Unrivalled service and support are the linchpins of James Hay's Wrap and Sipp offerings, writes Stefano Del Federico, UK Sales Director, Abbey Wealth Management
If the watchwords of the property business are "location, location, location", then those of any provider who is serious about meeting the requirements of today's forward-looking financial adviser firms must be "service, service, service" and "support, support, support". We have known that ever since Abbey first became involved in the intermediary market, and our focus has always been strongly on financial advisers and their customers. But, following the launch of Wrap in 2003, three years of close working with many of the most progressive, fee-based and advice-led intermediaries in the UK today have tightened and sharpened that focus even more - allowing us to see the road ahead through dinancial advisers' eyes and know exactly what advisers will need to progress along it.
That understanding has enabled us to align our goals 100% with those of the financial advisers who support us. Just as their aim is to acquire and retain profitable clients through the quality and value of the service they give, ours is to help advisers achieve that aim - by providing every financial adviser with first class support so that they stay with us for the long term. James Hay, of course, is a service brand through and through, and always has been - a great service brand. Its continued dominance as the biggest provider in the Sipp market is overwhelmingly due to the quality and consistency of the service and support that it provides for its customers - financial advisers and their clients. Those same factors have also underpinned the success of our Wrap, which has been administered by James Hay from day one - and was the first full Wrap service to be approved by the FSA.
We are proud of James Hay's reputation and achievement, and we believe the James Hay brand will give us the strongest possible foundation for our future growth. So strong is our confidence in the James Hay brand, that the Abbey Wrap will be relaunched as James Hay Wrap to sit alongside its market-leading range of Sipps.
And, to add to that, we are now taking the concept of service and support to an unprecedented new level. To drive the success of every financial adviser that chooses to work with us, we have adopted a '5-star' service and support strategy that we are confident is without parallel in the industry.
For the last three years, Abbey has been helping the first wave of financial advisers to begin the transition from the old-style business model, based on sales of life office products with funded commission structures, to the new advice and service-led model, based on Wrap and Sipp. This experience has given us a clear knowledge of what is needed for advisers to accomplish such a complete change of direction, and style of operation, with the minimum disruption and the quickest results.
James Hay's service and support package is delivered by four specialist teams of carefully selected and highly experienced professionals. Between them, they are equipped to give hands-on help with developing the new-style business and implementing the new systems, while providing full day-to-day operational support, and the best technical back-up, which is on tap to every financial adviser that makes the decision to use our services. When you add those to propositions that combine maximum functionality with total transparency, we really think James Hay is ticking all the boxes for financial advisers for Wrap and Sipp.
Every supporting financial adviser firm is assigned a local Business Development Manager who will have overall responsibility for ensuring it gains the most benefit from its relationship with James Hay. Our Business Development Managers have the practical experience to know and understand exactly what advisers need in order to write new business - so each one is fully able to help with prospecting for new clients and professional introducers, marketing new solutions to existing clients, and improving the overall profitability of each financial adviser business in their care.
We believe the move to Wrap will accelerate rapidly, and that this kind of development help at the 'sharp-end' is the key to ensuring that the change in style of working is seamless and immediately productive for every financial adviser who decides to make it. For this reason we have initiated an ongoing recruitment programme for our sales and marketing teams, to give even greater depth of financial adviser support throughout the regions.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for many financial advisers who are considering a move to open-architecture working, is a concern that the changeover might cause serious upheaval to the daily running of their administration, and that mistakes could be expensive for the business. With James Hay, every financial adviser has the services of a dedicated member of our implementation team - backed up by specialist consultants when necessary. These individuals are all Wrap veterans who will help you to migrate existing client assets successfully onto our Wrap platform, train your staff and ensure that they feel comfortable with the procedures, and then provide ongoing support to your back office for as long as it may be necessary.
At James Hay's head office, our skilled key customer services team helps support financial advisers with everything from quotations to procedural queries, pipeline enquiries and any operational troubleshooting they might need. Here, as at every level in James Hay, you deal with a named, dedicated individual, whose job it is to be part of your team.
The fourth, and final, cornerstone of our service and support regime is probably the best technical support unit in the UK financial services industry. We certainly understand that is the view of most financial advisers, who have called on them for help when working with Abbey providers over the years. Immensely knowledgeable and experienced, an understanding of an adviser's needs, and able to communicate in clear and straightforward terms, our technical support team are geared to providing information and guidance on the whole range of trust, taxation and pensions issues - and acting as a reliable sounding board for your ideas for dealing with the most complex financial planning needs of individual clients.
These support services are not simply add-ons - mere icing on the cake - but are intrinsic to our Wrap and Sipp propositions. Service is our product - just as it is for financial advisers. The James Hay Wrap and Sipp propositions are based on open architecture, which means the financial adviser can gain access not just to a few fettered funds, as with a life office, nor even to a fund supermarket, but to any allowable investment on the market. To offer that openness, and make it work flawlessly - as James Hay has done for many years - demands not only the most robust and highly-developed IT systems, but a total commitment to service of the very highest order.
In James Hay Wraps and Sipps we have two outstanding and proven propositions to offer financial advisers. In addition to their open-architecture functionality, both platforms allow advisers the option to appoint discretionary investment managers, in order to minimise any business risk associated with offering investment advice, by outsourcing all investment decisions. Their range of features is matched by their transparency. Transparency, in our view, is among the most important aspects of a true Wrap and James Hay Wrap is one of the most transparent on the market, with all fund manager discounts and incentives being passed back to the client. Individual tax products have become increasingly commoditised in the post-Sandler era. As that trend continues, we hold the view that the main differentiators between providers will be centred around service - its quality, depth, and the accessibility of both people and functionality. Four vital key factors - functionality, transparency, service and support are what will enable financial advisers to meet the needs of their clients, and of their business, as simply and reliably as possible - and as profitably as possible.
James Hay's commitment to service has earned it no less than 17 awards for self-invested pensions in the last five years alone. We look forward to making room in the trophy cabinet as more and more financial advisers take advantage of our unique and market leading propositions and service.
