BT works to support technical staff

BT is increasing the support available for support teams in advice firms.

In an interview with Money Management, Chris Mather, head of platform distribution, said the firm worked with around 10,000 support staff in addition to 6,000 advisers.

The firm’s Robotic Integrated Technology Administration (RITA) feature enabled advisers and their support staff to track the status of their transactions via the BT Panorama platform. BT said this could save up to 50 hours per year for an advice practice with 300 clients.

Mather said: “Support staff are the ones who are doing the service queries, the reporting, preparing the reviews and the reports and the implementation. They provide the client services on a day-to-day basis.

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“Previously, help for support staff hasn’t been as distinct as for advisers, it’s about the efficiency and the user experience.

“Practice professionals and office administrators are critical to improving workflows, managing client expectations and the growth of advice practices – and so we are enhancing BT Panorama in ways that align with how they prefer to work.”

He also said uptake was increasing for managed accounts with “huge growth” seen in the space. Some 80% of advisers said they were intending to use the products and 30% of advisers were already using them. According to the Institute of Managed Account Professionals, assets under management in managed accounts were now $135.8 billion.

One barrier to adoption of managed accounts was the evolution of the client value proposition and how advisers would charge clients for them.

“Our time is spent on helping practices move to this new way of operating and the value proposition and segmentation associated with that. Often there are tax implications of moving to them so advisers need to have a transition plan.

“There’s a high degree of variability in these, it could be only using them for new money or a new entity or using them in a core/satellite approach.”