Technical Support from threesixty
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“Technical support has been key to helping our client firms get through what has been an extremely complex year in the financial planning world."
threesixty Director, David Ingram |
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In this discussion, David Ingram, Director at threesixty, explains how threesixty’s Technical Support Service has assisted firms over the past 12 months.
What are the main areas that threesixty have faced with technical support this year?
Technical support has been key to helping our client firms get through what has been an extremely complex year in the financial planning world.
We’ve faced A day, a ‘shock horror’ budget, menu repricing and, in just a few days, a pre-Budget statement which is widely expected to make radical changes to one of the key components of pensions ‘simplification’ (alternatively Secured Pensions).
At threesixty we have always believed in the importance of independent technical support, free from provider bias and spin. The Budget changes were a classic example of why that is so important. While we were happy to provide a detailed view of the proposals (in fact we posted 3 versions of an in depth analysis on the client extranet as Government and HMRC gradually clarified the confusion caused by sudden change based on poorly drafted provisions) providers reacted only by withdrawing their products. It was several weeks before some reacted – simply because their understandable concern was to deal with issues around their specific product offerings.
What documents have you published this year to help clients with change in the technical arena?
As well as our papers on the IHT changes, we published a series of very detailed papers on the run-up to A day; again completely free from provider bias.
Our weekly newsletter, Information Round Up, has also been an important way of providing up to date technical information to client firms. Published every Monday (Bank Holidays excluded) this contains a wealth of information on regulatory and legislative changes as well as news from product providers.
Any of our technical papers are announced in Round Up as well as on the website so it really is a very important, as well as relevant, publication.
Do you provide any support other than documents?
For clients who need to discuss their questions in more detail, we also run a technical helpdesk where you can raise your query by telephone or email and get a specific response which, again, is free from any kind of ‘spin’.
The final strand of technical support is the monthly Key Issues Seminar workshop. These are held around the country; currently 11 locations but the number continues to grow. We keep these workshops small so that they can be as interactive as possible. They are co-presented by threesixty and a sponsoring product provider but, to ensure that our independent stance is not prejudiced; our technical team reviews the provider’s presentation prior to use. Where providers do not offer a full range of solutions in the market they are talking about, for example, we will insist that alternatives are identified and discussed in generic terms.
Our client firms generally operate in a market where it is important that they are able to show that they add value and our technical support team is here to help them do that.