Where the adviser practice leaks
Almost always after the client has said yes. The selling is done in the room; the revenue then disappears into an operation that handles things when they land rather than before they do. Underwriting requests go out late because medicals weren’t booked at the first meeting. Investment transfers wait on a form that could have been signed on day one. Annual reviews happen when the client calls. Across the thirty-practice panel in Case 01, the median delay sat on the practice’s side of the line, not the insurer’s.
Automation one: pre-underwriting
A stage in the pipeline that a signed application can’t leave until the checklist is complete, owned by the practice administrator. Medicals booked at the first meeting, not after the application. Documents in. Section 14 and transfer forms signed while the client is still in the room. The automation is the stage gate and the task list it spawns; the discipline is signing everything on day one.
Automation two: the ten-day alert
Every application older than ten days in any stage, on one Monday view, by owner. Then an alert to the owner and the adviser at day ten, and to the practice principal at day twenty. Underwriting turnaround across the panel went from 40–90 days to about a month, and most of that was simply that waits became visible.
Automation three: the review trigger
The book is the cheapest revenue in the practice and the least worked. A quarterly trigger on every client: review due, life-event check, cover-gap check, referral ask. The referral ask is the line most practices skip and the one that pays for the whole system. Build it into the review script so it happens by default rather than when the adviser remembers.
What not to automate yet
Lead generation, until the three above are running. Marketing email, until the review trigger is. Anything the FSP’s compliance function hasn’t signed off, because an automated message to a client is advice in the regulator’s eyes. And the advice itself, obviously. The adviser industry page has the pipeline drawn out with the leaks marked; the brokerage metrics note has the numbers to watch.