Back in the summer of 2019, the lang cat published a paper called A Disconnected World? This examined integration – or the lack of it – in the world of advisers and financial planners, and its impact.

That paper struck a nerve, and ended up kick-starting an industry-wide debate around technology, system integrations and the deep frustration firms felt in wrangling seemingly simple day-to-day processes on behalf of their clients. The paper exposed how these issues hadn’t been effectively tackled, let alone solved.

Since then, obviously a lot has changed. But within the financial services sphere, we wanted to understand how much has really changed for advice firms and financial planning practices, and whether we’re any closer to the industry nirvana of genuinely frictionless processes.

This report is a much deeper dive than its predecessor – drawing on a wide bank of interviews with advice professionals ranging from the big consolidators and national firms to the smaller specialists. It also weaves in views from providers, platforms, tech companies and more, and is packed with data and the usual lang cat insight.

THE LAUNCH

Join us for a breakfast briefing on Tuesday 20 September at Events @ No. 6, 6 Alie Street, London for the first reveal of the findings.

Breakfast will be served at 9am and the session will begin at 9.30am.

The session will cover:

• What progress has been made since A Disconnected World
• The reality of integration for advisers and clients
• The provider perspective
• Where are we now – barriers and what needs to change

It’ll also call out what’s working less well, some of the good practice that’s out there, plus future adviser tech developments to watch.

We hope to see you there!