10 October 2022 

Technology is going to be a key driver towards better mental and financial wellbeing in the UK.



Mental wellbeing is critical to a healthy, happy life, and there is clear evidence that our financial wellbeing impacts it. For example, confusion or lack of understanding around our finances is a critical contributor to mental anxiety. Conversely, having the confidence to make better financial decisions is documented to lead to better psychological and physical wellbeing – all three work hand-in-hand.

The UK cost-of-living crisis is making it more critical than ever for people to take action to understand their finances. 

There have been reports of people stopping their pension payments or raiding their pension pots to meet their standard of living costs. Last week, the FCA published their latest Retirement Income Market Data report*. It revealed that people have been withdrawing money from their pensions pots in far greater numbers (up by 18% from March 2022). 40% of pensioners are on a Drawdown rate of 8%, a rate of decumulation considered unsustainable in current markets. Many people are making these decisions without any financial guidance or advice. 

We may suppose that vulnerable consumers are predominantly those at risk of poor financial wellbeing. However, poor financial wellbeing may also impact those not considered 'vulnerable'. Retirement planning, saving, investment and estate planning decisions may cause anxiety and feelings of not being in control of our finances. Unfortunately, this is further exacerbated by financial services legislation and the myriad of available products and services. 

Wealth Wizards believe that financial technology may be the best, if not the only, way to support the large number of people who need to improve their financial wellbeing. Increased engagement with platforms that deliver helpful, user-friendly, jargon-free material builds knowledge, confidence, our financial wellness and in turn, our mental health. 

Imagine as a consumer going on to the website of a trusted brand, which securely takes you on a secured journey to assess your financial situation. Sharing your financial situation in your own time and space can feel less intrusive or intimidating than sharing it with a stranger. 

Upon reaching the end of this journey, you receive professional input, which empowers you to make an informed decision. You may need options on debt management or budgeting, retirement planning, saving or investing. Such a tool, accessible to many, would likely improve one's financial and mental health. 

Suppose we equipped financial service providers with technology that 'codifies' (automates) their financial expertise. How much more could we do to improve our nation's financial and mental wellbeing. 

Codification, through consistent and compliant financial guidance and advice, can assist more significant numbers than currently is possible through qualified individuals. It makes the resource affordable and accessible to more people, thereby improving financial and mental wellbeing faster. It also eliminates the barrier to entry as it can be made available to people of varying incomes and assets. And it is available when it is most convenient to the consumer, which improves engagement.  

Life assurers and banks have already employed the financial guidance model to help people make better-informed decisions around retirement. 

Financial advice firms also can also employ a digital journey during traditional onboarding and if required, introduce an adviser later. Such a process would improve efficiency, lessen associated costs and be available at the client's convenience. 

The current UK cost of living crisis, coupled with 'the advice gap' is undoubtedly impeding our finances and mental health. So helping consumers in their financial decision-making may never have been more critical. 

Employing technology will not happen overnight, but it can help now and in the future. The improvements to mental health resulting from greater financial wellbeing should motivate us all to find ways to make financial advice affordable and accessible to all. 

* <a href="https://www.fca.org.uk/data/retirement-income-market-data-2021-22">https://www.fca.org.uk/data/retirement-income-market-data-2021-22</a>

Written by Nick Hall, Business Development Director, Wealth Wizards

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For more information, please contact <a href="mailto:nick.hall@wealthwizards.com">nick.hall@wealthwizards.com</a>

Technology is going to be a key driver towards better mental and financial wellbeing in the UK.

Wealth Wizards to hold employee financial wellbeing event
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Wealth Wizards is holding an employee financial wellbeing knowledge event at this year’s MAD Summit in London.
The MAD Summit aims to shift perspectives on mental health in the workplace by encouraging conversation away from stigma toward a solution.
Held in London on the 11th of October 2022, Wealth Wizards will share a case study titled ‘Improving employee financial wellbeing through the cost-of-living crisis and beyond’. The case study will summarise how Ricoh UK has used Wealth Wizards’ MyEva application to implement a financial wellbeing programme for its UK employees.
Studies prove that our financial health directly impacts our mental and physical health. As business outcomes rely upon employees' health, many employers are searching for financial wellness solutions. Supporting people through the cost-of-living crisis reduces stress, increases employee happiness, and improves productivity.
As people struggle with soaring inflation, fuel, and utility costs, more employers are looking for ways to help.
To secure your place at the event please visit <a href="https://madworldsummit.com/workshops/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://madworldsummit.com/workshops/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1665037089684000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2-UnHRMdNX658vLmyOigWn">https://madworldsummit.com/workshops/</a>

Wealth Wizards to hold employee financial wellbeing event

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Fragmented World: Letters of authority remain a significant barrier in the advice process

Back in the summer of 2019, the lang cat published a paper called A Disconnected World. This examined integration – or the lack of it – in the world of advisers and financial planners, and its impact. Fragmented World, the follow up to that paper, has discovered the battling forces of fragmentation and integration throughout the technological landscape adviser firms must traverse.

One of the many findings from the report is Letters of authority (LOAs) and transfers remain a massive source of frustration for those working in advice firms and financial planning practices. But the scale of harm being inflicted is pretty staggering.


When the lang cat tested the worst-case scenarios for time taken from submitting an LOA to getting full, satisfactory data, the timeframe often ran to several months. In the very bad cases, firms were waiting over six months for the data they had asked for. * 

The report is based on more than 40 interviews with advice professionals ranging from the big consolidators and national firms to the smaller specialists. The lang cat supplemented this with online research, and also heard from providers, platforms and tech companies.

Through interviews with those professionals and providers, the guilty parties most frequently reported for frustratingly slow LOAs were:
<ul>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"> Legacy closed-book insurers and platforms who have grown by acquisition</li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">DC providers, especially Mercer, Towers Watson and Capita</li>
 	<li>How slow LOAs affect advisers directly &nbsp;</li>
</ul>
The advice process can be broken down to three main stages - onboarding, implementing and reporting. The first and last stages respectively can now operate completely digitally. Implementing a financial plan, however, is still a major issue because of LOAs. 

To implement a plan for a typical client in their early 50s, the adviser will often have to deal with between 5 and 15 products. This means advisers need to create anything between 5 and 15 Letters of Authority (LOAs) and agency transfer forms in order to be able to take control of the client’s plans, which often takes several months.

Some have tried to fix the problem, like Origo and its Unipass LOA, but it’s still early days, while some adviser and paraplanner groups have had varying levels of success in trying to unite more progressive providers in a set of common standards.
The lang cat principal Mark Polson said: 

<blockquote>“Despite the threat of regulatory action in this space, progress is not being made quickly enough. We need everyone to accept and adopt common standards before we see meaningful integration and automation. “This part of the technological world needs to defragment before it can be fixed and properly connected.”</blockquote>
Wealth Wizards CEO and Founder Andrew Firth commented: 

<blockquote>“After the pandemic we saw a lot of processes speed up and barriers reduced for financial advisers. </blockquote>
Wealth Wizards’ consumer-led and human-assisted (hybrid) guidance and advice platform automates key processes such as onboarding, fact finding, suitability report production and cashflow analysis. We are also looking at making the LOA process easier by creating automated digital signature and provider requests”.

Adviser views
One managing director of a financial planning firm told the lang cat: 

<blockquote>“Technology allows our clients to go from 0-100 in terms of their engagement, but they then fall off a cliff with LOAs and transfers taking months to complete.”</blockquote>
Another adviser said: 

<blockquote>“LOAs are the bane of the industry, not just for advisers but for providers as well. It makes absolutely no sense at all for everyone not to kind of join hands and try and work on this. It’s a perfect example of an industry that gone mad where we’re just creating more work for everybody.”</blockquote>
Fragmented World

The section on Letters of authority is just one of many in Fragmented World, which explores the technological landscape as a whole for financial advisers, taking a viewing on the powerful and opposing integrating and fragmenting forces. 

Five key advice market issues emerged during the in-depth research: digital ability is greater than technology; lack of control; data is the new oil; platforms aren’t enough; and clients expect more.

For example, there are the three fragmenting forces: misaligned commercial interests; decentralised control without tech to match it; and no shared desired view.

What’s more, advisers reported it was difficult to understand software before they buy it as more and more tech promises the Earth on integrations. Advisers often struggle to sort the good systems from the marketing hype. This was borne out from the findings of our online survey, where more than 7 in 10 firms agree that it’s impossible to make an informed comparison on software providers.
GBST Head of EMEA David Simpson commented: 

<blockquote>“We recognise the importance of open access to data, common standards, ease of integration, paperless processes and reduced cost of ownership of maintenance to support this drive for improved efficiency. </blockquote>
Benchmark Capital Managing Director Ed Dymott said: 

<blockquote>“Our services aim to help advisers navigate the complexity of integration with a turnkey solution, which covers the key services a high-quality financial planner needs to run their business.
“We support the entire lifecycle of an advice firm, helping practices launch, run more efficiently, accelerate growth, and then ultimately think about succession planning, with one simple aim – to help our advisers achieve more than they thought possible.</blockquote>
-ENDS-

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Fragmented World: Letters of authority remain a significant barrier in the advice process

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Wealth Wizards (WW) was founded in 2009 to take on the challenge of automating financial advice for the digital age. Our founding purpose is to make financial advice affordable and accessible to everyone, and this mission and ethos still drives us forward today.
Today we are one of the UK’s leading financial advice technology providers with a growing B2B customer base including leading life assurers, tier one banks, wealth firms, EBC’s and one of the largest advice networks in the market. We also operate our own digital financial adviser (MyEva).
Solution overview
Turo is our multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. This enables our customers to automate regulated client journeys as well as engaging and advising on everyday financial planning decisions.
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Turo supports two core propositions. Whilst related to one another, they attract different white-label customers. Our tenants may require consumer-led and/or human-assisted (hybrid) financial guidance and advice. Whichever they choose, they’re both designed with improved financial wellbeing in mind.
Turo’s consumer-led and human-assisted capabilites can compress the full at-retirement advice process down from 35 hours to 8.75 hours. This is achieved by:
<ul>
<li>Reducing Fact Find time by focusing just on the key data required to produce a recommendation.</li>
<li>Reducing suitability report writing from 6-7 hours to 30-35 minutes.</li>
<li>90% + automation within report writing to allow for more personalisation.</li>
<li>Reducing diagnosis time from 4-7 hours to 1 hour.</li>
</ul>
MyEva is our regulated financial adviser delivered through our pioneering conversational interface. Operating in the competitive workplace market for financial wellbeing; over 50 employers have already subscribed to MyEva. The solution provides us with valuable insight into the needs of a diverse population of over 80,000 employees. This enables our continual development of digital engagement solutions.
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Wealth Wizards

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Wealth Wizards (WW) was founded in 2009 to take on the challenge of automating financial advice for the digital age. Our founding purpose is to make financial advice affordable and accessible to everyone, and this mission and ethos still drives us forward today.
Today we are one of the UK’s leading financial advice technology providers with a growing B2B customer base including leading life assurers, tier one banks, wealth firms, EBC’s and one of the largest advice networks in the market. We also operate our own digital financial adviser (MyEva).
Solution overview
Turo is our multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. This enables our customers to automate regulated client journeys as well as engaging and advising on everyday financial planning decisions.
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
Turo supports two core propositions. Whilst related to one another, they attract different white-label customers. Our tenants may require consumer-led and/or human-assisted (hybrid) financial guidance and advice. Whichever they choose, they’re both designed with improved financial wellbeing in mind.
Turo’s consumer-led and human-assisted capabilites can compress the full at-retirement advice process down from 35 hours to 8.75 hours. This is achieved by:
<ul>
<li>Reducing Fact Find time by focusing just on the key data required to produce a recommendation.</li>
<li>Reducing suitability report writing from 6-7 hours to 30-35 minutes.</li>
<li>90% + automation within report writing to allow for more personalisation.</li>
<li>Reducing diagnosis time from 4-7 hours to 1 hour.</li>
</ul>
MyEva is our regulated financial adviser delivered through our pioneering conversational interface. Operating in the competitive workplace market for financial wellbeing; over 50 employers have already subscribed to MyEva. The solution provides us with valuable insight into the needs of a diverse population of over 80,000 employees. This enables our continual development of digital engagement solutions.
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Business Development Director

Simon is on the Wealth Wizards Exec board as Business Development Director and has been running businesses and consulting in online benefits and pensions solutions since 1999. Simon has been instrumental in developing innovative technology solutions that drive engagement for employees and return on investment for large corporates across all sectors, both in the UK and globally.
Simon is passionate about driving the development of enabling, integrated workplace technology and communications solutions to continually drive education, engagement and participation for employees, and streamlined, automated administration and data processing for employers.
Over the past 16 years, Simon has built strong professional relationships with organisations such as Microsoft, Citi, HSBC, Nomura, Willis Towers Watson, Mercer, GE, EY, PwC, Disney and JP Morgan, helping them to deliver their pensions and benefit ambitions.