advice for the client.

The integration will offer unparalleled efficiency for advisers, progressively allowing advisers:

• to initiate a SuiteBox meeting from within AdviceOS,
• retrieve and save documents directly to and from the AdviceOS CRM, and
• save the video link to the meeting against the client file.

The ‘go live’ of the first phase is expected in early December.

Speaking of the decision to launch a Virtual Advice offering for Midwinter users using SuiteBox, Managing Director of Midwinter – Julian Plummer said ‘We couldn’t be more excited to be first to market to offer this unique capability within the Australian planning software space. Advisers have inquired about the ability to carry out remote meetings for some time now, and its pleasing to be able to provide our users with the technology to do so via SuiteBox.’

‘In particular, the ability to carry out virtual advice has been eagerly anticipated by financial planners in regional areas, who often find it difficult to have regular face-to-face meetings with their clients. Using SuiteBox, an adviser can meet with a client located anywhere in the world. They can share and review documents, sign online and record the meeting using any web-enabled device. Now, via the Midwinter/SuiteBox integration, remote meetings for our users will not only as simple as a click of a few buttons, but they will also be recorded and saved within their AdviceOS CRM as the pure cloud technology within AdviceOS allows this.”

SuiteBox Country Head, Ian Dunbar, said “Virtual Advice is a game changer for financial advisers, offering the opportunity for them to expand their geographic reach, service clients more efficiency, grow their businesses and deliver advice to more Australians. SuiteBox is at the forefront of these developments, and we are proud to be working with Midwinter, a leader in Advice Innovation in Australia to deliver such a seamless and marketing leading solution.”

Managing Director, Julian Plummer added “The reason that the integration is so frictionless is due to Midwinter’s published open API which allows seamless integration with other approved software providers, allowing advisers to plug in various applications into AdviceOS with ease. Midwinter is pleased to have been able to offer this feature to our users for quite some time now, and to be growing the number of our integration partners.”

The post Midwinter and SuiteBox integrate appeared first on AdviserVoice.