Pushing the boundaries of financial advice technology
We’re just coming back down to earth after the success of intelliflo innovate 2024. Our flagship annual event was bigger and better than ever, with over 600 delegates, 44 speakers, 18 breakout sessions and 20 exhibitors, all ably hosted by award-winning international journalist Nadine Dereza and our CEO Nick Eatock.
The action-packed agenda covered everything from intelliflo’s planned innovations and valuable insight from intelliflo customers on how they are using our technology to its best effect, to thought-provoking debates involving advisers, providers, journalists and industry experts on a range of topics including succession planning, intergenerational wealth and cash management.
For those who missed the event, or are keen to relive it, we’ll be sharing videos and follow-up content from some of the sessions in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are a few of the key announcements and highlights from the main stage.
Customer inspired change
Our annual conference now has a new name – intelliflo innovate – to reflect our commitment to innovation and, as Nadine Dereza put it, “Pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the world of financial advice.”
Kicking off the conference with his intelliflo update, Nick Eatock emphasised the importance of adviser voices in shaping the future of our technology. The concept of ‘customer inspired change’ sees intelliflo users putting forward ideas for updates, both big and small, that they feel will have a positive impact on their daily work. Then intelliflo customers vote on each idea to help the developers decide what to prioritise.
Since its inception in October 2022, this programme has so far resulted in 250 customer inspired changes to the live system as part of our continuous delivery model that sees 18 changes every day.
wealthlink to go live with first firms
The crucial impact of customer inspired change on intelliflo’s technology also featured in the update on wealthlink, which Nick announced will go live with its first tranche of advice firms in August.
At our conference in 2023, we unveiled our plans to further streamline the advice process. Working with SS&C as our first partner, we’ve built the front end of a retail platform inside intelliflo office which links directly into retail platform capability via our open architecture APIs.
Recent intelliflo market wide research uncovered that the average adviser spends one whole month a year implementing plans on disparate platforms. On top of the frustration and loss of time, fragmentation of technology also results in errors in 20% of onboarding processes. wealthlink is set to change this, allowing firms to set up and maintain client investments without leaving the intelliflo office environment, removing rekeying and cutting errors.
Following wealthlink’s launch in the United States, advisers saw submission errors fall from 50% to 1%, thanks to intelligent data collection and removal of paper forms. At the same time, account opening times reduced from between five and seven days to between 15 and 20 minutes.
To ensure that the technology meets the needs of firms in the UK, the wealthlink build here has included significant involvement from a group of early adopters. Nick explained: “We were very conscious with wealthlink that we wanted to build capability that transforms your operational processes.
That’s why we’ve been working closely with ten different adviser firms, ranging from boutiques through to consolidators. We’ve learned a lot along the way and the input of the early adopters has been crucial to the development of the final service. We’ve ended up building way more than we thought, but as a result, we think it’s really special.”
Integrating AI into intelliflo office
One of the huge benefits of reducing data errors, and having comprehensive and accessible data through more joined-up technology like wealthlink, will be the ability to embrace AI solutions effectively.
Over the last year in particular, AI has emerged as a transformative force, revolutionising how we interact with data and influencing everything from healthcare to retail. The advice sector is no exception – our research revealed that 72% of advice firms think it’s important to integrate AI into the delivery of advice. However, an overwhelming 95% feel they currently lack the required skillset within their business to do so.
Nick announced intelliflo’s plans to solve this issue. He said: “We want to provide the best ecosystem for a wide range of innovative AI software businesses to offer their solutions already fully integrated within intelliflo office. We’re working hard with vendors, some small and some large strategic relationships with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon, to make a difference. We’re aiming to give you a full stack of AI capability that you can slot right into your business, all available from the intelliflo store.”
We’ll be adding many more AI vendors to the intelliflo store in the coming months, but, in keeping with the intelliflo innovate 2024 ethos of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, Nick highlighted two new integrated partnerships in particular – with Aveni and Money Alive.
Aveni is an AI platform built for financial advice. It leverages natural language processing and groundbreaking generative AI to automate mundane tasks and extract insights from client communication. Aveni is available now within the intelliflo store and its full product suite will be embedded into intelliflo office for all customers over the next year.
This will allow users to automatically record, transcribe, summarise and compliance check meetings, storing the original voice recording and all documents directly in intelliflo office, as well as auto-filling client details.
The second integration coming soon, is intelliflo video in partnership with Money Alive. This new offering combines data-driven insights with interactive digital experiences to deliver personalised learning experiences tailored to each client’s unique financial goals, preferences and life stages.
Under the partnership, intelliflo will be leveraging Money Alive’s existing video library and technology, and also launching a roadmap to develop new content and integrate video solutions directly into intelliflo office and the personal finance portal.
These immersive videos and interactive tools will help clients gain a deeper understanding of complex financial concepts, supporting better-informed decisions, driving engagement and providing evidence for the consumer understanding part of Consumer Duty.
AI in financial advice
It will come as no surprise that AI was also an ongoing theme in the panel discussion on the future of financial advice. The panel, hosted by Nadine Dereza, featured participants from Money Alive, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Aveni and Model Office.
The conversation covered the potential risks of AI, with Joseph Twigg of Aveni warning that for financial advisers, one of the biggest challenges of AI is ensuring that the tool you’re using fits the purpose. Pointing to a growing trend for smaller, industry-aligned large language models, he explains:
“For heavily regulated sectors like financial services, you don’t need your large language model to be able to recite Shakespeare. What you need it to do is recite the FCA handbook. You can now build a large language model focussed on an industry, that can outperform the GPT4s and Geminis of the world for all the use cases that you want to use it for. And you can do it in a transparent way, helping the regulator to properly regulate the use of the technology.”
Andy Kirby from Money Alive highlighted the opportunity offered by AI, urging firms to be open-minded to change:
“I’ve been in the industry coming up to 30 years, and it’s hard to recall any other technology that will have such a significant impact. We have to be open-minded because it’ll make our businesses better. If we don’t get on board with it, other companies will be doing it.”
Model Office’s Chris Davies agreed there is a risk to not embracing new technology. He encouraged firms to just make a start:
“If you’re not getting involved in this, somebody else will and they’ll surpass you very, very quickly. Talk to experts in the field, get the research, due diligence and process mapping right, but most importantly don’t be afraid … go and play with the tools and work out what’s right for your business.”
However, alongside the benefits of technology, AWS’s Ester Bizcarrondo reaffirmed the value of human advisers. She said:
“Money is an emotional topic. AI is not meant to replace investment advisors, but rather to augment their abilities. By automating manual, undifferentiated tasks, advisors can focus on what they do best (providing guidance and sound judgement). Additionally, AI can empower advisors to make better data driven recommendations.”
The rise of humans
The important role of humans in a world of technology advances was echoed later in the day in the keynote speech by Dave Coplin, Founder of the Envisioners and former Chief Envisioning Officer of Microsoft. He believes at least 30% of what we do is likely to be automated in the next decade and sees technology as an opportunity, rather than a threat.
When asked whether humans are going to be replaced by technology, he doesn’t think so:
“I believe that if technology can automate 30% of our tasks, it’s an opportunity to enhance our skills and passions rather than simply doing less. Embracing this change allows us to become better artists, musicians, creative writers, financial advisers, and more. Instead of being replaced, we can collaborate with this technology to solve more problems and achieve greater things.”
We’ll be bringing you more insights from the intelliflo innovate 2024 sessions in the next few weeks. In the meantime, register your interest now and be the first to learn about our 2025 event.