Advisers attending the 2024 FAAA Congress last week were cautioned that their email systems are the most vulnerable technology component to external threats when it comes to protecting the security of their clients’ data.
Supporting this cautionary warning, Hub24 Executive, Group Strategy, Greg Hansen, shared with delegates attending a technology session at the congress that regular cyber-security reporting released by the Australian Signals Directorate identifies email systems as the major point of vulnerability for criminal elements seeking to hack into the client and data records of services firms such as those operating within the financial advice sector.
“It’s always the same,” noted Hansen: “The major point of vulnerability. Email.” He added financial advice is one of the few remaining service relationships which are heavily paper and form-based, compared with what he sees in almost all other service relationships which have their major point of client contact via smartphone technology.
The solution …lies in advice practices shaping their client communications and relationships via client portals
The solution, according to Hansen, lies in advice practices shaping their client communications and relationships via client portals. He says portals such as Hub24’s My Prosperity proposition, offer a way of interacting with and sharing documents with a client that is not paper-based: “It works via a secure portal which can utilise face recognition and other new technologies which overcome the need to email personal information, whether that information is provided by the client to the adviser or by the adviser to the client,” he said.
Collaborating with other professional services
Hansen also noted another benefit in practices and dealer groups utilising client portal technology – especially when it comes to life insurance advice – is the ability for the adviser to collaborate with other professionals in a virtual and secure ‘room’. He says advisers can control which other service providers may access that ‘room’, who may include financial planners, legal representatives, estate planning lawyers, general insurance advisers, mortgage brokers, conveyancers etc. He says it’s then a matter of getting the people invited into that room to perform the right task for the client.
Those tasks include the allocation of responsibilities and timelines, where the relevant advice providers can securely message each other within the portal chat room. Hansen says the process is simple, quick and efficient and overcomes the need to email an external party to confirm details or to have documents printed, scanned, signed and returned.
He added the inclusion of other service professionals within the adviser’s secure client portal would also serve the additional benefit of removing the danger of any security failings that exist within the systems used by these other professionals, which are naturally outside the adviser’s control.
Using the My Prosperity offer as an example, Hansen says client portals address three critical issues:
- Cyber security
- The adviser experience
- Efficiency in operating advice businesses
He advocated that client portal offers are the obvious solution for those three critical elements. “If you can interact via a portal, it means you’re getting rid of all your [client] emails, so that you’re not sending personal information back and forth.”
He added the process also delivers a better client experience and is much more efficient by removing the ‘lag’ between sending and receiving bits of information.
