Recording conversations and giving verbal advice adds value to clients and provides a better experience for them than seeing advice written down in a document, according to Fraser Jack from The Cyber Collective Australia.
Speaking at the CISI’s Financial Planning Conference in Manchester this week (October 15), Jack discussed how recorded meetings were introduced into the advice process in Australia and how it has positively impacted both the adviser and their clients.
He said: “I was fortunate enough to be part of a digital advice working group between 2019 and 2022 with the regulator in Australia, which was at the time called the Financial Planning Association.
“We sat together and the concept of how do we digitise advice came up. So I took this analogy, if I was going to make you a cup of tea, and I brought it to you, and you said, 'oh, I don't have sugar'. I can't just go and take the sugar out.
“So if I'm going to prepare an advice document for you. And then you come in, and say, 'actually, we decided we're going to renovate the kitchen this year'. I'm going to say, 'oh, that sounds amazing, but all of my documentation and my projections are wrong', right?
“We now have to go away and redo this 100-word page document, and all of the cost and expense of that process and having to come back next week and do another meeting again. So the concept, to me, was why are we pre-preparing advice to the clients?
“If you go to the doctor or to another professional, you might have a conversation with them and the advice you're hearing, you're seeing, the body language, the non-verbal cues, all of that is part of the advice process, and part of what the clients remember. The clients don't remember what's in the document, but they remember what you say, how you say it and what you do.”
Video recordings
Jack discussed how the working group in Australia developed the ‘Video SOA’ project which had the concept of advisers recording the meetings they were having with clients when giving them advice and then providing a copy of the recording after.
“One of the criticisms we have for paper documentation is that clients don't read them. So I could say to you, 100 per cent of your clients were in the advice meeting where you were providing the advice, and if they wanted to re-watch the video, then they would be watching for a second time, not for the first time. So you can't get away with saying I didn't read the advice document, because you're actually in it. You co-created it, you're part of the experience,” he added.
Jack highlighted that client meetings did not need to just be recorded for one piece of advice, it could be used from the beginning of a client journey in discovery meetings all the way through the process.
