The pandemic made advisors embrace their technology, but one subset of "digitally empowered" advisors was poised seize the moment.

Three quarters of the advisors in Fidelity’s latest Financial Advisor Community COVID Series survey said that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital processes among advisors, reporting that they’ve increased the rate at which they’re taking their businesses digital.

As a result of the shutdowns, 44% of the advisors in the survey reported developing a formal digital client experience strategy during the pandemic, or creating plans to do so within the next one-to-two years. Additionally, 41% of the respondents indicated that they already had created or had plans to create a comprehensive, firm-wide digital strategy.

Yet only three-in-10 advisors said that their firms met basic criteria demonstrating a commitment to implementing technology that included concepts like having a grasp of currently available technology and integration partners, using technology to differentiate the client experience, providing adequate technology training for advisors, regularly implementing new features, tracking performance metrics on their technology, helping advisors expand scale and capacity, and considering the integration of platform technologies and tools as part of an overall technology strategy.

Fidelity deemed firms that meet all seven of its basic criteria “digitally empowered firms” and compared their responses to others in the survey. The digitally empowered firms were more likely to report digitizing their workflows (91% to 64%) and gaining efficiencies (87% to 55%) from increased technology use during Covid-19.

They were also more likely to believe that technological improvements made as a result of Covid-19 would make them more attractive to prospective clients (84% to 49%) and more effective in retaining current clients (86% to 60%).

Unsurprisingly, advisors named video conferencing technology as the most helpful technology to them during the pandemic, with 45% naming remote connections as their most valuable technology. At significantly lower rates, the advisors selected CRM, 15%, and their online client portal, 9%.

The top current and future challenges indicated by survey respondents were technology adoption, optimization and training.

Fidelity’s survey was conducted online among 422 advisors between July 10 and July 16, 2020.