Small firm focus: How I reach out to clients

Mark Loosmore of AT8 Group speaks to Alan Moran of Interface Financial Planning about his use of systems including Avelo’s Adviser Office and Client Portal.

Recently we have covered the use of technology by some of the largest financial distribution groups in the country. We balance the coverage this week by talking to Alan Moran, of Interface Financial Planning, to see how a smaller practitioner is using technology on a day to day basis.

Moran is a ‘technology aware’ IFA who has long seen the potential to use technology as a means of streamlining his business and improving client service. He has been a long-standing user of Adviser Office from Avelo and Truth from Prestwood. He has combined the use of these solutions with the Watermark document management system and says this enables him to run an effective, paperless IFA practice.

Cloud and proud

Last year Moran saw the opportunity to move this infrastructure to the ‘Cloud’ and create a virtual infrastructure. At the heart of Moran’s strategy was moving Adviser Office away from his own local machines to have it remotely hosted by a third party – Acuutech.

The approach enabled Interface to operate as a virtual organisation thus allowing outsourced functions such as his paraplanning services (provided by Cathi Harrison of Parasols) and his compliance support (provided by Compliance and Training Solutions ) to access the same system and data remotely.

In short, Moran’s own overheads of having to manage the IT infrastructure have reduced and he believes he is able to leverage more value from the software.

“Once we were operating in the cloud,” explains Moran, “It seemed silly to stop at just allowing Interface and our partners to access the systems. The logical next step was to expose some of our infrastructure to clients as well.”

As a result, Moran has been one of the early adopters of Avelo’s Client Portal, a solution that enables the client to log in and access key data such as portfolio details and appropriate documentation. More important for Moran, it also provides a secure messaging service between him and his clients. “When I first started using a client portal service I thought the value would be in providing a window on to their portfolio 24/7.

However, the reality is that 80% don’t use the solution for this – they pay me to look at their portfolio and tell them if it needs attention.” He goes on to explain that “the value all the clients feel they get is an efficient two-way communications centre where all correspondence is managed, stored and tracked”.

Integration, integration

Having a client portal is not new to Moran and in the past, we have reviewed his use of IFA Systems’ client portal that he used to run, so I was intrigued to find out why he has moved to use the Avelo Client offering. The answer is quite straight forward – integration.