How Lonsdale Wealth Management’s financial advisers respond to working online

Thursday 28 May, 2020

All our financial planning teams in St Albans, Barnet, Harpenden, Ware, Stafford, Ringwood and Leeds / Bradford have adapted quickly to new working conditions and are using video conferencing and helping our clients adapt to this online technology.  

Keeping in touch with our clients and colleagues via phone, online meetings and post  

We have increased the number of client mailings we issue and posted more news articles on our website to keep our clients updated with market conditions.  We have regularly been calling clients reminding them that they should contact us at any time, if they require information. This is especially important for those clients with no digital access.  For these clients we keep in regular phone contact and conduct client reviews via the telephone.  We have also sent post to them where necessary.  Our financial planning teams also use video conferencing for our own internal meetings. 

Using video conferencing with existing and new Lonsdale Wealth Management clients

Although our independent financial advisers can’t meet clients face to face and are generally working from home, we regularly conduct video conferencing meetings or phone meetings to complete client reviews.  Our online service is no different to the face to face meetings we used to have with clients as we can securely share information, for example a client’s lifetime financial plan online. Clients that have conducted the online meetings with their financial adviser are pleased with the service provided by their Lonsdale financial adviser.  Our advisers are still providing suitability assessments for clients, conducting fact finds and providing client reports.  For more information read: Lonsdale Wealth Management - open for new and existing business via video link.   

Our Lonsdale colleagues use Microsoft TEAMS to liaise internally 

Although most of our independent financial advisers are still working remotely from home, we regularly organise internal Microsoft TEAMS meetings to discuss our client service and operations, to ensure all our independent financial advisers are offering the same level of service during the pandemic.  Our internal Investment Policy Committee meeting and our IPC reviews with LGT Vestra are now conducted online instead of face to face.

Access to Personal Finance Portal for exchange of secure messages and documents

Lonsdale Wealth Management offers all online clients a Personal Finance Portal (PFP) from Intelliflo.  Most of our clients had set up their PFP prior to lockdown, but we have offered this to clients who hadn’t yet set this up as a secure way of checking their financial statement.  Since lockdown there has been an increase in demand for the PFP as clients appreciate having access to secure messaging and up to date valuations.  PFP treats the security of the information you share with the utmost importance and provides a secure messaging service, so you can quickly get in touch and have the peace of mind of knowing that any information you share with PFP is encrypted and completely private. 

Using paper and posting documents securely

Although some of our financial advisers are still working from home, they regularly visit their offices so they can always process post in a timely way. We collect post and process paper-based work regularly, normally each working day.

Simon Hawker, Managing Director, Lonsdale Services, St Albans, Hertfordshire said:

‘We are pleased that our financial planning teams are able to offer a ‘business as usual’ service, although this is now online rather than face to face.  We believe that we are being pragmatic in how we deal with clients during the pandemic. We have increased the number of client communications during lockdown which update clients on general market conditions.  Our vulnerable client group recently discussed how we help clients that don’t have internet access.  When we speak with our clients, we ask that they let us know if they send instructions in the post, so we know to expect information.  This lets us check that it has been received and enables us to deal with it in a timely way.’

 

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