Have a client portal? You may still need secure email1.

A client portal can be an excellent place to manage an ongoing relationship. It can hold documents, support structured tasks, and give clients a central view of the information they need over time.

However, it should not be expected to carry every exchange.

Whether you are a pure IFA, a dual-authority firm, a mortgage adviser, or a mortgage and protection business, your client relationships include both repeat activity and one-off interactions. Those two types of communication need different routes.

The question is not whether you should communicate with clients using a portal or email. It is what job each channel should do, which clients it suits, and how sensitive information is protected when the conversation moves away from expected processes.

Give the portal a job it can win

A portal works best as a destination. It suits ongoing engagement, account history, repeated self-service tasks, status updates, forms, and a document library that clients have a reason to revisit.

16 | The Adviser Online