Background
The Private Office (TPO) has built its reputation on results. Founded in 2008, it has grown to a team of over 70 planners and paraplanners working in 3 locations in the UK. With a partnership approach and bespoke wealth management services, clients rely on TPO's award-winning team of independent, Chartered Financial Planning experts to offer unbiased advice and find the best solutions.
The Challenge and Opportunity
After nearly a decade of growth, TPO found itself in need of a more streamlined approach to its financial planning process. With team members in multiple locations, ensuring a consistent client experience was becoming a challenge. Advisors were relying on a combination of cash-flow planning tools-including excel spreadsheets-and seeking a dynamic solution to better engage clients. In addition, they could no longer rely on inputs to deliver accurate reflections of a client's finances using alternative software. As Mark Hall, TPO's Associate Director of Client Delivery, recalls, "What we found with the old cash flow system was that it was quite archaic and was not intuitive. You'd have to work around the system with manual intervention to get an output you could trust. And that just wasn't working as it was open for interpretation and unscalable."
Engaging Advisors and Giving Clients the Confidence to Make Life-Changing Decisions
Once the leadership team agreed that their current tools weren't meeting the needs of advisors or clients, they conducted research for alternative solutions. It wasn't long before they registered for a free trial with Voyant. "You don't need to look too far to see Voyant is the market leader in how cash-flow should be done," Mark declared.
As with any business transition, there were initial pains moving to a new platform, but they were minimal. Any issues that arose were soon resolved with the help of Voyant's responsive support team and online resource library. However, the "big sell" for TPO was how intuitive Voyant's solution suite is. Very little training was necessary because it's so simple to input client information, making adoption seamless and straightforward.
It didn't take long before all TPO advisors were on board, presenting Voyant reports on-screen at every virtual and in-person client meeting. As a result, client engagement is no longer a challenge due to Voyant's flexible, web-based platform and easy-to-use interface. More importantly, advisors embrace Voyant because they know their clients can rely on its calculations and outputs to make life-changing decisions.
Learning and Results
Since introducing Voyant, TPO has found great success addressing two major sources of client concern-retirement planning and tax efficiency.
One business-owner client wanted to sell his business but didn't know what his "golden number" was. Using what-if scenarios modeling different growth rates, it became clear how much he needed to cover future expenses and live a comfortable life. As Mark explains, "for people selling their business, and we have quite a lot of them, that's hugely powerful. You can imagine the stress of wondering if the sale price is enough." He credits the Voyant platform for facilitating the conversation with compelling visuals that made sense.
Another high-net worth client had been drawing money from his pension pot, unaware of the negative tax implications that created. In a face-to-face meeting, TPO was able to show him how much their advice and strategy would save him. He became a client the same day.
"Voyant puts clients' minds at ease. Often, they are unclear whether they can retire or sell a business. I don't know how any financial planner can confidently guide someone to make that decision without using a holistic, visual tool like Voyant." -Mark Hall, The Private Office.
