Pass the pyjamas

If you’ve taken a look at our new website, you’ll have noticed we’ve got quite a few videos featuring our adviser partners talking about working with us. During the production process I was struck by how often ‘time pressures’ and ‘the need to de-risk the business’ were mentioned.

Happily, our adviser partners are saying that these issues have been mitigated for them because they are working with us but it’s clear these are two worrying elements for financial advisers in general.

Time is clearly a major factor. Everyone is so busy and the uncertainty around Brexit isn’t making life easier for advisers tasked with making their clients wealthier.

The irony is that taking a bit of time out to make some operational changes to an adviser business can reap major rewards. For example, one of our partners, Nigel McTear from Signpost commented on video about his experience of PortfolioMetrix: “I can produce all 80 quarterly reports in less than a day and distribute them. That would have been impossible in the old world. And the reports, by the way, are about ten times better than the ones I put together.”

This view is supported by Nik Proctor from IFS Family Wealth Advisers: “The time we have for relationships with clients has improved, has increased,” he says.

The risk involved in running an independent financial adviser business is also giving many advisers sleepless nights and it’s been heartening to hear that our adviser partners find that PortfolioMetrix has helped them de-risk their businesses and de-stress their lives.

Tools that provide a recorded trail through the entire investment process, from client risk assessment to capacity for loss plus suitability of portfolio selection are the cornerstones of our proposition, as are the investment portfolios that, by the way, in July had their best month since inception on the back of very strong markets in general and good underlying manager performance.

I never thought that sending people to sleep would be regarded as a positive thing in my career but, if our adviser partners are anything to go by, they appreciate the ‘snooze button effect’ of sharing the investment load with our team.

Sweet dreams.