November was a whirlwind month at RQ.

Following the news of our collaboration with ICAEW in late October, we've been inundated with incredible conversations with forward-thinking Accountants, Financial Planners and other professionals. On the 12th of December, we're cohosting a launch event for the ICAEW and RQ's collaboration agreement in London. If you've not got an invite yet and want to come along, message us!

We've also been busy shipping some exciting new features, including enabling clients to refer themselves to partners at the end of Compass and surfacing insights from inside Compass snapshots in a much more impactful way.

As always, every tweak, enhancement, and addition made to RQ has been crafted with you in mind, based on hours of conversations with innovative firms. If anything resonates with you or you want to learn more about these developments, email us at hello@rqratings.com or book a call with our team.
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November highlights

1) ICAEW and RQ announce collaboration

2) Making Compass immediately impactful

3) Launching RQ Certified v.2.0

4) Enabling clients to “self-refer”

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ICAEW and RQ

ICAEW and RQ announced our collaboration agreement in mid-October (see the release here). Under the agreement, ICAEW will take RQ to its 12,000 member firms and provide ongoing regulatory guidance and input as we continue the development of RQ over the coming months and years.

The ultimate goal is to help Accountancy firms build the practice of tomorrow by transforming professional collaboration to unlock commercial opportunities, benefiting their clients with vital introductions to great professionals.

Professional referrals are a rich source of potential clients for all professional services firms. Collaboration between the professions is a win-win-win, resulting in: better client outcomes and stronger, faster growing businesses.

Read more here
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‍Surfacing Compass insights faster

For those Accountants and Solicitors already using Compass to gather insights on their client base and strengthen client relationships, we're got some exciting changes just days away.

We’re making it even easier to uncover insights on your clients from inside your Compass dashboard. Once you've distributed Compass with your clients, you'll see their snapshots appear inside your Compass dashboard.

By clicking on a client, you'll get an summary snapshot generated on the right hand side, giving you everything you need to know about your client, their circumstances, goals, and more.

No more digging into each individual client snapshot. Instead, you’ll be able to extract insights seconds after your clients complete Compass.
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Launch of RQ Certified v.2.0

We're proud to announce the launch of RQ Certified v.2.0, our in-depth assessment that demonstrates the all-round quality of a financial planning firm.

Spearheaded by Jackie Lockie, with input from across the professions, RQ Certified is a key element of the wider RQ professional collaboration ecosystem.

RQ Certified aims to be the respected benchmark that demonstrates the all-round quality of a financial planning firm in the UK and helps the very best firms to stand out, shine and grow.

The Certified process delves into the inner workings of a financial planning firm, covering its client proposition, the structure and governance underpinning the delivery of services and advice to clients, its trading and regulatory history, and financial soundness.

What makes RQ Certified different

It's an objective, comprehensive assessment focused on helping consumers and other professionals, such as accountants and lawyers, understand the metrics that matter when choosing a financial planning firm to work with.

There are other certification processes available to planning firms – many of them very good, helpful and important, including, and in particular, that of the Accredited Financial Planning Firms. But each is focused on specific elements of what makes for a better firm and better client outcomes rather than considering all of them.

In addition, they don’t have the commercial cut-through we’d all like them to have: you’re great and high-quality financial planning has the power to change lives, but do accountants and lawyers know how good you are, in absolute terms and relative to the alternatives out there? Just as importantly, do they understand why you’re better than many, if not most? Do they know what truly makes a good firm good?

Why RQ Certified matters for professional collaboration

Alongside RQ Monitoring, which aggregates essential data on all FCA-registered firms, enabling monitoring in real-time, RQ Certified provides a robust quality assurance standard that objectively, broadly and deeply evaluates firms.

In effect, RQ takes the due diligence strain from accountants and lawyers and helps them to find a great financial planning firm to work with, compliantly and confidently justify and evidence their decisions and actions in referring to their existing referral partners, or identify possible shortcomings and preferable alternatives.

Find out more

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Enabling Compass users to self-refer

The “actions” surfaced by Compass are often a trigger for a conversation with a trusted professional. Some of you have told us you’d like to enable your clients to be schedule a call directly with a fellow professional; without having to wait to be referred by their accountant or lawyer.

That means if your client needs financial planning services, a mortgage, or a Will, and you have a partner that can assist, clients will be able to book a call with that partner and a referral will be created from your firm to theirs!

For those of you that want to explore using this feature, message us or book a call with our team and we'll walk you through it.