It’s just weeks until the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) deadline, yet advisers still have work to do.
This is the conclusion of Intelliflo. The company’s most recent survey of those advisers who use their suite of business management tools, which tested their GDPR preparation, discovered that only 18% reached ‘Expert’ status, scoring between 90% and 100%.
Almost three in five who took part reached ‘Pro’ status, scoring between 60% and 90%, while just under a quarter were still at the ‘Rookie’ stage, scoring between 0% and 59%.
Rob Walton, Intelliflo’s Chief Operating Officer and Chair of the Intelliflo GDPR Working Group, an industry group set up in 2017 and which represents around 2,000 UK-based advice firms, said: “The message about needing to take action to comply with the GDPR is definitely getting through to advisers. Last September we found that around 9% weren’t even aware of the new regulation. The knowledge survey shows that around 99% now do know about it and the majority are taking steps to increase their understanding of the regulation, although there’s still plenty of scope for improvement.”
Rob Walton continues: “We’ve created tools to give our customers a practical and effective way of engaging with the new requirements. They are particularly useful for advisers who are working alone or in small firms as they don’t have the resources of a team of support staff or on-site compliance experts. However, they are just as much at risk of incurring fines or being sued by disgruntled clients as the large adviser firms, should a data breach happen.”
The GDPR deadline is 25 May, 2018.
