When it comes to proprietary research, we specialise in trying to find areas of the advice sector that aren’t functioning well, or that are overly complicated or need further exploration.
Our recent service white paper with abrdn, Answering the Call, is a really good example of that.
The report came about for a number of reasons.
We were perpetually finding in our adviser research that service was the number one determinant of both satisfaction and dissatisfaction with advised platforms.
We’d also been guilty of using the word ‘service’ as a catch-all phrase in our State of the Adviser Nation reports, and we wanted to address our own shortcomings on that front. So we thought getting to a better understanding of what service actually means was a topic worth exploring.
The partnership with abrdn came about really easily – it was a like-minded company who wanted to be part of a discussion around service. It’s nice to be able to say it happened that way round – we defined the idea and identified it was a big issue, and then found a good supporting partner in the process.
And as we say in the paper, the only mention of abrdn is upfront as a supporter of the report. For us and for abrdn, the value of the project (and any others we do) is in our independence.
Evolving the research process
One of the theories we sought to test as part of the research was that advice professionals can’t know what platform service is going to be like until they’ve tried it, by which point it might potentially be too late.
That statement was put to interviewees and was met with a lot of agreement. But Kate Ogilvie, a research analyst in our insight team, actually challenged us on that and said that was a leading question designed to trigger an emotional response.
So we went back out into the field with quantitative research to test our findings. Around 212 members of the advice profession took part in that. We deliberately softened that particular question, using more neutral language. The same overwhelming agreement came back, which gave us further confidence in the conclusions we ultimately came to. That approach is what I think helped take the paper to the next level.
Why this research matters
I care about this issue because I worked in servicing for five years, and my co-author Rich Mayor also worked in servicing for several years. We both know what a hard job it is.
Ultimately, I want to win the debate that we need to look at servicing differently. That’s the short-term goal – for this to resonate with people. Hopefully people have taken it with the spirit it’s intended, and it doesn’t just become a Pandora’s box to moan about the worst provider that you deal with. That’s not what this is about.
The medium to long-term goal is to get better at analysing what servicing means, get comparable data in place and, in time, make that data transparent and accessible to people via our due diligence software Analyser.
The results
The paper was launched online via a lang cat webinar on 8 June 2023. As at 20 June, it had 528 downloads. The webinar, which featured Siân Davies Cole from Plan Works, Jonny Black from abrdn and me, currently ranks as our second highest attended of all time.
Providers can (and do) issue their own white papers on industry topics such as service, but in this case it’s difficult to see how people would take a provider-led report on this subject seriously.
For abrdn, working with us in this way allows them to not only be part of the debate, but to focus on their own developments and service improvements based on and informed by actual adviser feedback.
In turn, it allows us to focus on what a better way of working might look like for the advice profession and providers, and to continue the discussion about how to get there.
Steve Nelson is insight director at the lang cat
