Insurance advisors embrace mobile

Case in point: 30% of insurance advisors use their smartphones when preparing for client meetings vs 17% of full-service brokers licensed by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC)and 24% of mutual fund advisors licensed by the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada.

Insurance advisors also are using their smartphones more during client meetings, with 30% of them saying they use it for this purpose compared with 23% of brokers and 28% of mutual fund dealer representatives.

“Insurance advisors are out in the field more, meeting with clients,” says Larry Lubin, president and CEO with Toronto-based BlueRush Digital Media Corp., which commissioned the survey. “That forces them to leverage themselves and multiply themselves.”

And insurance advisors are accomplishing this by using more than just their smartphones. A slightly higher percentage of insurance advisors are using tablets for email, accessing social media, text or Internet messaging and remote access to a computer compared with both brokers and mutual fund reps.

As well, 67% of insurance advisors who use a tablet said they are able to bring their own tablets to work, as the device is supported by their firms’ technology platform, compared with 55% of brokers and 65% of mutual fund advisors.

When it comes to choosing a smartphone platform, BlackBerry continues its strong foothold in the financial advisory market despite its dwindling popularity in the consumer market. The brokerage channel has a stronger commitment to that Canadian brand, with 38% of advisors hanging onto their BlackBerrys, vs 24% of mutual fund advisors and 18% of insurance advisors.

The reason for this could lie in the fact that many of the large financial services firms continue to be bound to contracts for BlackBerry smartphones, says Lubin: “If you’re attached to the brokerage side, then there’s a very good chance your device is supplied by the firm you are with. And, from our experience, many of those firms are still very loyal to BlackBerry.”

Several advisors surveyed for this year’s Brokerage Report Card – one of a series of IE special reports regarding how advisors perceive their firms – expressed frustrations about being tied to a specific device.

“We’re abused with the BlackBerry, and I’ve been forced to keep it for three years,” says an advisor with a bank-owned brokerage firm. “I’m forced to use it and they still charge me for it.”

Adds another advisor with a bank-owned investment dealer: “The firm plays Big Brother with our mobile devices. Countless times, they scan your BlackBerry, and they can wipe out all contact information should we change firms.”

Allan Small, senior investment advisor with Allan Small Financial Group, which operates under the HollisWealth Inc. banner in Toronto, was an avid BlackBerry user for several years. As an independent agent, he was able to choose the device he preferred.

“At the time, the BlackBerry was revolutionary for the entire business world,” Small says. “It allowed for instant communication with clients at any time of the day. You could type with one hand behind your back or reply to a work email in the middle of the night.”

But after Small’s BlackBerry was damaged two years ago, he moved to an iPhone, a switch that has been increasingly common among advisors during the past two years. Adds Small: “[The damage to the BlackBerry] forced me to look at what was out there. And I realized that I wanted something with a faster operating system and a better browser.”

Among the BlueRush survey respondents, brokers are most likely to be prohibited from bringing their own devices to work. Lubin suggests that companies still prefer to control the technology and applications that are being accessed on devices for security purposes.

“The IIROC world will build applications that it can support and limit what the applications do for business purposes only,” Lubin says. “In an ideal world, an advisor would be able to have one device that would meet the needs of a personal life and a business life.”

In Small’s case, he is not able to access client account information through his smartphone. Instead, Hollis Wealth has set up an iPad application through which advisors can get direct remote access to all of their client accounts and process transactions from anywhere on the road.

“Whether I am on the beach on holiday or walking around Disney World with my kids, my phone is on and my iPad is close by,” Small says. “We say the advisory business is not a job but a lifestyle – and that is how I run my practice.”

At Mississauga, Ont.-based Primerica Life Insurance Co. of Canada, more than 90% of life insurance policies are submitted by advisors using a mobile device, either a tablet or a smartphone.

“One of the benefits of doing electronic data entry is that you can screen to make sure that everything is entered appropriately,” says Jeff Dumanski, the firm’s president and chief marketing officer. “Therefore, policies are processed quickly and they are issued directly to the client.”

As well, Primerica has been utilizing electronic underwriting for the past three years. With a client’s permission, advisors are able to compare client data against medical and other online records. As a result, Dumanski says, 80% of these life insurance policies are being issued immediately.

“[Add] the electronic underwriting with e-delivery,” Dumanski adds, “and our reps can submit an application from the kitchen table, have it approved, issued and delivered – and get paid – basically by the time they leave the house.”

Bobby Gocoola, a Primerica advisor in Vaughn, Ont., has been in the insurance industry for 26 years. He knows first-hand how technology can change the way you do business. Three years ago, he started using an iPad during his client meetings; now, he conducts more than 80% of meetings with his tablet by his side.

“Being able to process applications and provide instantaneous answers to clients is what makes us, as advisors, that much more efficient,” Gocoola says. “I no longer have to carry large bulky paper files, and I can address client concerns more effectively because I have access to proprietary data right from my iPad.”

In fact, the insurance advisors surveyed were more likely to download proprietary apps, as well as communication and social media apps, to their tablets. In contrast, brokers were more likely to download news and information apps; mutual fund reps were more likely to download productivity apps.

The 2014 Survey of Advisors and Mobile Devices, conducted between April 15 and 24, has a margin of error of about 5%.

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