Ways to make more of your current technologies: the functionality you may be overlooking

As individuals, most of us probably have multiple financial arrangements in place, whether they be investments, savings, credit cards, mortgages or pretty much anything in between. And this will obviously be true for your employees, too.

Various technological platforms and apps already exist for employees to review their financial arrangements, and millennials probably expect everything to be online in any case. It certainly has to be said that being able to track investments, savings, pensions, insurances, bank accounts, credit cards, store cards, mortgages, loans and property online rather than having multiple lever arch files full of paperwork going back years is a big improvement.

However, the inefficiency of doing this by means of numerous usernames, passwords and systems is self-evident and frustrating to say the least. There are also data security implications around potentially using the same login details for multiple systems containing sensitive information.

So what functionality are you currently overlooking that would make things better?

A clear, uncomplicated view of all your finances in one place alongside all the associated paperwork and documents would be utopia.

What some people may not realise, or may only be hazily aware of, is that this level of perfection is now very close at hand, with integrated solutions and data aggregation systems already in existence.

Although these sound complicated, really they just mean that you can not only view all of your finances together, but these ‘financial dashboards’ also enhance the ways in which you can understand your finances and workplace savings and, most importantly, plan for the future.

So if you aren’t already using them, what does this mean and what are the benefits?

The new generation of financial dashboards put people in control of their finances.

People may not be aware that a ‘personal digital filing cabinet’ enables you to have all your finances organised and updated. This means financial peace of mind, knowing that your most valuable records are both safe and easily accessible. And there are plenty of other advantages too

Avoiding the need to log on to multiple financial sites helps reduce the risk of online fraud, a problem which affected one in ten individuals in the UK in 2016.

All your financial records are kept together so that you can easily track your income and spending, and information is accessible whenever you need it from any device under one single secure login. Gone are the days of having to remember 20 different passwords made up of random capital letters, numbers, lower-case letters and special symbols…music to most people’s ears!

By combining all your financial records onto one dashboard you can see a snapshot of your entire financial life and you have an easy navigation point to everything you need. You can personalise it to display the information that matters to you most, which in turn enables you to do things like:

View your investment portfolio and keep track of your investments, making it easy to see how they’re doing
Switch investments at the push of a button (although don’t be too hasty, reacting simply to that day’s news!)
Quickly access the details of all your insurance policies – a boon in case of emergencies, or at renewal time
Track your property values, something everyone on the property ladder likes to do from time to time
Manage your income and spending to keep on track through the year
Safely store all your important documents including property deeds, insurance contracts, policy documents, wills, valuations, statements, workplace savings booklets, death benefit nomination forms etc.
Be reminded about your renewals, maturities, income and payments. Add your own key events such as MOTs, Road Tax, Tax Returns, HMRC payments etc.

As well as a snapshot of your current position, having all your records in one place makes it much easier to plan better for retirement. The dashboards have interactive tools and calculators to help you understand your situation and plan effectively for your retirement and later life.

You can track how much your pension savings might be worth in the future, and see the impact of how small changes to your current lifestyle can provide you with a much better financial future. An incentive to avoid that daily coffee from the coffee shop and put the money into your pension, perhaps?

Whether you look at this from an individual perspective or as an employer, the benefits are clear. Employers are able to provide access to secure financial platforms for their employees and then use the secure and timely communication facilities offered by these platforms to ensure employees can be guided and informed about their workplace savings. The advantages and efficiencies of the new system can help employees from both a workplace savings and personal finance perspective.

If they haven’t already started using dashboards, employees will soon appreciate their ease and efficiency in allowing them to take or improve control of their own finances, something which can often be seen as ‘scary’ or ‘complicated’.

Making more of current technologies in this way will enhance the areas of their functionality you may currently be overlooking, and the coming months and years are due to bring even greater benefits and efficiency associated with integrated solutions and data aggregation systems.

Stephen Greenstreet is principal at PS Aspire Workplace Solutions.

This article was provided by Punter Southall Aspire.