Annual reviews ‘not serving clients’

• Tweet

KiwiSaver advisers who are reviewing their clients’ investments on an annual basis probably aren’t serving them as well as they could, the founder of an AI business says.

Wednesday, June 24th 2026, 6:01AM

Clive Fernandes is director of Sevaka, which provides AI support for financial advisers. He also established advice firm National Capital.

He said annual reviews had never been best for clients. “The proof of that is the fact that clients haven’t been responding to the call from advisers to get financial advice.

“There has to be another reason other than clients don’t care about their own financial lives. I believe the reason is that we just don’t have the system set up correctly to give clients what they actually need. Right now advice is given on the adviser’s timeline rather than the client’s timeline. Just because a client happened to speak to me for the first time on December 24th, doesn’t mean every year the client’s available on December 24th.”

He said a better option was to try to speak to clients at the points they needed advice.

“The problem with that of course is how do we know when the client needs to speak to us? I Don’t think that’s a problem I’d have had an answer to if we were having this phone call a few years back but now we do,” he said. “Now we have an answer and the answer is to look at the data.”

He said a KiwiSaver adviser should be able to see the KiwiSaver transactions their clients were making, and then use AI to highlight anything that could mean a life change.

“A simple example is KiwiSaver contribution – if the amount has changed I could deduce from that whether it reflects a change in the client’s income. They could still be on 3 percent but now 3 percent of a higher income is a higher amount. Based on that if I was going to reach out to he client not with like ‘book an appointment with an adviser’ but with ‘we’ve noticed this… what are you doing with that extra income?’”

He said it was the approach he suggested to advisers.

“We’re running a technology company that could enable all of this. Rather than them send their client data to us, the system is set up within the confines of the FAP itself. As per the policies and agreements that our advisers have with their clients, they process the client’s data to give them the kind of advice I think clients have always  needed.

"I think they’re going to want even more and more going into the future just because the technology and the capability now exists.”

Fernandes said he expected consolidation in the industry which would allow adviser businesses to invest more in technology. “Most advisers are like ‘I’d love to do it. I have no idea how and I’m currently working 40 hours in my business so I just don’t have the time to look into that. That is a struggle that I guess small business owners have had for a long time.”

Tags: Sevaka

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Sign In to add your comment