By Caroline Gill, Outside The Box Consultancy

Are you among those businesses that, when it comes to compliance, view tech solutions as a luxury rather than a necessity? Are you getting by with good spreadsheets and hardworking administrators?

If you answered yes to either of those questions, I’ve got news. Today, manual processes are an efficiency-sapping liability. Let me explain.

With the need to evidence outcomes (Consumer Duty), the complexity of evolving EU and MiFID requirements and the colossal volume of data that a modern firm produces, the manual approach to compliance is an undeniable business strategy killer, whereas technology is your best defensive shield in a rapidly changing world.

Expensive mistakes: the high cost of human error

Conversations about technology often centre on efficiency, ignoring the safety benefits.

To illustrate the point, let’s consider the following credible error that could occur with a manual approach to compliance. An instruction to encash an ISA is missed because a paper form was buried on a desk. The market drops. The firm is now liable for a loss that could amount to £40,000 or £50,000.

Additionally, manual systems can create confusion around accountability. For example, where does responsibility lie for sending this or that form, and who was tasked with checking a specific file?

While these might be hypothetical scenarios, they are risks that firms face every day. Technology addresses this danger by providing an audit trail. This ensures that actions across the business are tracked and recorded, helping avoid the “I thought you were doing it” conversation.

Nothing to fear but fear itself: overcoming the overwhelm

Another barrier to tech adoption is the understandable concern about the complexity surrounding digital tools. From the modern platform economy flows a seemingly never-ending stream of jargon. The terms AI, automation, APIs and CRM integration immediately spring to mind.

However, the best way to overcome the daunting task of modernisation is to work backwards. Don’t start with the tool itself; come at it from the angle of the outcome. For example:

• Wrong approach: We need AI.
• Right approach: We need our advisers to spend 20 per cent more time with clients. What tool achieves that?

The human touch: how tech supports customer service

Fears that AI might remove the all-important personal touch in wealth management are well established. But in my view, they’re misplaced. Currently, highly skilled advisers spend hours scheduling meetings, writing up reports, scrutinising minutes and ticking off actions. None of this adds value from a client perspective.

With AI, however, a different approach is possible, and My Compliance Centre’s Boards and Committees module is a great example of that approach in action. Powered by AI, the tool can review board meeting minutes and instantly suggest follow-up actions, making oversight seamless and consistent.

Alongside this, My Compliance Centre’s Regulatory Change Management module provides real-time oversight as required by the FCA. Thanks to in-platform AI, businesses receive instant summaries of regulatory updates, which allow easy categorisation of changes, assignment of tasks and maintenance of a flawless audit trail. Colleagues are empowered to divert hours that would have been spent manually interpreting new FCA rules towards more client-beneficial activities. 

The upshot of all this is that customers get a more attentive, personalised experience, and the firm trades with the peace of mind that comes with a commercially savvy compliance strategy.

All-round benefits: from administration to user experience

Building on that last point, we are seeing firms use tech to transform the client journey entirely. Simple touches like a waiting room screen that welcomes a client by name help to set the tone of care and professionalism before a meeting even starts.

It’s hard to deliver this level of experience if your team’s time is taken up grappling with manual processes.

A hybrid future: augmenting customer care

In summary, adopting technology doesn’t mean replacing skills and knowledge. It means freeing up your experts to use their judgement.

If your management information and reporting are automated, it becomes possible to spend Board meetings discussing strategy and client meetings building stronger relationships.

In a time-poor, high-pressure environment, technology is the only lever you have left to pull that creates more capacity. And in our industry, that is the most valuable asset of all.