AMP joins KPMG in plotting digital advice journey

AMP has signalled its objectives with respect to digital advice by joining with KPMG to conduct a market scan with the two companies saying the objective is to accelerate the change needed for the financial advice sector to service more customers.

The market scan research was outlined to Financial Newswire’s Platforms, Wraps and Advice Technology Conference in the Hunter Valley with AMP’s Managing Director of Advice, Matt Lawler joining with KPMG special adviser, Marianne Perkovic to outline the depth of the exercise.

Importantly the market scan has recommended that the definition of digital financial advice be expanded to:

“Digital financial advice is the technology-enabled delivery of general or personal advice using an algorithm to provide outcomes based on an individual’s answers to various targeted questions. This can be entirely self-directed or involve human interaction, or a combination of both”.

The conference session, moderated by Colonial First State non-executive director, Jo-Anne Bloch emphasised that the objective was to harmonise digital advice with the delivery of comprehensive advice.

Explaining the approach, Perkovic said the objective was to accelerate the change needed to ensure that the financial advice industry has the capacity to serve more customers and reach Australians who needed affordable financial advice.

She said the market scan included 16 digital financial advice providers that are supporting the delivery of digital financial advice across a diverse set of tools, services and solutions with the report describing each provider defines their target market, what their services are, ranging from information, engagement, and guidance through to comprehensive personal advice, what technology they use, and how they work with enterprises to implement the advice services.

Perkovic explained that the market scan isn’t a benchmarking survey, and providers aren’t ranked, rather it outlines the details of each service offered.

Commenting on the scan, Lawler said that digital and face-to-face advice were often seen as binary but, in reality, clients were likely to move in and out of different forms of advice over time.

“Practices have the same issues with cost to serve of financial advice as large institutions and superannuation funds, so supporting all players to provide a service that ‘nurtures’ clients along the advice spectrum is core to how we think about solutions in this space,” he said.

Looking at the offerings in the market, the scan came up with the following: