It is in an employer’s best interests to have a healthy financial workforce because it gives them the most flexibility, according to Dan Scholey, chief product officer at Moneyhub.
Scholey alongside Simon Chrystal, chief executive of WPS Advisory, discussed how they were using technology to try and serve more people who typically cannot afford advice.
Last year, WPS Advisory launched its app LifeStage Money to give people the tools to manage their money better with the help of MoneyHub’s data and insights platform.
The two businesses have now collaborated further on new features within the app including streamlined data transition and data entry during fact finding, appointment scheduling, and an optimised registration process for new customers.
Scholey explained how the most popular time for people to log on and check on their money is a Wednesday after lunch, meaning people were spending time at work stressing about their finances.
“It’s a huge productivity gain to get people not worrying about their finances.
“If you’ve got a whole population that really wants to retire but can’t because they can’t afford it, you’re stuck with a very high expense of people, who are not really that into it, and you can’t do anything about it.
“Then at the other end, you’ve got a load of younger people who perhaps are getting themselves into debt which is distracting them [from working]. So as an employer, you want a healthy financial workforce,” he said.
Crystal described it as a “supply side risk” for employers if they had a workforce who were worrying about money.
He added: “If I’m looking at it from an employer perspective and a commercial perspective, I need to trade profitably. I need to out compete other people in that environment. And to do that, I need productivity.”
Crystal warned how human resources were no longer plentiful and younger generation of workers wanted more support in a workplace environment, which was why apps like LifeStage Money were so important.
It’s a huge productivity gain to get people not worrying about their finances.
He felt workplaces were a really effective place to get high levels of engagement among employees.
“The workplace is really effective, because you can actually have that [app] installation done for people so that the next day, the app you provided is giving them real value.
“It’ll tell them what money’s going out of their bank account. It’ll help them construct their budgets and help them to control their expenditure.
“It’s the only consistently effective way of engaging people with their money in a way that they can win because if they reduce their expenditure, and they’ve got more money in their pocket, they feel like they’ve won,” Crystal explained.
Advice gap
Scholey believed technology will help to close the advice gap because it allows firms to do things at scale at a price point that makes it affordable to a lot more people.
Technology can now allow organisations to segment users into small cohorts based on data and provide them with a hyper personalised experience.
It’s about using technology, and giving people more information in an accessible form, to allow them to understand when they can make their own decisions
Crystal felt advisers needed to trust their clients more and in general trust consumers more because they had the capabilities to manage their money.
He said: “We need to be better at letting them know when they need advice and when they can be confident to make decisions.
“I work with people. That’s my profession.
“So it’s about using technology, and giving people more information in an accessible form, to allow them to understand when they can make their own decisions and to create the confidence to make those decisions.”
Crystal added it was about showing clients the respect of what they have achieved and not talking down to them, giving them the technology and allowing them to use the skills they already possess.
It is also about creating an environment where a client can feel comfortable to make the decision of whether they need advice in a particular instance or not.
“That’s what we’re talking about here, a whole ecosystem which is deliverable because of the advancing of technology,” he said.
alina.khan@ft.com
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