We recently published our Advice Tech Stack report September 2021 update. It includes a slew of reviews of advice tech providers based on surveys of over 900 financial advice professionals.

The two things I thought were most interesting:

1. Covid honeymoon is over

As I commented in this piece for Money Marketing, the ratings and reviews that financial advice professionals give to their tech partners came crashing back down in our latest survey. A year ago, scores were up across the board. They came tumbling back down with every single score for every type of tech (except one) dropping – most by 0.20 (on a five point scale) in our most recent survey.

We think the high scores a year ago were part of a ‘Covid effect’ – making respondents kinder in their assessment of tech providers, more tolerant of shortcomings and also more appreciative of the support to keep the lights on during the pandemic.

Roll forward 18 months since the pandemic took hold, advisers are more critical of their technology. Saying you answered calls or kept your website open through the pandemic won’t cut it anymore.

2. Financial advisers are open to trying new tech

Nearly three quarters (73%) of financial advice professionals say they are open to adopting new tech. While most are satisfied with their current tech stack, they continue to have an eye to new tech that could help improve business efficiency and client experience. Around a sixth (17%) are actively planning to add new tech in the next 12 months.

This is a big change in the 18 months. Pre-covid, only 46% of financial advice professionals said they are keeping an eye out for new tech. The pandemic forced everyone to try new tech and the result is that we are more open-minded about trying something new. Some of the new tech adopted in the pandemic worked so well we now can’t live without it. Advisers are no different – an unprecedented number are actively scanning the market to find new tech solutions to power their businesses.

A few other things that caught my eye:

• Use of client portals is way up
• Back office systems get the lowest scores again. intelliflo office is most used but Enable from Fusion got the top ranking.
• Prestood Truth came out as the top rated cash flow modelling tool but with a much smaller number of users than CashCalc.

Get in touch if you would like to find out more or to buy the report.

A reminder that financial advice professionals can join our research panel to get free access to much of our research. In return, we’ll ask for you to contribute to four surveys a year. You can sign up here.