Financial advisers waste one in every eight hours on "unnecessary" tasks, according to a study by adviser tech platform Advicefront.
The figure amounts to nearly five hours a week, costing advisers £220 a week in wasted time, researchers found.
Advicefront asked 86 financial advisers how much personal time they waste each week on tasks they believed were "unnecessary" or "could be done quicker".
Their response was, on average, two hours and 55 minutes disposing of paperwork, two hours and 41 minutes printing documents, two hours and 35 minutes filling out paperwork and two hours and 23 minutes physically filing paperwork.
Advisers were also asked how much time they spent manually on tasks that could be automated using technology and the response was four hours and 34 minutes fact finding, four hours and 16 minutes preparing suitability letters and two hours and 55 minutes re-keying data.
José Supico, chief executive of Advicefront, said: "It’s clear that financial advisers are overwhelmed with paper and facing a daily fight against increasingly onerous admin tasks, leaving them less and less time to do what they love doing – sitting down with their clients.
"In many cases, this is because of the legacy systems of dino-providers. But there is also a whole world of tech out there that can help speed up or fully automate many of the more mundane, time-consuming tasks – and they are often only a Google search away."
When asked about the two main client-based tasks, advisers said they were spending an average of five hours and 25 minutes a week on financial planning, and four hours and 16 minutes on client engagement or education.
David Scott, an adviser at the firm of Andrews Gwynne in Leeds, said: "Of course it depends what you call a useless task, but because of compliance there certainly is lots more admin than in the past, and things having to be signed in duplicate and triplicate. It certainly does take up a large part of the day for an adviser."
