90% of advice firms say GDPR impacted business

70% of firms surveyed said GDPR had some impact on their business and a further 20% said it had a "major impact".

Just 8% said it had no impact and the remaining 2% couldn't say either way.

When asked about the number of breaches their firm has had to report to clients, prospects or the regulator, the survey found that 13% had reported between one and five breaches, with 83% reporting no breaches.

Discussing how regularly employees receive formal training on data protection and/or the GDPR, 73% said they receive it once a year and 17% said they had training just once, when GDPR first came into force.

8% receive it every six months and 2% never receive it in a formal way.

Nick Eatock, Intelliflo's executive chairman, commented: "It's no surprise that advisers are reporting that the GDPR had an impact on their daily working lives - the risks of getting it wrong and the compensation costs that could bring has meant doing nothing is not an option.

"Registrations to PFP increased by almost 70% last year, driven by adviser awareness that email is no longer good enough to communicate with customers. Being able to offer secure messaging across PCs and mobile devices is becoming something that people expect as standard. Without a doubt the GDPR was a catalyst for advisers to embrace technology and remove some of the stress associated with complying with the regulation."