Business support services provider SimplyBiz has performed hundreds of ‘virtual compliance’ visits during lockdown.
In March and April this year, the firm completed 500 compliance visits, compared with 400 physical visits last year.
For the month of May, the firm performed 200 visits in 2019, while this year it recorded 238 virtual visits.
Although the numbers represent between a 20 per cent and 25 per cent increase, the company highlighted that it took “some advice firms longer than others to move online”.
At the beginning of April, SimplyBiz unveiled a package of additional support, designed to help the 3,700 adviser and broker firms using its services during the Covid-19 crisis.
The services provider has shared details with Money Marketing about the uptake of the programme and how its virtual learning centre is benefiting advisers by offering training and structured CPD events through a digital channel.
SimplyBiz says it received an average satisfaction score of 9.7 out of 10 for the virtual compliance visits.
It has also moved several events online as large gatherings cannot go ahead due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The group’s managing director Richard Ardron tells Money Marketing that it will provide a hybrid model of face to face and virtual events in the future when things return to normal.
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He says: “Advisers still want to serve clients, they still want to learn, they just can’t do it face to face currently”.
Typically, the firm puts on more than 400 events a year from holistic events and full conferences to special courses on topics such as ethical investments and protection mortgages.
Ardron says: “Will we do 400 face to face events next year? No. I can be quite clear on that. Will we completely replace face to face? No.
“We’ll do a lot more virtual events and we’ll still do the core face to face but scale back because advisers want that, providers want that and it’s efficient and works for everybody.”
He explains that over the last few years SimplyBiz has invested into technology, including its purchase of Defaqto, in a bid to give as much additional support as possible to advisers and the wider market.
“Many advisers were probably wondering how the virtual compliance visits would work. But we’ve had some great feedback with advisers saying it was as though it was performed face to face. We have been able to talk to advisers and share our screens and files securely.
“We carried out around 300 compliance visits in six weeks, that’s a lot more than we can physically by travelling up and down the motorway.
“An adviser can have a virtual visit and for us it’s more efficient as we can do more than one in a day.
“We’re not necessarily looking for solutions that will disrupt, we’re looking for a continuation of service by saying to advisers ‘here’s the help desk, here’s the virtual compliance team, here’s the support team on the end of the phone for technical queries’ and it’s working really well.”
He adds: “We have been building a foundation to say we are here to help advisers with whatever that need is,” he tells Money Marketing.
“A lot of those things we are doing today have been expedited by the situation, but the foundations were in place.”
Ardron says tech development which may usually take 18 months has been done in three to six weeks in response to the crisis.
“There are some interim solutions in place, but we will take the time to build more robust systems.”
And he highlights the company moved quickly to “first and foremost mobilise 500 staff to enable them to work from home”.
He says: “We launched the pillars of support around payment holidays and access to financial information and support from the government as they are things we knew people would appreciate in the current market and it gives advisers one less thing to worry about so they can focus on advising their clients.
“Advisers are adapting as quick as we are. People are enhancing what is already there rather than ripping up the rule book and starting again.
“It’s very encouraging that people are using tech to wrap it around advice and still do what they have always done.”
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