The financial planning industry in the past must have decimated several forests a day. Reams of paperwork piled up on desks, filing cabinets, and for some, or so I have heard, the floor.
These days are long gone (for most) and at Oliver Asset Management we embrace the opportunities new technology provides to keep our process fresh, efficient and effective.
One particular innovation we have been using lately is a simple and helpful website called join.me. Using this we are able to display our screen on the computer of the client, wherever they may be. In combination with a phone call or Skype, this allows us to talk them through their plan as though they were sitting in our office.
This means that there is no need for any extra travel arrangements, or waiting until they are next in Edinburgh, for clients further afield.
The second innovation that is very quickly gaining ground in every dimension is the cloud, allowing us to not only back up certain important documents but also to share and edit documents collaboratively with clients on one of the best services cloud computing has to offer: Dropbox. Although the ability to send attachments via e-mail is relatively new in the grand scheme of things, this is already comparatively cumbersome and inefficient compared to this secure and straightforward service.
Unfortunately one area where excessive paper use cannot be avoided is signatures, which must be presented physically no matter the requirement.
Maybe Echosign will eventually be the answer to this? If the online signature service ever became fully trusted and compliant it would certainly bring efficiency in this industry to an unprecedented dimension. With the increase in tablet usage it is not out of the question.
While some in the industry may be resistant to change this is not part of our culture. This can also be seen by our readiness for the Retail Distribution Review. We will always be happy to embrace the best of the new, and you can trust in our service to be as efficient as it can be.
Malcolm Stewart