Financial advisers have more than doubled the number of clients onboarded each week over the past 12 months, a 116% rise year-on-year, new research from Intelliflo shows.
To cater for this growing number of clients, advisers are seeking to digitise more of their processes, with the ideal level at 77% to boost efficiency.
Onboarding absorbs a significant amount of time, half of which is not spent directly with the client. According to the survey, the average firm onboarded 13 new clients each week, up from six in 2024, equivalent to 364 additional new clients per year. To drive efficiencies across their businesses, advice firms have now digitised nearly half (43%) their processes – up 10% from 2024. Yet many continue to feel the strain of manual tasks.
Technology has helped reduce time across multiple areas — report writing, fact finding, presenting recommendations, and implementing plans — with report writing showing the biggest improvement. Advisers now save 20 minutes per report, equivalent to four hours a week.
Despite these gains, time intensive tasks remain. On average, advisers spend 3.5 hours on fact finding per client, 2.6 hours on presenting recommendations to clients, and 4.1 hours to implement financial plans.
However, on-boarding reportedly takes around 15 hours per client – of which 54% is not spent with the client. With 13 clients onboarded each week, advisers spend approximately 113 days each year on implementation alone.
Therefore, advisers want to digitise 77% of their workflows in the future to reap the time savings technology offers to better serve their customers. One in five (21%) are aiming for full digitisation of all processes, yet a mere 1% said they were currently able to do this.
Richard Wake, chief operating officer of intelliflo, commented: “Technology has become central to the advice journey and it’s incredible to see advice firms scaling their client base so significantly. But growth brings new challenges. Advisers want to go further, faster when it comes to digitisation. That’s why we’re focused on delivering integrated, intelligent technology that cuts down on admin and frees up time where it matters most: their clients.”
