Model Office

It’s about sustainability

Building a professional service practice to future proof your legacy, encourage value and profitability

It’s about compliance

Understanding and meeting ongoing regulatory requirements and government directives to ensure the business is fit for purpose

It’s about cultural alignment

Targeting the right technology, platform and service providers and bringing the business and its people together with client, regulatory and stakeholder needs, expectations and goals

it’s about strategic thinking

Providing a strategic plan to manage decision-making and biases, showcase strengths and weakness, and identify and address challenges and opportunities

It’s about professional development

Mapping the holistic path to a true professional service practice

it’s about satisfaction

Knowing that you are on track to meet your business and people development goals and objectives in a demanding and ever-changing market

It’s about digital growth

Ensuring your business is at the cutting edge of the FinTech evolution is imperative to ensure clients gain the service and experience they desire

BACKGROUND

Whether you are a wealth manager, financial adviser, planner or banking firm, Model Office is a concept that uses ongoing market and compliance-driven research to benchmark your working environment against 5 keys that demonstrate sustainable and professional best practice.

This diagnostic test is the first stage in a process of strategic professional development, which aims to gain a fuller understanding of where the firm is ‘at’ in relation to the key business, people, digital and regulatory development issues.

Engage Insight will update MO's diagnostic platform quarterly so that your business can keep track of new regulatory directives, relevant final guidance and discussion papers and our industry best practice research benchmarks

The purpose of the diagnostic is to encourage holistic and strategic thinking, and benchmark the firm’s performance against professional good practice and learn more about your personal view of the firm’s performance in the 5 key areas:

Your Focus

Strategy, governance, key financial ratios and managing risk

How well you are leading the business through key business functions, individual, systemic and cyber-risks and regulatory directives?

Your Engagement

Client and stakeholder engagement

How has your brand’s presence, marketing plan and documentation supported the client journey, embraced digital design and involved key stakeholders?

Your Promise

Client service proposition

Is your proposition robust in assessing investment service and product suitability and appropriateness, and identifying and incorporating new technologies, which are all crucial in meeting UK/EU regulatory and ongoing client needs?

Your Systems

Operations and service support

Have you streamlined back, middle and front office administration tasks and Client Relationship Management (CRM) activities to interlink, control and share high quality data information?

Your People

Human Resource Development

How well have you focused on the level of staff and employee engagement, incorporated social enterprise technology and ensured you have the right people in the right place with the right skills, all of which are crucial to business success and building client loyalty and trust?

The results can be used constructively as a means of establishing a collaborative culture for improving business and people performance, increasing client engagement, along with improved Management Information, corporate governance and due diligence thus achieving better business and compliance outcomes and potentially helping with financial challenges such as Professional Indemnity Insurance.

Analysing the Results

The output of the Diagnostic questionnaire will provide a high-level strategic benchmark plan which you can analyse
The main output will be a colour coded rated strategic plan along with a radar chart and key areas for focus and development
Action plan structures with resources and key areas for focus will be provided
Ideas to improve your scores to nudge your professional service development journey in the right direction are included

Taking the diagnostic test

Expressing your opinion

Each key will have a list of positive statements on core practice strategy based on the firm’s past and current practice
Questions will be a mix of Likert scale 1–5 and will be qualitative in nature and Yes/No based to ensure the diagnostic is relevant to your firm
We will ask some quantitative questions based on key facts such as when you plan to implement required actions, fee charging rates, the number of active clients and key financial ratios (profitability/turnover/expenses)
The results will be meaningful if honest and realistic answers are provided, so go on, be realistic with yourself but enjoy taking the test

Scoring system

Based on our 5 years of research and analysis of the industry, industry and regulatory papers, in each key we have produced a list of statements considered to be relevant to the business workings in this area. A sliding scale will be used for ease of answering and encompass a negative to positive spectrum.

This scoring system is designed to highlight and address biases that may affect your business decisions and influence your business practice.

Learn how to grow your score

Once you have your results you can learn how to improve your score against our industry benchmark. Our high-level strategic plan will provide insights into strategic action planning and developing a holistic plan to ensure each of the 5 keys calibrate together to ensure your business grows across all 5 areas and meets key stakeholder requirements and expectations, namely your clients and the regulator.

EXAMPLES OF HOW OUR SCORING SYSTEM WORKS ARE BELOW

Compliance Chat

Hi, Nice to meet you.

I'm MO^® your Digital Compliance Assistant.

I work on the MO^® Enterprise platform where you can chat with me online at anytime and ask me all sorts of questions (within reason, mind) about your compliance and professional development journey.

I can interrogate the FCA Handbook, advice suitability or file review requirements, KYC, AML, TCF, ESMA’s MiFID II and much more. I can also talk to certain back office systems to provide a client ‘Suitability Health Check’. My mission is to make compliance more pro-active, prescriptive and yes engaging, whilst saving you time and money, so you have comfort in knowing you’re compliant at all times. So come and join me at MO^® Enterprise. See you soon.