She said the platform space was very competitive and margins were low, which was driving some firms down a digital-only path in their customer service.
"I think a lot of firms are going down the digital-only route. I'm hearing a lot of things from advisers saying, 'I've got business on such and such a platform and they don't have anyone you can speak to', so it's purely an email type customer service function that isn't a call centre, that isn't a chat facility.
"Now that sort of service is fine if it's all very straightforward stuff. But actually, this is quite a complex business, you know, and quite often there are situations that are not always that straightforward."
Repositioning the brand
Last month the group consolidated its adviser platforms and rebranded them as the Scottish Widows Platform. This came as part of a £150mn investment into the platform from owner Lloyds Banking Group.
The former Zurich platform, Advance by Embark, has not been part of this rebrand but will be folded into the new platform later this year.
Part of the reason for the move was to end confusion in the market over which brand did what, said Leiper.
Following the change, Embark will live on as the name of the white labelling platform business the group runs for its partners, while all adviser business will fall under Scottish Widows and all direct to consumer business will be carried out via the bank brands.
Advisers have not always taken well to the Scottish Widows brand due to ongoing issues with clients in its legacy books. But Leiper said research had suggested "advisers feel that the Scottish Widows brand is more recognisable and is more trusted than the Embark brand from an end consumer perspective."
She acknowledged there were still issues in that side of the business, especially around so-called orphaned clients and advisers trying to move clients into new products. "We have had some challenges in one of our legacy propositions and we would recognise those challenges. There's been a lot of work there to improve this service," she said.
The group's vision is to "become the easiest platform for advisers to do business on," said Leiper.
"Advisers are quite time poor. They're quite impatient if they have challenges and issues. So part of the functionality that we've been developing is integrating into adviser back office systems...building that sort of two way integration so that we are downloading information into the adviser system, so bulk valuations for example, but equally they can start the new business applications on their side of the fence and we can upload that into our system."
And it's more user friendly and easily adaptable when it comes to its design elements, such as page layouts and button functions.
