Reminders for reviews, milestones and lender offers
How the Financial services pack reminds staff before annual reviews, invites clients ahead of them, and flags loan milestones and expiring offers.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Financial services businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
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An adviser with a few hundred client households cannot hold every review date in their head, and an originator cannot remember which lender's offer runs out on Friday. Both depend on something reminding them. When that something is a diary nobody updated, reviews slip by a quarter and offers lapse while the client is still thinking.
Achekam's Financial services pack sends reminders from the dates on its own records: the next review date on each household review, and the milestones and lender offers on each loan application.
Staff reminders before an annual review
When a household review has its next review date set, staff are reminded 30 days and 7 days before it.
Give each reminder a job. The first is the cue to send the client the pre-review request for changes and current statements, so the answers are back before the meeting. The second is the cue to prepare: read the client's answers, pull the provider statements, and note what has changed since last year.
That makes the next review date the most important field on the record. The annual review workflow ends by setting it, so make it a firm rule that no review is closed without one. A household with no date will never be reminded about.
Inviting the client ahead of the review
The pack can also invite the client 21 days before the review. Because this message goes to a client, three rules govern it:
- it stays off until a workspace administrator switches it on;
- once on, it is sent at most once, so the client never receives the same invitation twice;
- customer reminders are limited by a daily cap.
Before an administrator switches invitations on, decide what they should say and whether they suit your clients. Some clients appreciate a written invitation they can forward to a spouse. Others expect a personal call from their adviser and may find an automated message cold. Keeping the invitation off and phoning instead is a perfectly sound choice.
What a good invitation says
If you do switch client invitations on, the wording carries the relationship, so write it with care rather than accepting whatever is there. A good invitation is short and does four things:
- it names the adviser the client knows, not "the team";
- it says what the review is for, in a sentence: to check that the client's cover, savings and plans still fit their life;
- it tells the client what to have ready, or says that a separate request for documents will follow;
- it gives a simple way to agree a time, or says the adviser will call to arrange one.
Avoid anything that reads like a sales message. Clients who feel the review is for their benefit come to it prepared; clients who suspect it is about selling them something postpone it. For South African practices, the FSCA's consumer pages describe its role as market conduct regulator of financial institutions and how it promotes the fair treatment of financial customers, a sound test for any message that goes to a client.
Loan milestone and lender-offer reminders
For bond originators, the pack reminds staff of loan application milestones and of lender offers that are about to expire. An expired offer can mean returning to the lender and starting part of the process again, so these are the reminders to watch most closely in busy months.
Like every reminder, they work from the dates on the record. Enter each offer's expiry date on the day the offer arrives, and update milestone dates when a lender or conveyancer gives you a new one.
By e-mail and in the app
Reminders arrive by e-mail and in the app only. There is no SMS channel and no WhatsApp.
For staff that is rarely a problem. For the client invitation, it means the e-mail address on the record must be current. Check it at every review. People change addresses when they change jobs, and a change of job is often one of the very things the review is meant to pick up.
Switching reminders on and living with the daily cap
The daily cap limits how many reminders go to clients in a day. If your practice tends to bunch reviews together, for example around the end of the tax year, spread the next review dates a little when you set them, so the practice is not relying on a large batch of invitations all falling due on the same day.
Client reminders are the ones a workspace administrator switches on. Whatever the settings, though, every reminder can only follow the dates on the records, so the practice's part is to keep those dates accurate and complete.
| Reminder | Goes to | When |
|---|---|---|
| Annual review | Staff | 30 days and 7 days before the next review date |
| Review invitation | The client, once switched on | 21 days before the next review date |
| Loan milestone | Staff | Tied to the milestone date on the application |
| Expiring lender offer | Staff | Tied to the offer's expiry date on the application |
A routine that keeps reminders reliable
- No household review is closed without a next review date.
- Every loan application records its milestone dates and each offer's expiry.
- Client e-mail addresses are confirmed at each review.
- An administrator decides once whether client invitations are on, and the practice tells clients what to expect.
- Someone looks at the coming week's reviews and expiring offers every Monday, in case a reminder was missed or ignored.
The reminders are only the front end of the annual cycle described in running the annual household review, and of the application process in tracking a loan application milestone by milestone.
Look through your current list of households today and make sure every one has a next review date. The reminders start working from the first date you enter.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
