New guidance targets enhanced consumer outcomes in financial planning.
- Conference in Manchester served as the platform for unveiling the guidance.
- Guidelines focus on clarity, connection, choice, control, and confidence.
- Emphasises the importance of human skills in financial planning.
- Encourages long-term client relationships to build confidence.
The recent release of new guidance at the PFS National Conference in Manchester aims to improve consumer outcomes in financial planning. This initiative highlights a strategic shift towards prioritising client experiences by focusing on key outcomes such as clarity, connection, choice, control, and confidence.
The guidance underscores the significance of human skills in assisting clients to make informed financial decisions. Duncan Parkes, a co-architect of POWER Planning, emphasised that outcome-based financial planning ensures the client’s central role in financial advising. The approach distinctively concentrates on achieving tangible outcomes that clients can perceive, beyond merely placing them at the heart of business operations.
Parkes also points out that setting goals with clients can provide them with clarity about their financial situation. Understanding their resources is fundamental in establishing a connection between their present circumstances and future ambitions. Once this is established, presenting choices to clients enhances their sense of control over financial decisions, thereby increasing the likelihood of reaching successful outcomes.
Regularly revisiting financial plans is deemed essential for maintaining client confidence. The long-term relationships that financial advisers build with their clients are crucial in reinforcing the belief that clients are on the right track to achieving their financial goals. This ongoing engagement is vital to nurturing client confidence, as reiterated by Carrie Bendall, head of PFS POWER content.
Bendall reflects on her experience since 2008, highlighting the repetition of themes like clarity, connection, choice, control, and confidence in numerous conversations with both planners and their clients. These conversations reveal how clients value the opportunity to define what personal financial planning means to them, often echoing these key outcomes.
This guidance, focusing on client outcomes, marks a significant step forward in the financial planning sector.
