Back Office and Support Services

Behind every great adviser is a great back-office system, one that operates efficiently, integrates seamlessly with the front office and with providers, and which allows advisers and clients to access services from anywhere. 

Having top-quality back-office services has been critical for advice companies during the lockdowns of 2020 to early 2021 and in the shift we have seen towards hybrid working. 

Without solid, robust processes underpinning wide integration, financial advisers, planners and all those client-facing professionals in the financial services industry would not have been able to deliver to the end client. 

So it was important that FTAdviser recognised, back in 2020, the importance of back-office solutions to the service advisers provide to their clients, which is why the Back Office Provider five-star award category was created last year.

This year, competition was even tighter than before, as a period of consolidation over 2021 saw many big name companies snapping up back-office service providers. Clearly, big companies are realising how important some of these businesses can be to advisers. 

In January, platform Transact’s parent company IntegraFin Holdings bought financial planning software provider Time4Advice for an undisclosed sum. At the time, Transact said the deal will help it improve its adviser back-office processes as well as its platform.

Throughout the past 12 months, back-office mergers continued to hit the headlines: FE bought CashCalc; Voyant was acquired by US company AssetMark; Canadian enterprise Equisoft took over Altus; and a couple of months ago Iress was in talks with a private equity firm.

This year also saw five advice technology businesses owned by Invesco combined under the Intelliflo brand: i4C, Jemstep, RedBlack and Portfolio Pathway now operate under the name Intelliflo. 

Such deals signal the importance of brand relationship and recognition among advisers, which is no surprise, given the high numbers of votes in this relatively new category. 

Those who achieved the coveted five stars specialise in a range of back-office technology and other support services; this year five stars go to: Truth (Prestwood); Finametrica; CashCalc; Voyant; Selectapension; and SimplyBiz. 

Congratulations to all the five-star winners.