We sit in the midst of turbulent times; short term sentiment and global issues are leading to significant market turmoil. Indeed, market drops are looking to rival those of the banking crisis of 2007/08. Yet the long-term fundamentals remain strong.
During these situations if you’re an IFA or wealth advisory firm you can easily find yourself on the back foot – fielding client calls, providing reassurance and updates to your clients and importantly looking to protect your AUM as well as the potential funds yet to be placed into markets.
At times of uncertainty, clients will often defer their investment decisions, preferring to sit with cash in existing deposit accounts until they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Others will be looking to take a pause from the markets, withdraw funds (even though we educate clients to remain calm and vested) and AUM flows back to the client’s deposit provider and away from the adviser.
For those IFA’s and Wealth firms who have a Cash Planner in place for their clients, then this situation, though far from ideal, poses no serious impact. In fact, we are seeing that for those forward-thinking firms that already have this available, offering clients a safe haven for their funds, has helped to strengthen the client-adviser relationship. At a time when the client most needs to turn to their trusted adviser for help, being able to provide more than just words of reassurance will set that firm/adviser apart from the rest.
A Cash Planner Service allows firms and advisers to provide an enhanced offering to their clients – giving them access to a whole marketplace of deposit providers, covered by the FSCS protection and allowing clients to easily open, place and hold accounts with multiple providers, giving unrivalled access to the choice of interest rates available. Offering clients greater protection with their cash becomes increasingly valuable as the level of their cash increases. Take a client with cash in excess of £500,000, to maximise this across the FSCS protection they would be opening accounts with 6 different deposit takers, not an easy task without the use of a cash planner service. One stop on-boarding into the cash planner means that KYC and AML are conducted just once without the need to then repeat again with providers meaning that there is a true friction-less experience for the adviser and client.
Akonihub (akonihub.com) offers one of the UK’s leading and most functional Cash Planner Services available today, importantly their service is fully white labelled to the IFA/Wealth firm meaning it looks and feels an integral part of your proposition. More so Akonihub offer a full suite of API integrations, is FCA regulated and holds Open-Banking licenses giving firms unrivalled views of clients holding through just one lens.
For those advisers already using the platform, they have overcome the cumbersome processes associated with placing cash for their clients and are now seeing this area as far more than a just “a safe haven” as they attract more off platform cash and increase the overall holdings sat within their control.
Akoni helps businesses make the most of their cash. Register free for access to market-leading interest rate accounts, cash planning tools and tips at panel.akonihub.com and follow us on Twitter