Ask any adviser what their most important skill is, and they’d probably put empathy near the top of the list. The ability to put themselves in the client’s shoes, to feel what they’re feeling. But what if that muscle still needs a bit of developing?
Fear not, because the robots – and SJP – have stepped up to help. If an adviser feels so inclined, they can now strap on a VR headset and work on their soft skills from… pretty much anywhere, presumably.
Empathy training
SJP and the CII’s new virtual reality empathy training, running across May and June, promises to deliver “realistic, interactive scenarios” to help planners support vulnerable clients better, all through the power of AI technology.
At £275 for members, that sounds like a bargain, right? It certainly sounds like the kind of thing a consumer duty conscious adviser should be doing. But whether you believe it will work depends very much on your outlook on whether robots can do what an adviser can. “VR can help with many aspects to training. But to think it can identify and train empathy is about as sensible as thinking VR could train a novice how to identify a G spot,” says Appleton Gerrard financial planner. Kusal Ariyawansa.
That’s not to say that VR couldn’t be a good introduction for novice advisers. But veterans of the profession say a certain level of human contact is what’s really needed if planners really want to understand how clients behave in real life. Syndaxi’s Rob Reid says: “The young planners that worked with me sat in meetings and gradually took part. I’m all for AR – actual reality VR works for surgeons – but you need to learn through failing if empathy is a key objective. I can see VR helping with presenting or speaking to a crowd but not one to one.”
Keeping in contact
Blast through some of that the cynicism, and some of the data does suggest VR can give soft skills a boost. Consultants at PwC, for example, say VR users can feel up to 3.75 times more emotionally connected to content than classroom learners, and more than twice as connected as other e-learners.
Assuming we can measure such things with even a modicum of accuracy, that does sound like a decent bump. Some planners have already reported positive experience from the technology too – or at least an improvement on how firms have tried to train advisers on such things in the past.
One advice professional says they got to try the VR vulnerability tech at Techlink’s conference last year. “The example was clearly blooming obvious that the person was vulnerable and at the same time, with a plethora of examples, its way better than the honeycomb paper grid given to advisers,” they say.
SJP and the CII are certainly confident enough about it to promise a journalist like me a test-drive of the technology as some point in the future.
Investment Network boss Clive Waller adds: “Whatever the medium, effectiveness depends on the quality of the content. Vulnerability as defined by the FCA is a pretty new concept and unproven. Giving all good, transparent, advice in straightforward language is appropriate for the vast majority of folk.”
Photo by max-kegfire on Canva
