Kathy Vincent, BT's General Manager Platforms, Investments & Operations explains how Australian advisers have rapidly adapted to the impacts of COVID-19, including how technology has transformed and enhanced behaviours and relationships between advisers and clients.
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How have you seen financial advisers help everyday Australians with managing the financial pressures of COVID-19?
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I think the crisis forced advisers’ area of focus to the market volatility experienced. And putting that into context, from the peak of the ASX 200 in February, it dropped 38 per cent in just 4 weeks. Comparing that to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), I think it took about 10 months for the same fall to occur, so being connected with their clients in helping them understand the market dynamics and what was happening has been essential.
Times like these are where the value of advice really shines. When we consider the context of what happened in the markets in parallel with everything else that they’ve been endeavouring to manage over the last 18 - 24 months with regulatory changes, compliance requirements as well as the Royal Commission, the adviser community’s response has been really impressive.
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If there’s one area advisers have sought support for during this time most, what has it been?
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The backbone of the support we’ve provided is in the form of economic and investments commentary to understand what’s happening in the markets. Advisers were also seeking information on Government’s support initiatives, such as the early access to super scheme. We’ve hosted regular technical webinars where advisers can join us live or view it later – these have been very well attended with 100s of advisers at every live session.
Everything happened very fast – and the essence of what we’ve tried to do is to make sure advisers were really informed and had the insights around the market, the regulatory changes, to be able to have good conversations with their clients and act accordingly.
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How do you think advisers have adapted during COVID-19? Did you see an increase in the uptake of technology during this time?
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The first area that quickly came to the fore was the need for connectedness. Having to manage the impacts of working from home themselves but also their own team members, while also dealing with the urgency of their clients’ needs around the markets, this was the primary area of focus.
We provided support to advisers with a comprehensive hub to help them with things like business continuity planning and proactive commentary around the markets and economic updates to help them with client conversations.
We also saw clear changes in behaviours when it came to accessibility and transparency – advisers were proactively keeping their clients updated on their investments and the market impacts. We saw this particularly with the use of our BT Panorama mobile app with an 80 per cent increase in the use of the digital consent capability, the tool advisers use to transact on their clients investments.
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What do you think are the bigger takeaways for advisers having been through this challenging experience?
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I think it has brought forward the uptake of digital engagement much faster than we would have imagined.
There is a lot more comfort in the use of virtual client meetings and this provides a productivity opportunity for advice practices. The advisers we’ve been working with recently have indicated they’re thinking how they might change their business models and how they might interact with different clients such as face-to-face meetings for new clients but embed the virtual and digital ways of interacting into their client engagement processes.
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