Face-to-face, telephone and emails dominated how advisers contacted their clients.
Advisers are mainly using technology to assist with research and 92% use it to produce product quotes for clients.
Two thirds of advisers intended to spend less than 10% of their annual turnover on technology and training. Of these, one third intended to spend less than 5% on technology and another third intended to spend between 6%-10%.
The main technology related challenges currently facing advisers all relate to issues that waste time and cause unnecessary inefficiencies.
Four in 10 advisers said they found remembering passwords to be a challenge.
Some 32% of advisers are intending to increase the use of technology as a result of the changes the Retail Distribution Review will mean for the market.
Dean Lamble, director of distribution development at Aviva, said: “At the moment there is no one single technology solution that can support all of an adviser’s needs, therefore integration and common processes are key.”
Lamble said that investing in the right technology would be essential for firms to demonstrate their independence to the Financial Services Authority, so they can show they have considered all the products and providers that meet their clients’ needs.
He added: “Clients are increasingly demanding ever faster and different ways of interacting with their finances and as such advisers need to adapt with them. To help them meet this demand there has been an unprecedented level of change in new technology being launched to help financial advisers.
“However Aviva’s research found 66% of advisers intend to spend less than 10% of their annual turnover on technology and staff training to use it. Whether this is enough will depend on the individual firms, but what is vital is that firms choose the most effective technology solutions if they are to free up resources for client facing activity.”
