Does Advice RegTech work for you in a crisis?

2020 has seen individuals, business and government living, managing and surviving crisis after crisis – and its only March. Bushfires, floods and now the most significant health crisis in the last 100 years. Whilst we all were not been directly impacted by the first two, we are all impacted by COVID 19.

Never before have financial advice practices been more in demand and essential for managing the future financial outcomes of so many Australians[1]. Quality financial advice will play an important role in helping individuals navigate their immediate and long term personal and financial well-being.

Financial Advice practices have been seeking to take advantage of the digital economy for a number of years, some have achieved this more than others. It has never been more critical than in today’s volatile market, driving increased pressure on revenue and costs, whilst managing in crisis conditions with unknown resource availability and always putting the best interests of clients first, to have strong digital and technological driven partnerships.

The quality of financial advice remains an important focus for advice practices, advisers and regulators.[2] With the later making it clear that Regtech digital and technological solutions have enormous potential to help businesses build a culture of compliance, identify learning opportunities, and save time and money relating to regulatory matters.[3]

So, is your Advice Regtech partner helping you with crisis management? Managing through a crisis is more than understanding the cause and effect, it is stepping up to assist with innovative and collaborative approaches to ensure your business can continue to have the bandwidth and support to meet all the challenges the crisis throws up.

Your Advice Regtech partner should be:

A Collaborator – take a whole of business approach (not just a tech solution) to helping manage resources, costs and risk, working pro-actively to find solutions that can help resource pressure points to ensure you stay in compliance and continue to put your clients first in achieving successful advice outcomes.

An Innovator – finding ways to help solve business problems in crisis management environments quickly and effectively, offering ways to ensure that you continue to act in your client’s best interest.

Agile – have the ability and capacity to pivot when you need to pivot around resource availability, process flexibility, technology change and pricing alternatives to find solutions that maximise your ability to maintain your focus on your clients needs.

Resource Capacity – thinking beyond the technology, ensuring adequately trained resources are available to step up to help those areas of your business that may be impacted by resource unavailability and provided additional support to functional teams in uncertain times.

When managing resources in a crisis, advice practices need to ensure they maintain the appropriate compliance oversight of the advice process. When face to face meetings become unachievable, having a bionic technology solution that can provide insights through remote human oversight with a technology driven advice review processes which can keep the process moving, and keep you in compliance. But most of all ensure you continue to put your clients first and act in their best interest.

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Fourth Line is a rigorous RegTech risk management and compliance system for advice practices, dealer groups and other wealth management participants. Fourth Line uses algorithmic approaches to simplify the complexity in advice reviews whilst maintaining human oversight, empowering compliance teams to coach and develop strong advice behaviors through data driven insights from advanced analytics for adviser, practice/dealer group and industry benchmark comparison whilst centralised document storage and access to meet regulatory needs.

For information email: info@fourt-line.com.au

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/angus-woods-a5a7025_in-these-highly-charged-emotional-times-activity-6647455737473826816-nL-1

[2] ASIC Report 562, 1 January 2018 stated “In none of the 75% of files judged by ASIC to be “non-compliant” did the adviser demonstrate that following the advice given to the client would leave the client in a better position.”

[3] https://asic.gov.au/for-business/innovation-hub/asic-and-regtech/