Openwork Appointed Representative, People First Finance, use Marloo to halve time finalising suitability letters

People First Finance is a Somerset-based wealth, investment, mortgage and protection advice firm, and part of the Openwork Partnership network. Its principal director, owner and sole adviser Rob Keyte started his mortgage and financial planning advice firm five years ago, after a 15 year career in investment banking and financial services consulting.

Rob wants to grow People First Finance, but not at the expense of quality. Before Marloo, his business development plans and time spent on advice were being swamped by admin and processing work.

"I was spending 70% of my time on all of the mechanics that go on behind advice. The processes that are important and required add to the quality of the service, but don't necessarily need to be done by a qualified adviser."

About 12 to 18 months ago, he started thinking about hiring an administrator or trainee paraplanner. The salary plus the management, employment and compliance obligations that come with it, all before the extra capacity had a chance to pay for itself, felt risky. Then he saw Marloo presented at a Personal Finance Society event.

"It was when I saw how Ask Marloo works that I suddenly thought, 'I need this!' I left immediately after the presentation to come back to my office, sign up for a trial and spend the rest of my day working out how to integrate Marloo into my business."

As well as what it could do, Marloo offered a way through his hiring dilemma.

"Marloo is something I can use at a cost level below the line of employing a new member of staff, and it doesn't come with the commitment of managing a person. It provides ultimate flexibility with a much lower entry cost."

Before relying on Marloo, Rob had to register it with Openwork, his network, for data privacy compliance purposes, because it would hold and access client data.

"They needed information about how the system works, where data is being held, and confirmation and evidence that it is a closed system."

Since then Marloo has been listed on Openwork's adviser portal as an AI tool and service option.

Rob started small, beginning with meeting notes and tasks before moving on to looking up information across emails and documents. He keeps Marloo open on a second screen and chats with it throughout the day. Now that Morningstar's fund research and performance data is built in, he uses it to prepare for client reviews too.

"If I'm about to speak to a client in 20 minutes, rather than asking someone to collate a summary of performance for their portfolio against the benchmarks we use, I ask Marloo to do it. Something like that would probably take an hour to do. Marloo takes one or two minutes max."

He estimates he's saving 10 hours plus a week, and can see that will continue to grow.

The single biggest saving is on suitability letters. Drafting and formatting a detailed and well-considered recommendation letter used to take Rob at least five or six hours. Using his own templates in Marloo's document generation, he estimates that time has been cut by at least 50%.

"That's three hours I could be in front of a client meaning, in theory, the Marloo monthly fee I pay has already paid for itself."

Marloo's newer ability to query across his whole client base has opened up business development too. Rob recently asked it for a list of every client with more than half a million pounds in assets and no life insurance in place, along with a short draft email for each explaining, in two or three points specific to their circumstances, why a conversation might be worthwhile.

"If I was trying to find those clients and draft the emails myself, it would take me three or four days. Marloo helped me do it in 20 or 30 minutes, and then I spent two hours reviewing and sending each email."

Rob hasn't abandoned the idea of an assistant, but now the role looks different, and he'll be able to take someone on when the business is ready. He has set himself a target of building reserves before committing to an ongoing salary, a target he was struggling to reach without Marloo and now sees as very much achievable.

"The job description is unchanged in the sense that the objectives are the same, but a lot of their time will be spent using Marloo to complete these processes, managing clients, and managing my diary, with Marloo at the centre of it all. It's almost like Marloo and my assistant will be working together on all of the admin processes while I'm being an adviser."