Last Friday a new IFA website was launched – Meaningful Money (http://meaningfulmoney.tv/). The website that has been produced by Pete Matthew of Jacksons Financial Services in Penzance. I have followed Pete’s use of technology for a little while now and he often leads the way with fresh and interesting ideas, continually using technology to add value to his business. He is a strong believer of using technology in his face to face financial planning and currently uses Voyant to good effect in front of/together with his clients. Despite what some more traditional elements in the industry may say using technology in front of the client, Peter hasn’t found that it has created barriers or devalued his service but has in fact helped to increase the level of service he gives.

With Meaningful Money, he is pushing the boundaries away from the traditional brochureware site of many IFA practices with the quite brilliant and engaging use of video. Meaningful Money is in effect a library of video blogs about financial issues. In the videos, Pete gives his personal insights into how to manage finances and investments, how to plan for retirement and how to financial insure against various scenarios.

His videos cover the core principals of Financial planning, building the foundations of the financial plan, investments and risk management and general topical financial discussions. The videos are delivered in an engaging format, with Peter talking to the camera as he moves around the county. The style builds rapport and relationship (you feel you know Peter well after the first video) before the client has even met Peter.

The boldness in this approach is that it could enable clients to become more financial astute and to selfserve, convincing themselves that they don’t need financial advice. However, the hard truth is that for some clients, this may be the right thing to do and they may not be in the position to justify Pete’s fees yet (when they can I wouldn’t mind betting Peter is on the list of people to contact). The reality though for many clients is that they will realise the complexity of their financial situation and Peter is then ideally placed to help them.

The reach of Meaningful Money is of course is far wider than the Cornish boarders and Pete’s services through the use of technology are now also stretching their reach throughout the UK. Through the use of Skype Video he can contact clients easily and recreate some of the personal chemistry associated with face to face advice but without the cost and time of travelling to remote clients.

Meaningful Money is one of the most unusual and differentiated IFA websites we have seen and we recommend a review of its capability.

Written by Mark Loosmore - Visit Website

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under General, Industry Chatter, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.