A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

FINANCIAL PLANNERS – One of the most frequent questions I’m asked, especially when showcasing back-office software or practice management systems, is about the ‘fact find’.

Advisers will ask,

• ‘But where’s the fact find?’

• ‘How do I print it?’

• ‘Where do I upload it?’

These questions typically come from a certain generation—mine and older—that place immense importance on the so-called ‘fact find’. However, the concept of the ‘fact find’, as it was traditionally understood, is now pretty much obsolete.

If you’re under 35, here’s a history lesson in why us fossils get so obsessed with having a ‘fact find’ in our hands.

In the early to mid-1990s, fact finds didn’t exist. Financial Advisers were essentially ‘insurance agents’, primarily selling insurance and savings policies.

Often working for companies like Pearl, Prudential, Co-op, or, in my case, Royal London, we were assigned a specific geographic area within our town to build a client base. The only exception was if you received a referral to a family member in another postcode, giving you the chance to smugly step into another agent’s territory.

As insurance agents, we were embedded in those communities; we knew everything about everyone. We would knock on doors, introduce ourselves, sell our policies and then collect premiums from the doorstep each week and mark it in our little books. Hence why we still refer to things as a ‘book of business’.

We saw our clients’ lives unfold—weddings, births, promotions, deaths, and everything in between—and became a trusted part of the community.

As people reached various milestones in their lives, you simply wrote them a policy, which they took without question because everyone else in their house had one.

• Reached 16 and got your first apprenticeship? Here’s a pension policy.

• Getting married? You’re going to need a savings plan to save for a house deposit.

• Baby on the way? You’ll need some life insurance.

There was no paperwork beyond a one-page proposal form—no fact find, no computer systems, no file checks, no terms of business, and no key features illustrations.

Just the knowledge in your head and a page in your cash book.

By the mid-90s, however, things changed. The Financial Services Authority (FSA), which later became the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), began to ask, “How can you prove these policies are suitable?” 

The answer of “Because I live amongst my clients, see them every week and know everything about their life and family” didn’t wash with the regulator– they wanted a form with tick boxes and facts.

And so, the ‘fact find’ was born—an A4 document containing basic information such as your client’s name, address, earnings, assets, and liabilities. The irony was that it captured only about 10% of what you knew about the client, yet it was 100% responsible for justifying the product sale.

Of course, once forms were introduced, you needed people to check them, and so the compliance industry was born to ensure that boxes were ticked and the last remnants of human soul were expunged.

However, all of this had to be paid for, which meant cutting costs elsewhere. Clients were moved to Direct Debits, eliminating the need for expensive agents to collect premiums door-to-door.

Ironically, in the regulators’ pursuit of ensuring we ‘knew our clients,’ we ended up knowing them only as a name on a computer screen and some ‘facts’ in a fact find that told us nothing about who they really were, just what they had and what they wanted.

Their stories were still being told; we just weren’t there to hear them anymore.

Fast forward to today, with the rise of cash flow modelling and Lifestyle Financial Planning, the focus is once again on our clients’ human stories. We’ve realised that simply knowing their National Insurance number and salary details isn’t enough. We need to understand their thoughts, challenges, hopes, and dreams. In a way, we’ve come full circle—back to where we were before the fact find.

The difference now is that, instead of keeping all the ‘human’ information in our heads, our software should be intuitive enough to record these stories alongside factual data.

And the truth is, both will change—that’s life.

Our job is to challenge clients’ assumptions, present new opportunities, and guide them through changes in their lives. As their circumstances evolve, their stories take new turns, and both financial plans and fact finds will need updating.

After all, what is a story but a series of circumstances—fact finds—woven together, like a flicker book.

So, when an Adviser asks me, “Where’s the fact find on our software?” I remind them that today’s fact find is simply a printout of the information stored in the CRM at any given moment.

It’s still there, just more fluid and organic—like life, as it should be.

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