What is the new normal?

All businesses had to adapt to a Covid world forced upon us. This resulted in a quick pivot to isolated working, working from home and an embracement of technology. Financial planning and the wider financial services have been impacted just the same.

In the past many financial planning businesses and advisers had resisted technology as part of their service offer as they felt client’s place significant value on face to face and may not be open to digital engagement. This pandemic has enforced change. This pandemic has adjusted thinking as many have not only embraced digital meetings but now actually prefer them.

This will need to have you thinking about what the new normal looks like. Whilst some businesses have started moving staff back into the office others have stated that full time office time may not return til 2021 if at all.

When you look at financial planning businesses, will there be a future need for a regional or another capital city satellite office? Will you need to fly or travel regionally as much once we are allowed back to business as usual. For small businesses, having additional office space or the cost of travel are large expenses that can now be reduced significantly.

Think of an adviser based in Sydney who has clients in Adelaide. In the past, this would have involved regular trips to Adelaide to see client’s face to face. Not only are there physical costs in this (flights, accommodation, taxis etc), there are also the emotional and psychological costs (such as 4am wake up to go the airport, 10pm arrivals home, less time with family etc). Not to mention that you require the clients to be available to fit your travel time frame (“I can see you on either this day or this day”) which isn’t client centric at all. Moving several of these meetings to digital has a significant downstream impact on working around your client’s schedules, your home life and a reduction in expenses. Now I am not saying that these trips will be removed entirely however even a 50% reduction is possible.

I have heard that new business is still a challenge in the video conferencing world, that it is harder to read the room or to be certain that key decision makers are giving you their full attention. However, is this the case or do we need to adapt our process and simplify the brief to keep everyone engaged. General consensus from my interaction with advisers is that virtual client meetings are more productive in a shorter time frame (2 hour face to face are now 45 minute video call) and the documenting of these meetings has become easier due to visual aids shared with the clients being able to be saved straight away into the CRM.

To conclude, now may be the perfect time to survey your key clients to ask them “once we move back into a past lockdown world, how would you best like me to engage you”. This could set you up perfectly for when we can finally get some normality back in society.