How Qwil Helped Fiducia Wealth Management Bring Faster, Secure Messaging to Clients of All Ages

"If you use WhatsApp in your personal life, why would you not use that in your business life, provided it was efficient, provided it was secure, and it had the functionality that would allow your business to scale?" - Gordon Kearney, Managing Director And Financial Planner, Fiducia Wealth Management

Fiducia Wealth Management is a chartered, independent financial advice firm that has been operating for 21 years. It specialises in Fiduciary Wealth Management and has always positioned itself at the forefront of adopting technology. It was one of the early adopters of wrap platforms some 20 years ago. Gordon Kearney leads the firm, working in a "podular" structure alongside a paraplanner and admin support.

For any financial advice firm, client communication runs on sensitive information, and email has become a tedious and unreliable way to handle it. For Fiducia, the problems in conventional communication channels led them to Qwil Messenger: a secure, WhatsApp-style channel that clients across generations already understand and that feeds straight into the firm's CRM.

Why Fiducia Switched to Qwil

Email had become a weak point. Messages are easily forgotten, and once they slip off the first page of an inbox they get lost and have to be chased.

"Emails have become a tedious medium and are easily forgotten about. As soon as they lose the first page, if you don't have good discipline, they get lost and then they have to be followed up."

Gordon initially wanted a faster, more direct way to communicate with long-standing clients, relationships of 10 years or more. Email was too slow, and he wasn't comfortable that information shared informally was secure enough. Anything clients sent also had to be manually clipped and uploaded into the CRM.

"What I was not comfortable with was that if any information was given to me, it wasn't secure, and I needed a degree of security."

Qwil offered both: the convenience of a familiar messaging experience which is easily adopted not only by younger clients (i.e under 50), but also those well in their 70s as well, with the security a regulated firm requires.

Streamlining Communications with Qwil

Seamless CRM integration. Qwil links automatically with Fiducia's Planner CRM, so information shared by clients lands where it needs to be without anyone copying or uploading it.

"The information that was given, I didn't have to clip up and upload into a CRM. It would happen seamlessly. That's what Qwil provided for me."

Instant communication, for both sides. A degree of instant communication is more efficient for advisers and clients alike, and Fiducia has seen requests move faster.

"If I want to get a meeting or get an answer, it gets done in a much more speedy way. That clearly is the reason I'm engaged."

A team that can jump in. Because Gordon works with a paraplanner and admin support, shared visibility matters. Team members can see conversations as they happen, so nobody is missed off a CC'd email, and they can step in quickly to respond on his behalf.

Looking ahead. Fiducia is now exploring calendar integration and synchronisation, so clients can log in and book review meetings directly and the firm can get the information it needs to progress a case instantly.

Building Better Client Relationships With Clients Across All Generations

Fiducia's clients span the generations. Adoption was fastest among clients under 50, but older clients have embraced Qwil as well. Only this week, Gordon rolled it out to a group of clients in their early seventies, and all of them adopted it.

"All of them have adopted it, and they now know that that is the secure stream for me to communicate with them."

Onboarding has been smooth, with no complaints about the process being cumbersome and nobody opting out.

"I think it's quite intuitive. I've not had any clients complain that the process was cumbersome. I've not had anybody say, 'It's not for me, I'm not going to use it.'”

Clients are happy to engage this way for two reasons: security, and just as importantly, ease of use.

The Results

Fiducia didn't track time spent on email before adopting Qwil, so the firm can't put a precise figure on time saved. The benefits are clear in day-to-day practice:

• Faster outcomes. Meetings get booked and questions get answered more quickly.
• Secure by default. Clients have a dedicated, secure channel instead of sending sensitive information by email or consumer messaging apps.
• Less admin. Client information flows automatically into the Planner CRM.
• Clients of every age on board, including a group in their early seventies who adopted it readily.
• Whole-team visibility, with paraplanners and admin support able to follow and join conversations.
• A foundation for scale, with calendar and meeting-booking integrations next.

"It has clearly impacted our ability to communicate with clients in a medium which is relevant to their everyday life. It's much more expediting in terms of what gets done and how we can get information." - Gordon Kearney, Fiducia Wealth Management