Dealer group Wealth Today and its 120 advisers are using technology to reduce the regulatory burden.
National financial advice dealer group Wealth Today’s decision to roll out Midwinter’s real-time risk software solution across its 120 advisers has saved it an estimated 30-40 hours a week of manual processing.
“Regulations are only becoming more onerous, forcing advice businesses to become leaner,” Wealth Today Managing Director Keith Cullen says. “This also means that systems need to adapt and work ‘out of the box’ to create true efficiencies.”
Wealth Today uses the Key Risk Indicator Solution (KRIS) through Midwinter’s AdviceOS planning software to ensure advisers are meeting key regulatory requirements such as opt-in renewal notices and annual fee disclosure statements. It also helps monitor potential risks such as products recommended from outside the APL, and RoA vs SoA ratios.
Cullen says that KRIS’s intuitive group-wide dashboard has made compliance stronger and more efficient, with the time required to check critical compliance issues across each and every adviser in the group reduced to about one hour a day.
“Strong compliance is the bedrock of good advice. Technology is the key to making advisers more efficient and productive, so they can simultaneously spend time on revenue-producing activities.”
Wealth Today’s parent company also runs its own practice, SFG Private Wealth, which gives it insight into the practical needs of advisers.
Cullen estimates Midwinter’s AdviceOS software is saving the average individual adviser four to six hours a week to service their clients while still ensuring compliance.
“Advisers that run their business properly and are not exposed to a refund liability or other compliance issue are building value in their business through stringent record-keeping. Midwinter’s AdviceOS software makes that simple, and KRIS lets us support them in that process.”
Tackling the compliance burden was recently rated as the main business challenge of advisers – even higher than COVID-19 (68% versus 59%) – according to a recent survey by Investment Trends.
As large banks and institutions continue to exit the advice industry, many advisers are leaving the industry or choosing to take control by setting up their own independent practice.
Midwinter Chief Operating Officer Jeff Hall said the trend to smaller advice practices made the choice of advice technology more important than ever.
“Advisers need a simple and efficient way to meet their compliance obligations, which allows them to focus on what they do best: spending time with clients to understand their personal goals,” Mr. Hall said. “Technology will continue to play a key role helping advisers build sustainable businesses.”
Midwinter’s AdviceOS KRIS module helps deliver these efficiencies at a practice level and dealer group level.
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