The number of reports generated by advisers has doubled since the introduction of consumer duty, data from Dynamic Planner has revealed.
In the past 12 months, Dynamic Planner has seen “exponential growth” in usage as its technology is “increasingly” adopted and utilised to solve the new demands and challenges faced by the industry.
As a result, advisers generated over 100,000 reports the month of June 2024 with demand for annual reviews and cash fow reports having grown fastest.
Dynamic Planner chief product officer, Chris Jones, said: “Consumer duty brought sweeping change across the advice industry and over the past 12 months firms have been working hard to deliver on the guidance set out.
“We understand that any change or innovation takes time and we are determined to support our clients throughout to meet their objectives and help them to avoid harm."
He added that, as with all new regulation, consumer duty has presented challenges and obstacles but pointed out that industry “has and is overcoming them”, with technology “central” to this success.
“Our analysis of how advice firms use Dynamic Planner to meet the new regulatory demands they face is a reassuring testimony to our ease of use and the quality of our users,” Jones additionally stated.
“They can rest assured that we will continue to innovate and align with the prevailing regulatory principles and changing requirements faced by the industry such as the Retirement Income Review, in both theirs and their clients’ best interests.”
Dynamic Planner also reported that technology has enabled advisers to become more efficient, reducing the time spent reviewing and creating reports.
Consequently, it now takes 16 minutes for advisers to generate a review report, 10 minutes to generate client profile reports, 19 minutes for recommendation reports, and 28 minutes for cash flow reports.
Additionally, Dynamic Planner has said that consumer duty has “put the spotlight” on target markets and, in the past 12 months, advisers have increasingly used the target market feature in Dynamic Planner.
Around one in four firms have, as a result, created target markets, with an average of 130 new target markets created each month.
Since July 2023, over 1,500 target markets have been created with numbers peaking at the expected times of year in July 2023 ahead of the advent of consumer duty, followed by March ahead of the end of tax year; and November pre-Christmas.
In line with the 2021 Financial Conduct Authority “Guidance for firms on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers” advice firms have completed over 5,000 of Dynamic Planner’s psychometric Financial Wellbeing Questionnaires with their clients over the past year.
tom.dunstan@ft.com
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