Helping advisers prepare their businesses for the future and catching up on our analysis from last week
This week was a great week for industry discussions on innovation.
The Personal Finance Society held their Fintech Festival over two days. I had the privilege of joining some great industry speakers talking about how advice firms can get the best out of technology and prepare for the future. Both sessions can be found online at the links below and qualify for CPD.
PFS FinTech Festival Day One featuring Iress, CashCalc and FE Fund Info
PFS Fintech Festival Day two featuring Intelliflo, Ian McKenna and Panel discussion
On Thursday, the Protection Review ran an InsurTech special as part of their ProtectX talks where I had the privilege of joining six great industry speakers exploring how we can help advisers give more advice to more customers and also how insurers can improve their offerings.
In my seven-minute presentation I covered:
- How we can improve Income Protection products using Open Banking.
- How to help advisers and consumers choose the best value products rather than the cheapest.
- How insurers and reinsurers can understand which benefits advisers see as most important for clients of different ages, genders and other demographics.
- How insurers can get a better understanding of the technology wealth and mortgage advisers use to run their businesses, to make it easier for such firms to give protection advice.
- How changing fact find processes are helping identify more protection opportunities for advisers.
- A new service to help call centre advisers have all the detailed data they need when selling protection at their fingertips and accessible in seconds.
You can find the full event here. My presentation starts at around 31 minutes but I would urge you to watch all the presentations, they are well worth the time. Maybe taking a few hours over the weekend with a bottle of wine or whatever else is your libation of choice would be time well spent, again the event qualifies for 90 minutes unstructured Insurance Distribution Directive CPD.
On the subject of events I’d like to call out a really important one that should be of interest to all protection, mortgage and investment advisers. Our next Investment Forum takes place on 21 September at 2pm where the discussion will focus on Cyber Security & Secure Communications and whether firms have changed their methods of data security since the start of the pandemic.
We are delighted to have Tony Challands, Group Head of IT at Benchmark Capital and SJP’s Group Head of Cyber Security, Matt Smith as panellists for this session.
Cyber security is possibly the biggest threat to advisers and their businesses that exists today. You can register for a free ticket to attend the online meeting by visiting this link. While this event is taking place under the auspices of Investment Forum all advisers are very welcome. I think there will be a huge amount valuable learning for everyone who joins regardless of your specialism.
It was a really busy week for our Adviser Software site. Now the holidays are over we are returning to producing a study to help advisers understand technology that can help them run their businesses every day.
Adam Flowers began with a look at Videosign’s smart system solution, providing online video meetings, digital signatures and identity checks/validation in one proposition. On Tuesday we turned our attention to Filehaven’s secure communication system. Wednesday’s insight focused on Quotehaven’s insurance portal and on Thursday we examined Fintegrate’s wealth management system. We also have a more detailed analysis of this proposition on the site . We finished the week by investigating Genovo’s report generation software.
Over on Benefits Guru, on Tuesday Kat Mitchell’s insight was the first instalment of a two-part deep dive on what services and functionality is included in mobile member apps. The second instalment followed on Thursday.
Turning to Protection Guru, Rob Harvey kicked off the week with a look at Who provides free life cover during application underwriting. Our second insight on Monday was an announcement of the submission deadlines for entries from advisers/advice firms being extended for our Protection Guru Awards. The new deadline is Sunday 19th September. We have already had some exceptional entries but if you haven’t answered already I would really urge you to do so. There are some great categories and we are really looking to highlight the best in the protection industry. On Tuesday, Rob investigated the Difference between life and CI, and life or CI. Adam Higgs was in the writer’s chair on Wednesday asking What are the benefits of menu plans?
This is Gynaecological Cancer Awareness month so the subject of Thursday’s insight was How ovarian cancer is covered in critical illness plans. In our second insight of the day, we updated LV=’s showcase page, looking at their key USPs. We concluded the week with a collation of insights related to Increasing protection insurance without underwriting.
Have a great weekend everyone.
