Five minutes with PlannerPal
Interview with Mark Whitcroft, CEO of PlannerPal
PlannerPal describes itself as the financial planners’ artificial intelligence (AI) assistant. The software was added to the intelliflo store in June and users are already reporting significant benefits from adding AI into their processes. We spoke to CEO Mark Whitcroft about how PlannerPal is saving advisers’ time and the role AI can play in creating efficiencies in the advice journey and ultimately closing the advice gap.
Tell us about PlannerPal
Built specifically for the UK financial advice sector, PlannerPal records face-to-face, Teams and Zoom client meetings, then automatically generates accurate transcripts and seven different document types in the style and structure of the individual adviser and firm. Often the client meeting is the single source of truth within advice firms, so PlannerPal gives the whole team access to that source of truth and breaks it down into the critical nuggets of information as well as making it searchable.
How do your solutions interact with intelliflo office?
We’re very aware that many systems in the financial advice sector don’t talk to each other, which means there’s a lot of double-keying of information into CRMs. When we looked at partnering with intelliflo, ensuring a smooth transition of information was crucial.
We went live with the two-way integration at the start of June. Now advisers can link their client list in PlannerPal to intelliflo office and invite our assistant to join the Zoom or Teams call, or use our mobile app for in-person meetings. Once the meeting is complete, PlannerPal will generate a transcript,and a number of different document types that can be saved straight into the intelliflo office client file.
PlannerPal’s new module, the CRM Updater, also suggests updates to incomplete or incorrect data within the intelliflo office client record based on information discussed in the meeting. Advisers can approve the suggested amendments and the relevant fields will be automatically updated in intelliflo office, or decline it to leave the information unchanged.
What benefits will intelliflo office clients see from using PlannerPal?
Often key information from client meetings will be in the adviser’s head, or in their written notes, and it can be difficult and time-consuming for support team members to extract the relevant details. With PlannerPal, after a client meeting, admin staff and paraplanners can immediately access not only the recording, but also the transcript, the summary and the key points covered so they can start automatically generate the follow-up documentation without significant input from the adviser.
Our AI can also help generate seven different document types including draft file notes, emails and more complex documents, learning from feedback and revisions to generate future drafts that are closer to the adviser’s preferences. Overall, it speeds up post-meeting tasks, allowing firms to get back to clients much faster and leaving more time to focus on quality of service, deepening relationships and building the book of business.
And because PlannerPal is built for the UK financial advice market, we’ve trained the AI to understand the products, spell the names of industry players correctly and provide documentation that reflect the planner’s day-to-day priorities. The new CRM Updater module brings further benefits, making sure that the information stored in the client file is accurate, helps improve data quality automatically helping to streamline workflows and integrations with other solutions.
Usage within over 350 firms finds that on average, firms using PlannerPal spend 15% to 20% less time on administration and post-meeting activities. One adviser said that PlannerPal had removed three quarters of the admin burden, allowing him to see twice as many clients as usual.
How do your solutions help advisers meet the Consumer Duty requirements?
PlannerPal is built around financial advisers, so while the main aim is to improve productivity and efficiency, we also make sure that the AI is relevant to the sector and compliant with the regulations.
We’ve seen in recent months that accurate record keeping is a key theme for the FCA, so firms can demonstrate compliance with the regulations. By storing the meeting transcripts and all associated documentation automatically in the client file, PlannerPal simplifies the process of evidencing suitability and regulatory compliance as well as flagging potential vulnerabilities. We’ve found that advisers also like to automatically add quotes from the meeting transcript directly into the generated documents stored in the client records to further demonstrate the quality of the advice.
Where do you see the future of AI in financial advice?
There’s huge potential for AI to reduce the admin burden as well as generate business opportunities for firms. We often hear that the norm for advisers is to manage 100 clients, and the only way to build scale beyond that number is to add more people. I think by using AI effectively, we can move that maximum figure to 300 per adviser in the next three years. Our aim is to get it to 3000 per adviser within the decade.
If we can do that, it will go a long way to fixing the financial advice gap where only 8% of the population in this country gets advice, but 29 million people want it.
For more information about PlannerPal, please visit http://www.plannerpal.co.uk/.