AWS Support Resources

Last week the Adviser Workstation team travelled to York for our monthly Adviser User Forum. It was great to finally meet some of the people we have been speaking with on the phone for the last year or so! We also managed to see some of the sites, including The Shambles, “the most picturesque street in the UK,” and I even bought a flat cap so I could fit in.

The agenda included a presentation of common investor mistakes and how to avoid them, given by one Morningstar Associates’ investment consultants Brook Sweeney, a presentation of Morningstar’s qualitative fund research given by Head of UK Research Jackie Beard, and an overview of the Adviser Workstation software given by yours truly. Overall the feedback we received was quite positive and it was great to see more of our clients engaged with the software and interested in the research and fund analysis Morningstar provides the IFA community. The individual training sessions in the afternoon were also well received. It is always nice to sit down with our clients and help them address their day-to-day business needs.

Common training questions included questions on importing client portfolios, portfolio reporting needs, investment planning and future integrations with 3^rd parties. If you have questions in any of these areas, please let us know! These are very common needs of our clients and we are very happy to help you start utilizing the software to meet your business needs. Some of the training videos on this blog may also help address some of these needs so I would encourage you to have a look.

If you have not had the chance to attend one of our User Forums we would love to see at the next event in your area. Stay tuned for future emails announcing locations and dates. In the mean time, thanks for reading!

Posted in: Events, Morningstar,

In January, Morningstar Adviser Workstation was awarded the Best IFA Online Tool by Professional Adviser magazine. We were thrilled to win this award, especially considering the other nominees which included Inteliflo, Adviser Office and Trustnet. This was a great start to 2010 and a real testament to our efforts in 2009 to improve the tool and increase awareness of Morningstar in the IFA community. We are really looking forward to building on this success in 2010 as we increase our efforts to integrate with various wraps and back office systems and continue to make Adviser Workstation an indispensible tool for IFAs.

Posted in: IFA News and Commentary, Morningstar,

Back in January I attended a conference here in London that went pretty far in breaking the mould of a traditional gathering of IFAs. The conference was held by IFA Life, which is a social networking site for IFAs. There were industry experts there to speak but the topic of conversation did not center on product providers, investing trends or the overall ill health of the economy. Instead, as the title of the conference stated, we were there to hear about “Social Media in Financial Services” – a topic that is near and dear to very few IFAs. So why the great turnout? I braved the snow and ice because I want to make this blog as informative and valuable as possible and I thought it would be a good opportunity to hear what others are doing and test out some of my ideas with advisers. But why did so many advisers turn up in spite of a snowstorm the morning of the first day? Why were they saying afterwards, “this is the best conference I have ever attended”?

It turns out that social media and the internet present an enormous opportunity for financial advisers to reach out to potential clients and improve the service they already provide. Now there is a little sarcasm in that statement – of course the internet can help an adviser reach out to clients. Many advice firms have websites of varying complexity and have found them to be much like a phone number was 25 years ago; something that is essential for doing business. However, social media – things like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Ecademy and even Youtube – can actually be utilized to effectively communicate with clients and prospects while building a name for oneself in the online community. I’m sure most IFAs will read this and think, “Facebook is for kids,” or “What’s a Twitter?” I would have put myself in that category before this conference and I’ve used Facebook for about a year so I wouldn’t say I’m uninformed. What I realized at the conference though, and I know I wasn’t alone, was that internet usage across every age group in the UK is increasing. As it increases, the percentage of people using social networking sites is growing even faster, and that includes people over the age of 55. I realized that although things like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are seen as novelties by many, they are very close to becoming mainstream. And once they are mainstream, if you are not already familiar with their uses and how to leverage these things, you have to play catch-up.

Most IFAs do not have a marketing plan. This was another somewhat surprising statement uttered at this conference. Do you have a marketing plan? Other than referrals, how else does your client base grow? Is your current business plan ready to take advantage of the shrinking number of IFAs and the inevitable consolidation that will take place? Facebook or Twitter are certainly not perfect solutions, but the ability to understand who uses these types of social networking sites and why they use them can place an adviser in a very good position as things evolve in the coming 3 years. These are merely my observations and by no means an attempt to lecture so please add your own comments or feedback, whether you agree or disagree.

Posted in: IFA News and Commentary, Morningstar,