This Insight is shared by Jennie, our Practice Manager.
I’m not sure about you, but I can’t believe we are now in mid-August! 2020 has been a very strange year for all of us, but it certainly doesn’t feel that time has slowed down! As the Summer starts to come to a close, I am taking a few moments to reflect on what has been a busy 6 weeks here at boosst.
July brings our annual assessments with Standards International who assess us against British Standard for Financial Planning firms – as well as another half yearly visit from our external Compliance support.
British Standards are a widely recognised Kitemark for quality and provide consumers with reassurance that a product or service is robust and of the highest quality. British Standards are applicable across many industries; the key ones for Financial Planning firms are BS 8453, BS 8577 and ISO22222… all of which I am pleased to say we have just been awarded for the third year in a row!
Who are Standards International?
Standards International was founded by Michelle Hoskin in 2007. Michelle, having started working in the industry over 20 years ago, was astounded by the inefficiencies in financial advising firms back then, along with quite frankly how boring they could be! Sadly, in a lot of firms this is still the case.
With her boundless energy and passion for financial services, she has become an internationally recognised author, speaker, coach and leading expert in her field. Michelle now spends her time with businesses like ourselves, who wish to push the boundaries of international best practice and operational excellence, whilst keeping business exciting and fun. Firms that want to be the best – work with Michelle and her team. She runs numerous workshops and makes herself available to firms with the British Standards. Michelle is a great resource for us to run ideas past and she also supports our recruitment decisions.
I am lucky enough to attend Practice Manager days, where I get to spend time with other like-minded people with sessions hosted by Michelle and her team. Brainstorming sessions, best practice and generally thrashing around ideas, makes these day fun and leave me keen to get to the office and implement some of what I have learned. After a day with pocket-rocket Michelle, you certainly feel invigorated!
So what does this all mean for boosst?
BS8577 – Framework for the provision of financial advice and planning services. This is the core British Standard for financial planning firms and is fundamental to our team being as efficient as they are. The boosst team joke that my role as Practice Manager suits me so well because I simply love processes. We have a consistent and fine tuned process for just about everything – and if the team find an area where we don’t yet have one, they know who to speak to! This British Standard ensures that we operate a process-driven business, where any qualified person could join boosst and figure out how to work in the same way as the rest of our team with minimal fuss. This is crucial for our clients to receive a consistent service and has enabled both Jon and Chloe to join us this year during lockdown and slot in to the team.
Our processes started with a large black marker pen and lots of A2 paper – and have come a mighty long way to now be embedded within all of our software and tools. Improvement to our way of working is continual – and the whole boosst team play a huge part, a long with feedback from you, our clients. Our processes drive efficiencies within boosst which allow us to provide you with the best possible service whilst charging very fair fees.
ISO 22222 – Personal financial planning – This is the only certification of its kind – available to Financial Planners personally. We love the appeal of benchmarking our service and internal advice process against this international standard of best practice. In addition to all of our Financial Planners being Chartered Financial Planners and/or Certified Financial PlannersTM, obtaining ISO 22222 demonstrates ongoing competence at the highest level. Qualifications, such as Chartered and Certified, are the result of highly regarded examinations and require technical knowledge. They can be studied for and sat on a given day. ISO 22222 pushes this further by requiring those same skills but with an annual re-assessment to ensure ongoing competence and adherence to those high standards.
BS8453 – Compliance framework for regulated financial services firms. This may well be the least interesting of the standards, but arguably the most important. It ensures that not only are we meeting all the requirements and standards set out by our regulator, but we exceed them to a level that sets us above the rest and provides our clients with the best experience and peace of mind that everything we do is excellent.
Having this Standard means that whilst others may shudder at the thought of compliance, it is something that is naturally built into all our processes and absolutely embedded within our team in a positive way, so that it simply looks after itself.
Each of the assessments entail lengthy interviews with Keith, Josh, Vicki and myself – followed by time with me to assess all of our documentation and a review of how we have evolved since the last annual assessment.
boosst remains one of only two firms in the UK to achieve this ‘full house’ of British and International Standards.
Compliance
During the Compliance visits we are updated with any upcoming legislation changes and anything else that we need to be aware of. Importantly though, this is time for our client advice to be independently audited and checked to ensure that not only does our work meet all regulatory requirements, but that we exceed requirements and provide everything to our clients in a clear and concise way.
Although this might sound quite dull, we are motivated to provide advice as clearly as possible, and ensure that documents do not become too long or wordy. These audits give us space to stop, consider and create new and better ways of presenting advice to clients. This time around, I was elated that the feedback was so positive, showing that our hard work and creativity is working!
Several of us in the boosst team have come from backgrounds where compliance is allowed to direct a business, resulting in lengthy advice reports and never-ending terms and conditions in size 6 font. boosst doesn’t want to be the like rest so we have invested time and effort to ensure we’re different. The feedback from the independent assessors agreed that we are certainly different, and their view was that our client experience is right up there with the best they have seen. Even our most ‘compliancy’ documents are colourful, vibrant and encourage you to have a good read!
Why do we put ourselves through it?
Well, we think we do a good job for our clients. We often get feedback from our clients to say that they think we do a great job for them – but it is really nice to have this rubber stamped by an independent audit.
We are a small team and as the saying goes, ‘we only know what we know’! Having independent input from external audits gives us fresh ideas and tests us, to keep driving forward and making boosst better and better.
As I said at the start, time can go by so quickly and without the drive of these audits, a business could find themselves 3, 4 or 5 years later – before they are made to make any changes or improvements. That will never be us.
One of the many things I love about working within boosst is the continuous push for improvement, excellence and most importantly our commitment to giving clients the very best experience we can.
What the assessors loved…
Here is some of feedback from the independent audits:
“I really like your approach to getting things done. You have a clear vision of what ‘good’ looks like and you continually strive for this, regardless of the obstacles put in your way.”
“I really like the way you quickly identified the need for remote working due to the Covid-19 pandemic and introduced this smoothly and seamlessly with nominal impact on your team and clients.”
“The files I checked from the three financial planners were consistent in their style and quality. This is exactly what the regulator would expect to see. Any client, dealing with any planner, at any service level, has exactly the same high quality experience.”
“I really like the effort you made to contact your clients following ‘lockdown in an effort to ensure clients were okay, how lockdown had directly impacted them, were they shielding and asking if they needed anything. This was an excellent example of boosst supporting their client member community.”
P.S. – If you’re a client and thinking about integrating relevant British Standards into your business, feel free to get in touch for some guidance and tips! 🙂