intelliflo’s eAdviser Index proves the transformative power of technology

Our latest eAdviser Index confirms yet again that advice firms that fully embed technology into the advice process outperform their peers. In fact, these tech-embracing advice firms achieved even greater business performance gains in 2022 compared to the previous year.

This year’s Index saw the highest technology adopters, our Champions, generating per adviser 54% more revenue and 76% more ongoing revenue, and managing 64% higher assets under advice and 39% more clients than the lowest adopters, our Explorers. This is a significant increase on last year’s figures, when per adviser Champions generated 44% more revenue and 59% more ongoing revenue and had 48% more assets under advice and 28% more clients than Explorers.

The benefits of embracing technology

At intelliflo, we’ve long believed in the power of technology to transform the success of financial advice firms. We launched the eAdviser Index in 2018 to examine in detail the interactions within intelliflo office, our cloud-based practice management software which currently supports 46%^[i] of the UK adviser market. We wanted to understand how the critical business metrics, such as client numbers, assets under advice, and revenue, of advice firms that harness technology compare with those of firms that don’t.

Five years on, the Index continues to prove that embedding technology into the advice process is increasingly important to a firm’s success. It provides clear evidence of the positive relationship between technology adoption and overall business performance, highlighting the growing performance gap between the most tech-savvy firms and the least. With Consumer Duty shining a spotlight on value, using technology to streamline processes and deliver a high-quality cost-effective service that supports better customer outcomes, leaving the adviser more time to focus on the client, is becoming an essential competitive advantage.

Many of our clients are already reaping the benefits of properly embedding technology into their advice journey.

Crunching the numbers

The eAdviser Index is based on analysis of nearly four billion interactions with intelliflo office. We review this data to understand where each firm is on its specific adoption journey, examining how it uses the functionality within intelliflo office across six key areas: activity management, valuations, income, Document Designer, Personal Finance Portal and data quality. Once we identify which features a firm is using and how they use them, we give it a score out of 100 in each of the five areas: 0 means that adoption has not yet started and 100 indicates the technology is fully adopted and is being used effectively to a very high level.

Firms are then categorised into four distinct groups based on their overall technology adoption scores:

• Explorers (score 0 – 274) are typically using some of intelliflo office’s core functionality, such as income processing and automated electronic valuations, but are not yet maximising the capabilities available to fully drive efficiency.
• Adopters (score 275 – 399) have a good adoption of technology and are typically strong in the core areas such as valuations and income processing. However, these firms are yet to fully leverage other efficiency-driving benefits that intelliflo office can provide.
• Embracers (score 400 – 524) have very strong adoption of technology and are typically very strong in most areas. Many of these firms are working on delivering an established technology vision and are well on their way to achieving Champion status.
• Champions (score 525 – 700) are using all parts of the system and achieve maximum points across several areas. These firms have set out a technology vision and are delivering it.