The “starting point is what is your proposition,” he says.
According to Wilkes, advisers should consider how they want to interact with their clients, what their service should look like and feel like to clients.
“If you're going to move [clients] into a digital onboarding process initially, to get that initial data and that fact finding process started, then I think that’s the first basic decision, then it's a matter of, right, who does that best for me.
“You really need to understand where your businesses is, what's most important to you, to your business, whether it's process, admin burden, brand, a combination of those things, and then select the right parties that match that."
However, he adds: “If [you are] looking for the one stop shop for everything, it doesn't exist.”
He says his firm has “researched everything, and we continue to” but has come to the conclusion that whatever tech it buys in, it still needs to use other things in the background to support the client and adviser experience.
What's more, trying to improve the technology his firm works with has historically been “nigh on impossible”, he says, which is why switching to new providers is always an option he is happy to take "even if it causes a little pain internally for us in the short term.”
A major frustration
One thing in particular the firm has been trying to solve for years is a link up between its back office system and the platforms it uses for clients.
"That seems so simple and so logical, but just at the moment doesn't really exist,” Wilkes says.
He says the past two years have been “really frustrating” in that regard. “Because of what we've wanted, we find the existing incumbents in the platform world to be really cumbersome.
"And really, if you're an IFA that's got model portfolios and is not going to do a great deal with them, they're fine. But because we're an adviser with discretionary permissions, were neither a DFM nor an IFA, we kind of get lost in the middle.”
The business went down the route of trying to build its own platform as a result but found that didn’t work either.
In particular it wanted full access to the universe of funds or ETFs it could choose and manage.
"That's something we've been trying to do for two or three years, and the platform sector just isn't quite there to allow us to do it. And that's been a major frustration for us," says Wilkes.
