According to a Cerulli Quantitative Update, financial advisors spend up to 41% of their time on administrative and office management activities. That’s approximately 2 hours each day spent on activities that aren’t generating new income for the firm. Reducing administration time as a financial advisor for business owners does not have to be complicated.
Here are some of the best solutions for cutting down on administrative work:
Hire a professional
When a £12-an-hour administrative assistant undertakes tasks that a partner worth hundreds of pounds an hour might complete; searches for old papers; makes a copy; or performs any other work such an financial advisor for business owners can do, this is counterintuitive to the company’s health.
Make a list of all the admin chores you do now, such as filing or returning records, and assess whether it would be more cost-effective to engage someone even part-time to accomplish these tasks.
Stop depending on the paper.
According to survey, two-thirds of businesses waste at least £2000 per employee yearly due to excessive paper usage. In the case of a company with five to ten employees, 20% of workers print out physical papers at least once a week, and the staffing required to do so adds up: business owners spend more than 120 working days each year on administrative tasks.
You can save time by reducing your dependence on paper. You may avoid wasting time searching for, finding, and reviewing files by avoiding relying on paper. Going completely paperless may be difficult, but identify where you use the most form and where you might reduce it. It is a simple and quick solution to prevent the creation of spam emails and other digital documents.
Challenge your processes
Reducing admin time by challenging your current operations and refusing to accept the present condition is an excellent method to save time. Sit your group down and develop new, more efficient ways of doing the same things. Perhaps you can reduce duplicate effort by combining forms, make better use of your CRM by only tracking clients when necessary, and store info in the cloud so that it can be accessed from anywhere rather than traveling into the office.
You’re more likely to discover areas of needless effort if you invite individuals from all business sections.
Minimize admin work when seeing clients
If you can only devote 59% of your time to advising clients, you need to make the most of it. The problem isn’t bringing your paper files and forms with you on your visits; it’s what you do with them when you get back to the office. You’ll be able to sort and find these files more quickly if you store them practically, using a digital document storage system that intelligently interacts with your CRM. Plus, because the information you gather is so essential, converting the files to digital copies gives you more control over data protection and ensures an audit trail to prove it.
Finance in a system designed for financial advisors
Every business has its own set of quirks, and financial advisors are no exception. When you’re looking for a document storage system, cloud-based filing, a way to reduce paper usage, or a way to communicate with your CRM selecting one appropriate for your line of business is crucial; having a clear and concise manner of tracking client information, appointments, and finances. Setting up automatic payments, scheduling reminders, and creating templates can help free up an advisor’s time so they can focus on providing quality advice to their clients.
Conclusion
Docupile provides cloud-based document management, designed especially for SMEs and built on a foundation of significant financial services industry expertise. We’ve perfected and refined our system to work for financial advisers, allowing you to keep records easily; free up office areas; find files quickly from anywhere; maintain files with GDPR compliance, and lower overall admin time.
Suppose you’re searching for solutions to reduce administration time in your financial planning business. In that case, Docupile will help you discover ways you may save time and money by simply altering how you store documents and files.