API’s Will Be The Adviser’s Products Of Tomorrow By Peter Smith (@SmithyChat) What are the opportunities for wealth management, investment advisory and independent financial advisers to work in collaboration with FinTech’s and the banks to move market developments on as it becomes easier for customers to shop around for the best deals?One recurrent thought I have on my travels around UK Financial Services and especially at many industry conferences on Open Banking is “will API’s become the new advice products?” People historically have not moved bank regularly, now they will. Data lying dormant in bank accounts will become as easy to exploit as personal details online. Next to cash, the ISA is the “go-to” product for consumers and advisers. How do we create the link to individual savings accounts, ISA’s, pensions and all the other regulated wealth management products? Where do Corporate ISA’s, which operate via payroll deduction, sit and how can they be linked via an API. It will also make it much easier for the nearly 7m people who are in the gig economy or self-employed (5m), the largest unpensioned in the country, to engage easily on ISA’s or some form of pension provision. How does this Open Banking vision translate into the retirement planning world? Perhaps it starts with the centralised Pensions Dashboard. The latest soundings from Guy Opperman at the Department for Work and Pensions are that there will be one single, standards-driven platform which all providers will (eventually) be compelled to provide a feed into, so you can see your pot (whichever institution it is with) on the Dashboard. Once would-be and actual retirees and their chosen advisers’ (hopefully) can take a closer look at their array of retirement savings pots online, you pretty quickly get a more holistic picture of the true retirement savings wealth position and likely income levels once fully-retired. This will all be very attractive to the financial adviser community.