ello, it’s Nat here, taking a turn on the TCWU Wheel of Fortune. Hope all is good in your world.
Away from the impending World Cup, Wimbledon and various other summer delights, we find ourselves in the middle of industry awards season. (Yes, I just lumped in financial services awards with one of the world’s biggest and most expensive football tournaments. What of it?)
A lot of the time these awards tend to focus on innovation in some shape or form. Sometimes whole categories are dedicated to innovation, ‘next gen’ firms or other descriptors that denote an advice firm or provider as fit for the future.
To me, innovation used to mean something to do with technology. In Adviser Land (the best of all the theme parks) that meant the firms and planning practices embracing new tech and getting the best out of their systems and operations. It wasn’t about adopting new tech for its own sake, but using it to engage and reach new and existing clients, or enhance service delivery.
That’s probably still true. After all, intelliflo’s innovate conference yesterday spoke to all of the above.
But that’s not the kind of innovation I want to talk about here.
As someone who is privileged to sit on the judging side of the awards table from time to time, I’ve started to think that innovation in advice is about more than just tech alone.
From entries I’ve been privy to over recent months, for some firms innovation is about adopting a different fee model. TCWU isn’t the place to open up the whole ‘my fee model is better than yours’ debate, but increasingly business owners are calling out where they’ve consciously opted for fixed fees, subscription models or similar. They want to break with the status quo of percentage-based charging, but also they feel that, under Consumer Duty, it’s a better way for them of demonstrating value.
Other firms talk about their approach to attracting younger/different client types, or the proportion of their team below the average age of a 50-something adviser as their own particular brand of innovation.
There are others again who argue for them innovation lies in the clear contributions their business has made to the profession/ local community, or the work they’ve put into building a strong team and company culture. This latter point translates into actual policy, such as four-day weeks or similar, with rotas for handling client queries and no expectations of working later or for less. Or firms that insist on ‘protected’ days for focus work, either on a meeting-free or minimal meetings basis.
There are also firms innovating in the ‘traditional’ way (if traditional innovation can be a thing) through the likes of AI, building the workarounds and integrations they need that they can’t get elsewhere.
And finally, there are the firms using AI to do the opposite of innovate. I don’t know if there’s a word for that, but the closest I can get to is ‘samey-ness’. As Steve alluded to so eloquently last week, the AI slop is real. And award entries, at least some of them, have not escaped this fate. When every submission reads the same, in a process where the express purpose is to show a point of difference, something has gone wrong.
But there are firms who make me do a happy dance. The ones whose service, client experience, and general level of thinking they’ve done about their business leaps off the page. The ones who, interestingly, while no doubt using AI to hone and craft, are choosing to celebrate the people-ness, the humanity, of their advice and planning processes. That is now becoming a differentiating factor.
From my little window into the advice world, there are lots of good firms, and there are some great ones too. Good advice is no longer a point of difference, it’s table stakes. And that’s a really good thing.
Your music choice this week is nothing to do with innovation but is designed to give you a lift on this dreary/dreich day. Please enjoy Worth It by RAYE, and sing along to your heart’s content.
