Invest3 publishers3 min readPublished
FPA rebuilds PlannerSearch to reach planner prospects within five minutes
Financial Planning Association's rebuilt PlannerSearch, launched Oct. 1, follows up on prospects in five minutes against a 24-hour industry average. That first contact comes from the software, so each practice still decides how fast its own reply must be.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- The relaunch is part of a multiyear strategic partnership between the FPA and technology company Snappy Kraken.
- Prospects answer a 12-question quiz on emotional drivers and life events, and the results place them in one of four client mindsets on a two-axis Mindset Matrix.
- Planners can claim up to three significant life events and client demographics as specialties, with the rest of the profile pulled from the FPA database.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- contradiction The report's summary calls the five-minute effect an 85% increase while its body calls it an 85% conversion chance, so planners cannot tell how much of the gain depends on their own starting rate.
- constraint The three-specialty cap forces generalist planners to choose which life events they want leads for, because the quiz routes prospects by those events.
- capability With profile views and leads on a dashboard, each practice can measure its own lead-to-appointment rate against the 85% the report cites, which the published claim does not allow.
Twenty-four hours is 1,440 minutes, so PlannerSearch answers 288 times faster than the industry average [1]. Both figures come from Robert Sofia, chief executive of the FPA's partner Snappy Kraken, who said the average industry response time sits at around 24 hours and that PlannerSearch follows up within five minutes [7]. In that account, the thing that "follows up" is the software. Whether a planner has to make contact inside the same window is a separate question.
If the automated touch holds a prospect until a planner calls, the practice's own speed matters less. If it hands a warm lead to an office that answers the next morning, the 24-hour gap comes back one step later. I'd expect the second outcome at practices where nobody is assigned to watch the inbox. The counter-case is that a prospect who has already worked through a 12-question quiz on emotional drivers and life events [6] is committed enough to wait a day.
The case for speed rests on one figure, and the report prints it two ways. The body says there is "an 85% chance of converting a lead to an appointment" when contact comes within five minutes [8]. The summary says five-minute follow-up "increases lead-to-appointment opportunities by 85%" [9]. An 85% conversion rate and an 85% lift are different claims. A lift means little without a baseline. The sentence that should give the 24-hour comparison breaks off at "drops that conversion to below" [10]. The report does not cite a study for either version.
The FPA built this with outside help: a multiyear partnership with Snappy Kraken [1], plus the Smyth Group, a financial software firm brought in to round out development [2]. Jamie Smyth, the Smyth Group's chief executive, said the goals included building something that was neither a directory nor another ZIP code search service [4]. "Most people don't start searching for a financial planner on an average Tuesday," Smyth said. "They start looking because something major has happened in their lives." [5] FPA chief executive Dennis Moore said the matches are available in the format users want, "including a world where artificial intelligence is changing how people find answers, compare options and decide whom to trust." [3]
Matching on life events puts every planner up against a cap. Each can choose up to three significant life events and client demographics as a specialty [11]. A generalist practice has to decide which life events to claim, because the quiz uses life events to fit prospects to an advisor's expertise [6].
The planners' side will test the 85% figure. "Planners also have a dashboard that gives them visibility into activity around their profile, including views and leads," said Nikita Nilges, strategic designer at the Smyth Group [12]. The 85% figure counts appointments [8]. If practices that answer in a day book appointments at rates close to those that answer in five minutes, practices need less speed than the vendor's figure implies.
What to watch
- Lead-to-appointment rates from PlannerSearch dashboards, broken out by how fast planners respond after the platform's first contact.
- Disclosure of the Snappy Kraken partnership terms, including whether planners pay for PlannerSearch leads.