How did accountants uncover £1.5m extra in COVID support for clients?

How to start having advisory conversations with your clients as part of the next normal.

As the UK begins to ease lockdown measures, some believe it will be back to the ‘good old days’.

But that seems unrealistic. The coronavirus pandemic appears to have altered the world that we knew and loved, forever. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the economy, the ability to do business, and the financial and personal wellbeing of clients.

A constant that remains – demand for advice 

Despite the changes we are seeing, both personally and professionally, one thing has remained constant – accountants’ advice is in high demand.

There is a huge amount of information available for clients to consume, but shifting through all this can be difficult. How do they know which advice is right? 

The difficulties of having client conversations remotely

The pandemic has led to social distancing to limit infection, but as a by-product it has meant that accountants are having more conversations with clients than ever.

And the main thrust of these conversations? Planning for survival and business continuity. 

Clients regularly turn to their accountants as their trusted advisor, but how do you help them understand not only what is available, but how this applies to them and their businesses?

Helping clients feel more in control and secure needs to be one of the key roles of accountants in the next normal. Yet, it can be difficult to have these kind of conversations with clients in a consistent and qualitative manner across all staff in an accounting firm, especially when they are all working remotely. 

A new tool to empower client advisory conversations

To assist firms in their advisory conversations with clients, we’re working with The Complete Advisory Solution, who have released a free COVID-19 Support Tool.

This pulls key information for clients all into one place, such as business and personal support options and a review of personal expenditure.

There are numerous benefits of the tool, including:

• enabling any accountant to have engaging and enriching conversations with clients
• leads on to unlocking financial help for clients they didn’t know was available
• provides clients with a huge amount of reassurance
• leads to further planning work for accountancy practices

How is the tool helping already?

Accountants are already identifying otherwise unseen opportunities for their firm through uncovering additional critical help for clients.

In fact, we know two firms have already found over £1.5m worth of extra help in total for four clients.

This comprises of, firstly, a sole practitioner who identified £255k, £344k, and £72k of additional help for the first three clients they contacted.

Separately, a large accountancy firm identified nearly £900k for one client. 

The tool is free until 31 August, with no obligation beyond this free period. 

IRIS customers can request free access to the tool by sending an email to info@completeadvisorysolution.com, mentioning they are an IRIS customer. They will be sent all the information they need to get going asap with the tool for free.

IRIS customers can also visit our hub for more resources on adapting to the next normal.