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.

Last week, I gave a presentation to the sales and support managers of CFS. The division has been managed by Dennis Ryan (ex Barclays) for the last few years and Dennis has taken the distribution channel through some major changes as it organises and equips itself to compete in the challenging times ahead. Dennis is a charismatic leader with a disarming nature that is unusual in someone of his position. Originally from the North East, he is so ‘down to earth’ that his management team and colleagues ‘look up to him’! He has an open and honest approach that helps him to deliver and get support for changes that he has introduced – including a reduction in the adviser numbers from over 1,000 to 600 (with increased growth and profitability).

On one slide (of too many) that was part of the presentation about the market challenges – including the global and local economy and regulation (RDR etc) – I listed a number of bullet points to illustrate the economic environment:

My point was that it is too often too easy to focus on the negatives and see the ‘glass as half-empty’ (some see it as completely empty!). I gave a personal example of how we need to put problems and challenges in context – without ignoring them for what they are. I was relating a story about the challenges of having a daughter about to do ‘A’ levels and the pressure that I was placing on her to study in order to get the grades required by her University offer (I am apparently more of a ‘stress transferor’ than a stress owner). All of this paled into insignificance (well not quite…), when, after a week of racing heart rate (tachycardic) and two occasions when she collapsed, she was eventually rushed into hospital with what turned out to be ‘massive bilateral pulmonary emboli’ (two big blood clots on both lungs) that were causing significant strain on the heart and required urgent thrombolysis. My daughter has become a bit of a phenomenon due to the rarity of the problem in someone so young without obvious linking causes, but I am sure she would prefer not to have this notoriety.

The good news is that the advice and treatment by the experts seems to have worked and although still recovering with ongoing medication, the current status is less critical and worrying than three weeks ago. The point is that however difficult the situation, there is usually a way of dealing with it and in the context of other situations it may not be as bad as we first feel.

Going back to the presentation and the bullets on the various slides, we should remember that our industry often has the knowledge, skill and experience (and products) that can help consumers to manage or mitigate some of the consequences of the problems that the economy presents. We should be proud of what we do and positive about the value we create. As I said (not original) last week, ‘the only constant is change’! Our industry needs not only to cope with change, it needs to be resourceful and adaptable in order to ‘create positive change’.

I attended the 1st – The Exchange User Conference on the 25th May – not having attended before, the event was a very pleasant surprise. It was well organised, packed with useful exhibits and well attended – so providing a great networking opportunity. From my perspective, it was much better than the MoneyMarketing or Mortgage Expo conferences that I have been to in the recent past. There are few software companies in the Financial service industry that could have pulled off such an event and hats off to 1st – The Exchange for doing such a great job.

1st – The Exchange used the conference to trail a number of interesting developments. The one that gained the most interest was their ‘Client Portal’ and it is an important development for a company that has largely delivered offline technology solutions in the past. The Client Portal quite simply gives the end client a view of the data the IFA holds. It also enables the client to make changes to that data albeit that these changes, for data integrity reasons, aren’t accepted into Adviser Office until approved by the adviser. Client Portal also shows a view of the Portfolio, enabling automated valuations to be requested. Finally, it allows for a secure document store and a protected method of communication between adviser and client.

1st – The Exchange has built the system with mobile devices in mind and demonstrated this with both the iPhone and the Blackberry. Client Portal is a significant development and a positive step forward with a more modern web look and feel when compared to Adviser Office. There is a breed of more modern tools that are being used to engage the end consumer in a number of ways and another good example of such a tool from Sammedia which has a very engaging ‘Apple’ look and feel to it, called MoneyInfo was also on show at the conference.

In addition to the Client Portal, 1st – The Exchange was also showing of its new financial planning tools to the market. Again, what they have built, is an impressive step forward over some of the older, but still widely used Product solutions. Financial planning tools tightly integrated to the back-office makes a lot of sense and my only disappointment with the tools that were on show is that they are probably still six months from general release.

1st –The Exchange is the largest ‘quote and apply’ portal and is still the largest back-office system in the market. As market leader, they are often picked on as the firm people love to hate. However, the value that they provide to the industry has been and still is, immense. The company has a broad set of product functionality and the financial backing to push its strategy forward. It spends more on R&D than some of the smaller companies’ annual turnover. As with all suppliers, clients and consultants like ourselves often want more to be delivered from them sooner and for everything to work as a joined up story. However, we mustn’t lose sight that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and maintaining existing functionality, renewing it in new solutions and adding innovative ideas for the future is a significant challenge, but is one that the Company would appear to be working towards delivering.