12 Nov Financial Services: Don’t buy the wrong CRM system

Business in this digital age = data; a lot of data, and there are few sectors where this is more the case than financial services.

It goes without saying that acting as a wealth manager, broker, fund or advisor, obligates you to a whole world of regulatory burden – centred largely on the volume and sensitivity in the nature of the data you hold, alongside strict procedures for the conduct of your day to day business. Keeping your team adherent to a complex web of protocols, whether regulatory or internal business procedures, can be challenging enough, but even more so without the implementation of the right computerised system that ties all of that together in a structured way. Herein enters the value of having the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

Why your current system isn’t up to scratch?

It is not uncommon to find independent financial advisors, wealth managers or brokers running their business from an ‘off the shelf’ CRM system, or worse, from something as basic as Excel spreadsheets.

The vast majority of CRM systems are designed to apply to many different markets in a bid to keep their options open to the businesses they can service, and by this very nature, they tailor poorly to requirements beyond handling the most basic of customer information. For financial services this approach is far too vanilla and generic – CRMs commonly miss some or all of the components most vital to the sector, including:

1. Volume and style of data – Financial services firms are fairly unique in the number of individual data points that must be held on each client. Combining the FCA ‘Know your Client’ obligations driving up the number of answers that must be collected from clients, with each of the data fields unique to the range of products and services directly sold or brokered to clients; the volume and formats of the data points held within a financial services practice must be catered for.
   
   
2. Unique terminology – As providers of financial services, unlike an average CRM user, your firm is not selling ‘widgets’ – items that have a fairly rigid buy and sell price, have a stock quantity to manage and are quite transactional in nature. Generic CRMs are built with this whole product by product transactional sale concept in mind, which is completely off-piste to the case by case dynamic nature of consulting and brokering around financial service products; with the brokerage of a mortgage product differing entirely from a pension or an investment. If the terminology and structure used within the system is unfamiliar to your team, can you be certain that they will truly adopt it?
   
   
3. Rigid processes – Aside from some specific user permissions, almost all generic CRM systems provide users with carte blanche freedom to make updates and edits to records with little regard for an ordered process for doing so. The reliance for process adherence is entirely on the user, and with processes that need to change with an evolving business and ever shifting regulatory burden, how can you 100% be certain your team will always remember to do the right thing. Inadvertent human error is rife – why have a CRM system that doesn’t lock users into your rigid processes and minimise the scope for human error?
   
   
4. Audit trail – The need to log every data component or service activity within a generic CRM system can be an arduous, or quite possibly an impossible task.
   
   
5. Reporting – When you have a mammoth of reporting requirements to file with the FCA, and need to share periodic financial status or performance reports with clients, generic system dashboards and manual spreadsheet exports aren’t going to cut it. Why have a system that doesn’t cut the red tape for you by producing the figures that you need, when you need them, in the format you want them?

RADAR CRM holds the key.

From our years of supporting businesses in the financial services sector, we have learned how best to support clients in overcoming challenges and gaps prevalent in most generic CRM systems.

Our unique approach addresses these unique financial services related CRM requirements by:

1. All of your unique data fields – capture any and all of the data points you need to, whether that’s relating to a customer’s record, a product or policy you have provided, or enabling the measurement and tracking of your commission.
   
   
2. Your unique terminology – RADAR CRM speaks in your language. Whether our default financial services CRM components match your internal terminology or not, your account can be personalised to your phraseology used within your business. By deploying a system that adopts your terminology from day one, will ensure your team seamlessly adopt RADAR CRM and hit the ground running.
   
   
3. Your process structure & logic – RADAR CRM’s powerful workflow engine will ‘stick your team like glue’ to the defined processes and practices used within your business. The system funnels user inputs with ‘if this, then that’ logic to almost but eliminate data entry errors and ensure all of the activities within your business take place as per your defined procedures. Beyond structuring user activity, the workflow can be built to drive a number of different automated steps – further driving your efficiency by cutting red tape and manual actions.
   
   
4. Your full audit trail – benefit from peace of mind that your full audit trail of system entries and service activities will be fully logged. From tracking every email engagement against a client record to a full log of user inputs and changes; your full business activity history is at your finger tips in RADAR CRM.
   
   
5. Your reports on-tap –  save a considerable amount of time by receiving pre-scheduled system reports that contain all of the data fields you need. Make your FCA reporting a breeze with all of the report components presented to you in the order you need, with automation and mathematical calculations summarising the key figures you need to have to hand.

Find out more about how RADAR CRM can be personalised to your business – BOOK A FREE DEMO