PFS Power has published new guidance on how firms can focus on delivering consumer outcomes in financial planning.

The firm’s guidance identified “clarity, connection, choice, control and confidence” as five key consumer outcomes that advisers should be working to achieve.

It also outlined the human skills required to help clients to implement sensible decisions about their life and money.

Defining outcome-based financial planning, co-architect of POWER Planning, Duncan Parkes, said that “outcome-based financial planning” is an approach that puts the client “at the heart of everything, but with a subtle difference”.

“As well as being about the client it focuses on the outcomes that financial planning can bring to a client,” Parkes said.

“Anyone can say that the client sits at the heart of what they do, but only those adopting a specific style of financial advice can say that they are working to achieve specific outcomes for their clients.”

In the guidance, PFS Power recommended that goal setting with clients can provide “clarity”, while understanding of resources will establish a realistic “connection” with their current circumstances and future plans. Once established, “choice” can be presented, improving chances of success, and enabling the consumer to feel in “control”, and ultimately “confidence”

Head of PFS Power content, Carrie Bendall, added: “Since I discovered the world of personal financial planning in 2008, I’ve had the privilege to meet hundreds of financial planners and to have hundreds of conversations with their clients.

“Conversations where clients have the freedom to think about what personal financial planning means to them. Many repeated the same words: clarity, connection, choice, control, confidence.”

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