Advice Link: your link to being a better advice business

Six years ago, Link Financial Group (LFG) - the holding company of Mortgage & Insurance Link - discovered an opportunity for a New Zealand-based financial services Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.

At the time, the Australian-based, mortgage-specific CRM they used was no longer keeping up with their advisers' needs, and their insurance advisers were on a separate CRM.

Hence the decision was made to build Advice Link.

There are many CRMs in the market, but not many have financial industry compliance and new regime built into their DNA.

Throughout development, the new regulatory environment was front of mind.

Advice Link had to deliver on workflow management requirements and provide a platform to seamlessly showcase adviser competency, knowledge, and skillset, while maintaining a positive customer-engagement experience.

Advice Link has an inbuilt, comprehensive, six-step advice process, accurate record-keeping, and an audit trail of disclosure (and other information) ensuring compliance and due diligence are taken care of.

Advisers can rest easy in the knowledge that the feature-rich Advice Link includes:

• workflow management and automation

• loan and insurance pipeline management

• an adviser library with FAP resources and platform to track competency, knowledge, and skill

• advice document creation for accurate record-keeping and audit trail

• customer portal for document completion process and uploading documents with ease

• direct integration with a major bank for efficient processing and shorter turnaround times (direct integration with other lenders is in progress)

Advice Link was proudly developed in New Zealand with a local support team. Our development team works closely with more than 40 lender and insurance providers and key industry stakeholders to ensure our users have the latest resources available.

Through continuous enhancement, Advice Link is a flexible and progressive system which meets the changing needs of the New Zealand Financial Services industry and adapts to new regulations, legislation, and industry requirements.

All developments are made with peer consultation to keep Kiwi advisers and their requirements at the front and centre of design, with a non-negotiable motivation to enhance functionality for its users.

A high emphasis has been placed on ease of use, keeping it intuitive, easy to navigate, and master; as a result, Advice Link has proven itself to be the most valuable tool in the belts of many mortgage and insurance advisers.

When approaching development, we focus on:

• feedback from our financial advisers actively using the system

• compliance and regulatory requirements

• best practice and industryspecific functionality

• theory vs. practical application

In November 2022, New Zealand Home Loans (NZHL) announced they were acquiring a majority share in Link Financial Group and associated companies, including Advice Link.

This is the beginning of a new and exciting chapter for the Mortgage and Insurance CRM - now an independent company dedicated to further developing a fully-fledged financial services tech platform.

While LFG advisers remain the largest group of users, we expect users will diversify: Advice Link is now open to the broader New Zealand adviser market, providing more advisers with access to this world-class system.

Advisers using the CRM are settling more than $2 billion of loans annually and completing more than $4 million of annual insurance premium income.

Josh Bronkhorst, director and shareholder of Advice Link, said he is particularly excited about the prospect of offering adviser groups a white-label version of Advice Link, enabling groups of all sizes to provide their advisers with a CRM solution which better represents their brand, look, and feel, and features unique to their group. ✚