Firms that are yet to integrate technology to complete assessments run the risk of missing significant vulnerabilities among their clients, MorganAsh has found.
Feedback from users of the MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS) revealed that firms are not only getting to know their customers better – including existing clients – but discovering vulnerabilities which they previously did not know about.
MortganAsh found that vulnerability assessments helped identify information that people did not volunteer face-to-face spontaneously, and which might be hard questions for advisers to ask.
In addition, assessments helped uncover invisible vulnerabilities that advisers would not normally assume people have.
Paul Russell, independent financial adviser, said: “I get detailed monthly reports. Like everyone, I think I know my clients well, but MARS highlighted some with significant vulnerabilities – clients with alcohol dependency issues, and clients who have had cancer.
“Those stood out, but there is a wealth of detail across the board.
“As much as you can ask all the questions and may be doing good fact finds, the MARS assessment brought out information that I just didn’t know.”
Andrew Gething, managing director of MorganAsh, added: “You can know someone really well and yet still not know something important about them.
“Many material vulnerabilities aren’t apparent, aren’t volunteered and aren’t something you’d casually ask about. We often say that, like wealth, vulnerabilities aren’t binary.
“People aren’t just either rich or poor. In the same way, you don’t either know everything about someone, or know nothing.
“If there’s one consistent piece of feedback we get from customers, it is that they uncover significant vulnerabilities from consumers they have known for years.
“You can know someone well, but you can’t know everything.
“It’s no reflection whatsoever on an adviser or their relationship with a client. It’s normal.
“But it’s the gap that products like MARS and its objective vulnerability assessment are designed to fill.”
Gething added: “People are less happy talking about their finances, [but] we get very little push-back with our vulnerability assessments.”
Russell agreed: “I got a fast response from about 80% of people, which tells me that the system is quick, reliable and easy to use.
“In the end, around 90% of the assessments were completed online and the rest I went through personally, with the client, using the MARS questionnaire.”
Gething said: “With the right questions, specialist vulnerability knowledge and a lot of time, you could get similar results from a manual approach.
“But that’s the whole point of technology. It’s there to make light work of big tasks and lets you find things you wouldn’t otherwise have seen.
“We need smart tech to get consumer vulnerability right and to help meet the requirements of Consumer Duty.”
