Improving the financial planning process

The problem

A financial services company wanted to improve its financial planning process by using a more modern tool to shift the focus from personal budgeting to supporting clients’ financial goals.

Workshop overview

I led a workshop alongside the Financial Planning department to:

• Review current processes for opening new accounts, receiving compliance approvals, and updating client information.
• Discuss current pain points for clients and advisors.
• Conduct an impact and feasibility activity to help product management build a product roadmap.

Findings on the account opening process

Advisors wanted more training opportunities, better support from the home office when they were actively engaged with clients, and better feedback when financial proposals were denied by compliance.

Receiving timely and relevant feedback to address compliance issues would help advisors address issues much quicker, which would significantly reduce the overall time and effort required for opening new accounts.

Findings on the compliance process

Advisors wanted to reduce how often the same data is manually updated across multiple tools, and to receive clear instructions for engaging the wealth management team for certain types of financial products impacting high net-worth clients.

Findings on updating client details

Advisors wanted to reduce how often the same data is manually updated across multiple tools, and to receive clear instructions for engaging the wealth management team for certain types of financial products impacting high net-worth clients.

Reflections

The workshop was primarily intended to communicate details about a new third-party financial planning tool for advisors. Since the advisors were not more actively involved in the decision process to acquire the tool, it limited the amount of actionable changes we could make based on the advisors’ feedback.

However, this workshop was a positive step forward since it was the first time the corporate and business teams made efforts to better understand and support financial advisors. Moving forward, I would recommend similar workshops to be conducted during the market research phase to better define user requirements and help inform purchasing decisions.

Observing financial planning meetings

After the workshop I partnered with another researcher to understand how the advisors’ client meetings were impacted from the new financial planning tool. Some of our findings included:

• The rollout did not provide two-way data communication between our internal database and the new tool, which required redundant data-entry that advisors found burdensome.
• Advisors wanted more concrete feedback and examples for less experienced advisors’ to grow the book of business and instructions on how to build rapport with new clients.
• Many advisors used budgeting as part of their planning process which was not addressed or implemented in the new tool.
• Overall, the tool received positive sentiment and helped advisors better understand their clients’ needs.