TAP offers OATs to independent advisers

After more than six months of intense testing and development, The Adviser Platform has launched a new advice tool saying it's a game-changer for independent advisers.

Tuesday, October 12th 2021, 6:23AM

by Matthew Martin

Ryan Edwards.

Over the past eight weeks, The Adviser Platform (TAP) has quietly rolled out its new Online Advice Tool (OAT), built from scratch by TAP's development team with support from advisers and compliance experts to respond to the new regulatory landscape.

TAP managing director Ryan Edwards says the key to the new software is that it integrates smoothly with TAP's customer relationship management (CRM) system and allows financial advice providers to "...efficiently give outstanding advice and meet their compliance obligations from within the CRM".

"Advisers have traditionally grappled with different advice tools or processes that fall outside their CRM," he says.

"This creates huge inefficiencies from a record-keeping, filing and compliance perspective."

Edwards says OAT is market-leading in the way it helps advisers generate consistent, well reasoned and logical advice while integrating with the TAP CRM to provide an end to end process.

“Our adviser clients are thrilled to have a tool that allows them to provide advice efficiently and consistently - giving them more time to service their clients and grow their businesses.”

TAP’s head of compliance and advice Scott Duncan says TAP was created with a focus on client engagement, making advice accessible and providing a framework to demonstrate a robust and repeatable process.

“The tool ensures disclosure and scope can be adequately defined and allows clients to articulate their goals. Advisers can utilise the tool to demonstrate quality advice with the support of genuine calculation based reasoning," says Duncan.

The OAT provides a framework for advisers to review existing cover along with key documentation to ensure the clients' understanding of the advice and the process used is fully documented - even when acceptance may vary from the adviser’s original recommendation.

OAT can help manage advisers databases, compliance requirements, the complaints process and record keeping.

"Peace of mind is what we are looking at for our advisers," says Edwards.

"We're really pleased with the outcome. OAT has been heavily resourced internally, it's flexible and responsive to changes in regulations and the feedback we have had is enhancing the process even further."

He says mathematical algorithms back up the system so it's not just "freewheeling" and he hopes it will become an important part of an advisers toolkit.

Tags: FAP FAP Services innovation Ryan Edwards tech innovation The Adviser Platform