Challenge
The majority of leads supplied by Professional Leads are for financial advisors who perform pension reviews. Their aim is to speak to people seeking pension advice, set up a meeting and obtain a signed LOA to approach the customer’s pension provider.
Traditionally, this process alone can take up to two months by the time they’ve made contact, arranged a convenient time to talk, the customer decides they want to move forward, and signs and returns an LOA in the post.
The advisor then waits for the provider to release the customer’s financial information before conducting a review and offering advice. All the while, they don’t get paid until they transact, and the whole process can take up to five months from initial enquiry.
When compared to a bank account switch, which can be done in a day, the magnitude of the problem for both pension holders and advisors becomes apparent.
As the government pushes for financial services to embrace technology and expedite transfers, and with more and more providers accepting e-signatures (currently 65%), the timing is optimal for lead providers to make their offering more attractive to clients. That’s why Professional Leads approached FLG to help them speed up the process of obtaining a signed LOA.
Solution
Since day one, Professional Leads have used FLG to distribute leads to their clients on a daily basis. All users rely on the platform within their roles to carry out tasks such as monitoring lead allocation, identifying clients that need to top up their credits, checking lead quality issues, and obtaining information for analytics and reporting.
In terms of helping clients reduce the time from enquiry to transaction, Professional Leads have been proactive for some time – accelerating the process of obtaining a signed LOA by trialling a third-party form builder to give leads the option of completing them electronically.
The results were positive and they immediately saw 4-5% of leads completing an online LOA. However, the form builder wasn’t capable of pulling details through from the initial enquiry, meaning the customer had to re-enter information for the LOA which affected conversion rates. And, even if they were completed, the data was siloed in the third-party system.
Determined to increase conversion rates and store customer data in a single place, Professional Leads asked us to build a solution within FLG using our Journeys feature to create customer-facing forms with e-signature functionality to obtain online LOAs.
This work was completed a couple of months ago and focuses on three key elements:
- Customer-facing external Journeys that allow leads to complete an online LOA that is pre-populated with details from their initial enquiry
- Static text in the LOA allows template variables to state the name of the client requesting consent to act on behalf of the lead
- Customers can provide an e-signature using their cursor.
