Sam Seaton sees a world in which financial planners are able to help hundreds of people by using technology to deliver financial planning to the masses. She also sees a path to this nirvana.

We’re all familiar with the vision that technology will turbo charge financial planning businesses to allow them to deal with three or even ten times as many customers. The difference is that Sam can see a path from here to there.

Sam Seaton, CEO of Moneyhub believes that progressive financial planning businesses will focus on the areas where they can make a real difference. “Advice is based on experience, qualifications and a very human ability to have a conversation with an individual. Combined that adds a huge amount of value.”

Sam believes the future of financial planning is to help people to figure out what they want to achieve and doing that by setting up a plan that can be easily tracked. The simplicity of this statement belies its importance.

In Sam’s vision for the future, rather than having a quarterly review, clients would receive “always on” reviews. The initial set up would be done by a financial planner. Past that, instead of meeting for a quarterly or annual review, the client’s financial plan would be reviewed automatically and continuously with adjustments alerted as and when required in accordance with agreed tolerance.  In addition, unique functionality such as smart-nudges, ensure major life events or radical changes to the portfolio would trigger the customer and the financial planner to get in touch.

“The FCA has introduced the annual review to force people to do a review. But with automation and technology the review is on-going.”

The financial planner would be supported by being able to automate what they have put in place for the customer. The adviser and client would be alerted if the client’s portfolio goes outside of certain set parameters. And of course, the plan would take a more holistic view of the client’s wealth – taking into account property and cash savings. Our industry tends to ignore the full breadth of client assets because it has been difficult to collect the data let alone monitor it live.

“This is great for the financial planner. When the customer gets in touch – that is when they really need help. It’s not when a computer can help. It’s when they need a human being.”

“Financial planners working with 100 customers now will be able to work with three times or even ten times that number in this new model of operation the possibilities to scale are truly ground breaking.”

Sam is aware this won’t be for everyone. Some firms and financial planners will want to continue to operate as they are. But for what Sam dubs “progressive firms” the path to reaching more people with financial planning is clear.

Sam thinks that the tech will be provided either directly, through the platform, back office providers or via vertically integrated businesses. She is confident there will be plenty of options to do this in the future.

But she adds that financial planners will need to adapt in order to achieve this degree of change. “Financial planners may need to give up some of their variety when it comes to some of their processes to achieve this. They may need to increase the evaluation criteria of providers to encompass their ability to support integration, automation and customer facing solutions, for example.”

Our reliance on technology keeps rising. The pace of change can be a challenge for smaller financial planning businesses or those that resist change. But Sam warns that there will be price pressure: “none of us are immune.” She thinks that once “super slick advice” is available for the mass market it will provide a benchmark and that will push others to adapt and change.  That is why scale is important for the future to safe side profit margins.

With the rise of algorithmic advice and better modelling to nudge people to make good decisions the day to day ups and downs will be dealt with by a computer. But when issues such as divorce or redundancy come up, when people genuinely need advice and perhaps more importantly financial assurance – they will be happy to pay for this key aspect of a service proposition and will always want to be able to speak to a human.

“I think that most advisers like to solve problems for people. We’ll get to a point when advisers get to do the things they really like doing and where they add the most value for people – giving holistic financial advice at a time when it is really needed.”

The NextWealth Directory rates and reviews the technology that supports financial planning businesses. The more the directory is used the more useful it will be to the community. You can sign up for free and leave a review either under your name or anonymously on our website.