2022 Client Survey Results

At the beginning of October we sent out our client feedback forms for 2022. Not only were we seeking opinions on the service we provide to our clients, but also information on their biggest financial worries and the ways in which we can improve our offering to make their lives easier.

Achieving positive outcomes for our clients is at the heart of our business, and so the outcome of these annual surveys is vital. We take the results, analyse them carefully, and make changes where they are needed.

2022’s feedback was as brilliant as ever for us to see! Our clients have amazing things to say about us, and always help us refine our service. Read on for what we discovered.

Headline Figures

We gave our clients 15 statements related to the service we provide, and asked them to rank how true they were on a scale from 0-5, where 0 meant “Very Poor/Very Untrue” and 5 meant “Excellent/Very True”. We also asked them to rank us overall on the same scale, and if they would recommend us to their friends. Here are the headline figures we’re incredibly proud to share:

• Our clients gave us an average overall rating of 5/5 – 100%!
• 100% of our clients would recommend us and our services to their friends.
• 100% of our clients said we are excellent at, or it is very true that our company, as an adviser:
  • Understands them and tailors advice to their circumstances
  • Is approachable and easy to talk to
  • Is easy to get hold of and responds quickly
  • Enables and supports them to pursue their financial goals
  • Keeps them informed and up to date
  • Is honest, fair, open, and acts in line with their expectations
  • Acts to deliver them with positive outcomes
  • Is knowledgeable on all aspects of their finances
  • Listens to their feedback and makes positive changes as a result.
• 99% of all other statements we gave scored good or true at the very least.

Our Clients’ Financial Concerns

One of the most important things we wanted to know from this feedback exercise was the types of things that are worrying our clients about their finances. Whilst we keep in regular touch with each client, taking such a measurement from everyone at a fixed point in time could provide valuable insight. We discovered:

• 62% of respondents’ biggest financial concerns were, unsurprisingly, based around the UK and Global economies and their effects on living costs and investments.

• However, 15% of respondents had no concerns, being confident in economic and financial recovery.

Other financial concerns included matters such as inheritance tax, pensions, and hitting retirement goals.

Overall, 98% of our clients said they had complete confidence in their ability to resolve their financial concerns with us. 100% agreed they have good confidence in resolving any financial concerns by working with us.

Having a broad overview of the things concerning our clients at the moment is incredibly helpful. We plan to not only pick up these concerns with the clients individually, but also to tailor more of our online content to addressing the wider themes, via the Guides we produce monthly and the informative blog posts we share weekly on our social media pages.

Areas For Our Improvement

We asked our clients: “Is there anything you think we could improve on / do differently?”. Only 20% of our clients suggested improvements, which tells us we must be doing most things right! That being said, those suggested improvements will help us refine and enhance the outcomes our clients receive, and so we are hugely grateful.

Suggestions we received, and what we are doing as a result, included:

• Providing feedback after annual review meetings
  • We have already been working hard on building an improved annual review process for 2023 and beyond, including a post-meeting email that summarises the key outcomes from the meeting and the things we need from the client before we can issue our annual porfolio suitability report.
  • It’s therefore fantastic to hear that we’re on the right track with these changes, and that clients will appreciate the clarity we’re aiming to boost!
• Improving the accessibility of documentation formatting
  • Our previous documentation included potentially hard to view formatting of colour and fonts. Going into 2023, we have focused on improving this to ensure that all clients are able to view our information clearly.
• Re-clarifying the coherence of fee structures
  • It has been a while since we re-clarified our ongoing fee structure to our clients, and we were already in the process of drawing up a new and improved Ongoing Service Fee Agreement when we received this feedback. We will issue this to all ongoing clients in 2023; not to make changes, but to reaffirm and reinforce understanding.

Biggest Benefits of working with us

Finally, we asked our clients what the biggest benefits are of working with us. The answers were wonderful, encompassing a range of outcomes from peace of mind to investment growth. We’ve included a few of our favourites below:

Summary

We want to thank our clients so much for their, as ever, wonderful and beneficial feedback. As we say every year, we aim to implement any suggestions for improvement in a fully evidenced way, and it’s great to see our clients agree this is the case. 2023 will be a big year for us as we implement a new portfolio review process and documentation, as well as focus on ensuring our service meets all aspects of the FCA’s new Consumer Duty regulations. With the support of our clients, we’re confident in making a success of these, with our clients hopefully reaping the benefits.

We’ve summarised the key points from 2022’s feedback in the infographic below, which you can click to enlarge.