AdviceTech Podcast #22 – Fin365 – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl advice tech podcast. How exciting is that to say? I’m Peita Diamantidis and the guest joining me here today to deep dive into fin 365 is a fellow financial advisor so knows our our suffering and experience worked as at Microsoft as a lead program manager and has possibly the best title ever in his LinkedIn profile of director of relaxation and fun for a guest house in Torquay, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Stephen Handley.

Stephen Handley
Thank you. Great to be here. I didn’t realize you were going to dig up dirt on me. But yes, I have lived a few lives, including running a guesthouse for five years with my wife. And it was all about fun and relaxation was surprising how many financial services professionals came and stayed at the guest house during that time. So well. Of course,

Peita Diamantidis
it’s such a beautiful part of the world down this is just delicious. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, you’ve made me add it to my list again. And it’s just by doing that research, so very keen to pick your brain on all things. Finn 365. But let’s just get to know you a little better through your use of technology. All right. And you know, I have sort of given you almost no warning on this. So please feel free to take your time. But let’s start with what’s your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Stephen Handley
Yes, I do. And but it does depend on the time of day. So I have, I’ve only had about 21 seconds to think of this everyone but time of day. At the moment, at least I’m inundated with messages all over the place. So the thumbs up to say I have received it. And at some point I will respond is is definitely one I’ll use. But if it’s later at night, and I’ve done with the work day, and I’m just browsing through some of the LinkedIn conversations, and maybe I’ve had a glass of red wine or three, the the facepalm often is often one that I wish was on LinkedIn. I actually do it myself. But then there’s no way to try it, which is probably a good thing, I’d probably get in trouble if it was available on linking. So those two because some of the comments out there boggle my mind, including probably some of mine at times when I read them back

Peita Diamantidis
the first time is a good one actually. It’s my equivalent of that too is I was a big NCIS fan and the TV show and there’s a character called Lenovo and his boss you know frequently during the day when he does something really stupid stupid will sort of do this slap up the back of your head a bit like an Italian mama. And I need one of those on as an emoji because sometimes I’m like really? Except out of it. Sunshine. So I’m with you. All right. So in terms of your smartphone, we’re all permanently attached to them. We are if you had to wipe everything off at all those apps I’m sure you have. Which tree would you keep?

Stephen Handley
This is a tricky one. And to be honest, if I could I would throw it away in one damn. I’m looking forward to doing that to how because we are tied to it and that’s it. We could do an entire podcast on that conversation. Which ones would I well music for I have a background in, in music engineering, I’m still a closeted guitar player and singer songwriter. So and these days, it’s it’s Spotify just because that’s easy. So I would absolutely have the music on there. I’d like to say the To Do lists, so that my wife and I were more efficient at communicating what needs to happen. But she doesn’t use the To Do lists, she has her own little book that I have no access to. So that’s useless. Am I still doing any sort of business? I’m going to assume that at that point, I’m not doing any business at all. So maps have to keep maps because these days we’re all so hopeless at finding our way around. And men have had that problem historically, anyway, and probably something that gave me a bit of feedback on restaurants or places to eat or reviews of having worked in hospitality and worried about how we were rating as a guest house, it was always good to get consumer feedback. So let’s call it whichever one of the apps, whatever the one of the TripAdvisor that now there’s, there’s probably a few others. So one of those,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, I’m with you. In fact, I’m at the point now, where I mean, you know, an everyday restaurant we you just dropping in is fine. But if I’m going to go somewhere special and spend some money, I won’t go unless I can see some reviews and also see a menu. This doesn’t have to be necessarily today’s menu, but I’m like, No, I need to know what we’re in for here. You know, that’s how your pics are right there with you. All right, so let’s dive into Finn 365. And let’s start a bit high level. For those that aren’t aware I’m sure most are. But for those that aren’t aware, where do you guys fit in the advice, tech space? You know, what sort of category are you in? And who are you generally lined up against? You know, if somebody’s considering the their alternatives?

Stephen Handley
It’s that’s probably the hardest question to answer, because we’re not we’re more of a platform that an individual. So, broadly speaking, the problem we’re trying to solve, which may help answer the question is, is data management, right? And automating the flow of data management through the advice process in the client engagement process reduplicate, reducing duplicate data entry, having it flow through a broad range of integrations. Okay, so, so at our core, were a CRM. Microsoft Dynamics is the platform that we built. Fin 365. I started in my own advice business 1112 years ago, and I looked at the systems that were available to me off the shelf and said, I need better data management. Our customers, we’re in regional Victoria, our customers are in the mums and dads be, you’ll appreciate this with the business and you’ve tried to build or not tried to build the business that you have built. We our average revenue is half the industry average, upfront and ongoing. And so it wasn’t sufficient for me to find my 128 clients per advisor, or whatever the average is, charge them 5000 a month, or 5000 a year sorry, and play golf on weekends, I had to be able to see more clients, I had to be able to still deliver a great experience to those clients. But to do that I had to reduce the manual effort to be more automated operational efficiency. So better customer experience to more clients than the average and of course in our industry maintain the quality assurance, the compliance that is always ever present. That made when I looked at the flow of information from the very first point of contact with the client to the fact find to the research the authorities to proceed, the statements of advice, the application forms, annual review documents go around in circles every year. And the amount of the breadth of information or data that we have to manage there is not an industry like yeah, I often hear people say that were the Uber of financial services are the Airbnb in financial services. And my response is always how many data points do you think Uber needs to deliver you a car and get you to your destination? It is not that many No. Compare that with the number of data points that goes into one of our annual engagement. FTS are not in documents. Yeah. And the the engineering challenge and the information management challenge that financial planners face is it’s just there’s nothing there’s no comparison. Yeah, so the original problem I was trying to solve was that all this data that I need to capture or I need to store I need to be able to analyze it and then I need to be able to take action from that data but in an automated fashion as much as possible. Now 100% automation is a pipe dream, but we’ve got to continue Need to build to it. So that was the genesis and I looked at the systems available to me that were all built as advice, production tools, modeling, SLAs, etc. Yep. And their data capabilities were designed around those functions. They weren’t designed as broad platform CRMs, like Salesforce or dynamics or even Zoho, right? So I decided better to start with the foundation layer, the data layer, figure, I outsource power planning, I really didn’t care what modeling tool they, they need they used. And from there, once I had the data management in place, then I would figure out which functions or apps do I connect to that and integrate with that. So I can do my modeling, and I can generate my documents, and I can have a client portal. That was that was the original intent, I actually didn’t set out to build the software for for financial advisors. It just evolved that way. So at our core, we’re a CRM, but the reason that Finn 365 came into existence was I got about four or five years into the journey and realized, doesn’t matter how good Microsoft Dynamics is, and how well I have customized it. So much of the data that sits in here gets updated elsewhere. First, the credit, the credit card balance, the property value, the insurance premium, the superannuation holdings, the currency exchange rates. And so if I am going to maximize business efficiency, I need all of that information to flow into my CRM from the outside world. So the second step we took been developing what has become fin 365, is we started to connect the CRM out to other financial institutions, other systems, data feeds, open banking, the I’ll call it the financial services ecosystem, for the flow of information into the CRM to automatically keep all of my clients financial information up to date, data foundation connectivity. The third space we play in is then the function that you that you derive or you, you perform off the back of the data, the modeling the client portal, so production, the product research. And in that space, as much as we can, we want to be a connector, a someone that integrates with the other tools out there. So online fact finds a good example every man and his dog is building on loan fact find. And that’s the way it should be the when it comes to that part of the your overall technology stack. To use the latest buzzword, you should have choice, you shouldn’t be tied to a single online fact fine, just because you like fin 365 CRM and 365 says use our fact find sorry, or nothing else. And that was one of the other issues with the original legacy systems that were born out of financial planning. You were stuck with their CRM and their functions. And you could not if I wanted to move to a different modeling tool, I had a data migration headache on my hands. Yeah. And that’s the most disruptive part of to change your technology, these data migration. So in an ideal world, you have this consistent, very good quality data management, CRM practice management platform that integrates with as many other apps as possible. And then you pick and choose your favorites. Yep. Right. So yes, it’s a long answer to your first question, where do we play, we are a practice management platform, our customers come to us because they want to manage, they want a single source of truth of all their data. They want to manage all of their workflows and their activities in one single place. They want all their business revenue to flow into that same system. So they can generate a true cost serve profitability per client metric, and then make it easy for them to connect to other applications that so they don’t have to do the work to figure out how do I integrate MailChimp and my CRM? That’s taken care of for them?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let’s cover the revenue thing just quickly, because it’s not something that I’ve brought up I don’t think on the podcast before but the the data that’s historically been provided on payments from providers, whether that’s insurance, or it’s a fake election, or whatever it is, has, has historically been horrific. To be quite honest. I’m constantly stunned at how bad some of the arteries are. Yeah. Have you seen it? Because you’re clearly going to be neck deep in that given? That’s part of, of what you’re you’re pulling into the system? Are you seeing that improve? Like, are you seeing there is an improvement in the data or, or is the blessing, you know, product provider rebranding, and therefore changing everybody’s account? I’m like, is that still causing this sort of disasters as it always has, in terms of our data, and what we receive on income?

Stephen Handley
I know this is audio only, but there was a big smile on my face. Will you ask that question? The so the short answer is no. One of the first apps that we actually built ourselves so we have been I have a collection of applications that sit outside the CRM and one of the first one was revenue management, the ability to import all of those different sheets into the CRM and tie them to my client and tie them to the product that they’re associated with the referral partner, etc, to give us some really rich business intelligence, and then the ability to automate some of that FDS and opt in. Right? No, there’s been no improvement. And I don’t anticipate there will be you have the data that data itself is actually not that complex. It’s, it’s the amount of revenue it’s a date, it’s which clients attached to which account will policy hasn’t come from or loan if it’s mortgage commission. Is it upfront or ongoing? It’s just that they’re all in different formats. And every sheet comes through in a different way. And so the delivery of the data and the, the formatting of that data is so varied, that you essentially need a system that can help you convert it into a standard for Yep, so that’s we have built that. But those the the systems in the product providers that that are generating those sheets, they are so antiquated. And, and there’s so many other problems that the product providers need to solve first, they weren’t happy to put the the effort onto the advisor to figure out how they take all of that revenue data and turn it into something meaningful. So I don’t anticipate any investment in that. I’ve I’ve not heard of that. Yeah. And I doubt it will for a long time.

Peita Diamantidis
Because it is, it’s an example of one of those things that with some alignment, the effort saved could be enormous, you know, I put it in the same category as consent, you know, so if we’ve, if we could get one agreed, consent that advisors get signed by the client, and we can give it to providers, like the roar, like the volume of effort going on right now, pulling that stuff? Is is enormous. And I think this is another category. So it is I’m with you, I don’t see anything. I don’t see any work on that. But it is one of those things that there is so much time and effort put into right now, that is a little ludicrous, because actually the number of institutions pushing out this data is the list is relatively small now, or I mean, compared to what it used to be. So actually, you know, by them getting on top of their end, it could impact you know, the the industry in quite a big sense, but I’m with you. I don’t I don’t expect too much of that to change.

Stephen Handley
For Chase. There is one more piece on that, though, that I am seeing in that there’s a lot more direct invoicing. Yeah, happening. A lot more fixed monthly fees out of a cash management account happening. Yep, that is also revenue data that has to flow in as well. Mix discipline firms also want to bring in their accounting revenue or their lending revenue. Yeah. So even if all of our insurers got together and said, Here’s the standard format, you still got the need to bring in other revenues from other sources? Yep. I’m firmly with you on the on the annual engagement product, provided they could do more, and some have I’m gonna give you I will give a shout out because net wealth hub challenge are near the top that I can remember, all except third party forms. Yep. All of which we have automated. And so the delivery of those has become anyone using those have a much easier time than some of the ones that I won’t pick on all mentioned yet. But yeah, they could do more in that space. Absolutely. Sure.

Peita Diamantidis
And for their own benefit, too, to be quite honest. It is one of those things that I’m confident they’re spinning in an inordinate amount of time internally as well processing all this stuff. So if it can get a bit streamlined, it would make it easier, there’d be less mistakes and all that sort of stuff, Greg, so yeah, I’m with you on with you. So then I do have a question that you know, me as a sort of a data freak and having spoken to, you know, enough apps both in and outside the industry. time series data is interesting, right? And so for the listener that might not be aware at the fact that having, you know, a balance sheet effectively or you know, a snapshot of a client’s situation, absolutely doable, that’s fields that have figures in them, and you can have a data feed and feed in the data. Right, great. But what is harder to do and is not all that common, necessarily is? Well, I want to look back and be able to see the progress over time for that thing. Where are you guys placed on that? And do you see that being something that’s valuable important or is it something that you know, has has got parked as a as a need or a want for the system?

Stephen Handley
Well, that helps that I sat in the advisor chair, I used to do that in Excel. Because coming out of the I suppose the the technology background I did when I first came into it Advice. And I sat in the advisor chair and had to articulate my value to the clients. Yep, it was a forward looking promise that I was making. Like I promise I’m or you trust me, I’m going to deliver value over time I couldn’t. There are certain problems you can solve and give them instant gratification, but much of it is a forward looking promised. Yeah. And so I just started tracking every time I did a review, I would track the where was the balance last time leats saw each other and what’s the millions today and over a three to five year period, I was able to say, hey, here’s the difference we’ve made. So actually, one of the first things I built in the CRM was a recurring snapshot of account balances and loan balances so I can show growth of assets and decline of debt over time. So that’s, that’s a feature that we’ve had from day one, because I wanted to as an advisor,

Peita Diamantidis
right, and because in isolation, you know, one thing alone, say that balance could be dropping, but that’s because there’s withdrawals being made that are building up in a cash balance. I mean, it’s right. So the client, and also the client themselves might say that dropping and go, Oh, no, and it’s like, wait a minute, but what about that extra few 100,000? You’ve got over there now, you know, so it’s giving them that context, if there’s nothing else we provide to clients, one of the most valuable things I think, is context, you know, really giving them a picture? So, look, it’s exciting to hear that because I think you’d agree is not something that’s necessarily all that popular, or comes up a lot. But I do think it’s it’s almost giving them those guardrails, isn’t it, it’s helping them see, are we still on? On Track? Are we still within where we’d expect to be? And you know, how might it go in the future? So then, okay, so the primary users then have fin 365, you’re coming? It does sound like very much like the practice management. And so I’m betting, you know, licensees and, and, and practice managers, and all that sort of thing. A very keen, to the extent, though, that it sounds like it’s right through to advisors do admin, like is it right through the practice, generally, that you get users? Is it or is it just advice? And, and, you know, senior personnel? How did most people use the system?

Stephen Handley
Yet? It generally every user in the business has a license for because of the centralization of activity. Okay, and so, appointments that used to just sit in your Outlook calendar, and what connected to the client in the CRM unless you added a manual fall note, in our world, they’re in the CRM because of the integration with Outlook, Tasks, Emails, phone calls, anyone doing anything in the business that is in any way client facing? Or for the client? has a has a license? Absolutely. Okay. And so

Peita Diamantidis
given this, as you guys have built this in the Microsoft world, then it sounds like there’s particular benefit for people who are generally operating in that product to tivity suite. Right. So they’re using, you know, Outlook and others, then clearly, that’s going to be a more natural mesh than say, you know, for us, we operate in G Suite, and in the Google land. So clearly, it sounds like for Microsoft people, like there’s some real instant blending that can go on in terms of what you know, where they look to do’s and you know, all that sort of stuff. Is that Is that valid?

Stephen Handley
Yeah, it’s this the integrations as you would expect, Microsoft and Microsoft, they’re gonna make it the best of breed that it’s seamless. And it’s, it’s, I mean, I looked at Salesforce, I looked at Zoho, I looked at others that were available. Dynamics at the time wasn’t the best CRM months, I suppose the fact that I worked at Microsoft helped maybe guess where they might be taking this? Yep. And the integration of their broader suite of technologies. The guess was, if they get that right, then the benefits it will deliver to my business will be immense. Yeah, so we are very much standing on the shoulder of that giant now. And when you look at use cases or scenarios, like click a phone icon in the CRM, it pulls up Microsoft Teams, it makes the call it records the call it converts it to text and provide you analytics about the positive or negative sentiment within the phone conversation. That sort of functionality is not something that Fintry six five would ever build. It’s not something that IRIS will ever build. But it is amazing the value it adds back into your business. So we’re picking that up from teams and ship or Power BI and power automate. You just have to pull up the number of Microsoft icons to see what’s possible.

Peita Diamantidis
And do you think then that part of what you know a practice would experience by you know, coming on board with Finn 365 is sort of accelerating that take up because I do know I mean, we I you know, some months ago did an interview with somebody who who works a lot in the in the suite of Microsoft 365. And and he you know, his key message is nobody’s using this enough like you, you’re what we’re all touching on about 10% of what’s available, and what’s what you’re already paying for. That’s not even adding, you know more of the things. It’s just the ones you’re in. So do you think because you’re being another connector through all of those that it can sort of accelerate the practice take up in all of these other features?

Stephen Handley
Yeah, we, yes. Because as part of the onboarding journey, and the ongoing engagement that we have with all of our customers, the inevitable business questions of how should I store my files in this new world, right? Versus data, or workflow management, or I would like to automate the creation of a no change, Roa? Is that possible? All of those business needs, generally, Microsoft suite of tools will play a role in those. Yep. And, and so as we progress through, through the business improvement cycles, that we touch on more and more and more of the technologies, off the back of an improving quality database underneath. And one example I use, and this is not specific to Microsoft, but it just sort of paints the picture is the birthday email, I always use this one in, in all my demos, because that’s a nice touch point with the client, good customer experience, if you can automate, it doesn’t cost anything, can be a nice, pretty HTML template. So why would why would an advice business not turn that off? Yep. But if historically, you’ve not focused on making sure that your staff enter the date of birth in your database, or their email address, then that email can never be automated. Yeah, and when we see that time and time again, because historically, some of these systems, once the data was in there, it really didn’t do much. So there wasn’t a level of discipline built on top of the technology to say, this is what we want to get out of it. Therefore, here’s what we need to put into. Yeah, a big part of our journeys, is highlighting gaps in the data that would then prevent you from generating a no change. ROA. Right. That could be done through power automate, and other Microsoft tool. So yeah, there’s a lot of thing about

Peita Diamantidis
that, too, I’d say is, and we’ve learned this the hard way, you know, like yourself, I’m very focused on the quality of the data and what we collect, and and utilizing a CRM to collect more and more of it, you know, so So things that we constantly have in documents that don’t ever make it into the CRM, you know, it’s that sort of stuff, right? And it’s that intelligence, but the thing that I think most people get a bit overwhelmed is, is they they’re like, oh, okay, well, the date of birth have to be up to date. So, you know, I’m going to have to get a team member to just get our full client list and update them all at once. None, none, none, no, 12 months in a year, you could do a 12 of them a month ahead, you know, right. So, so right now, you know, you could get somebody working on the January birth dates, and just make sure that they’re up to you know, so there’s ways to do this, that aren’t quite the imposter that I think a lot of practices approach these things on, they really just, it’s almost tools down, we’ve got to fix everything. And if we go and it’s not manageable, ongoing, you know, if there was one single big thing we did once in our business, maybe, but this is going to be perpetual, we’re always going to be doing these tweaks. So sort of sort of, you know, chunk it down, I think means that you can, it just means that it’s a bit more organic, you know, and it’s going to take a bit bit of time before you’re at perfection. But then invariably, there’s another field that you need to update or, or that’s nature and,

Stephen Handley
and that’s why it’s really important, regardless of which system you’re using, for the database, the CRM to be an integral part of your day to day activity. Yeah, because if you’re in there looking at a client, and you see that the salutation field is empty, it takes you two seconds to put Mr or Mrs or miss or doctor or whatever you like, which then can flow through to a document template. And, yep, result in a more complete document at the push of a button. Yeah. Which will happen time and time again. And it’s only one salutation one date of birth, it has to go in but the long term benefit you get. So I agree most of it, you need to get to the point where it is organic. There are some things though, when we go through a lot of data cleansing in the early stages, that I mean, just yesterday, I had one of our customers that I sat down with him CEO and he looked at the contacts and the dates of birth, and he went nah, goodness, if they’re empty, said yep. And so he talked to his staff, Lisa will actually platform we use has all the dates of birth for every client. So we do a bulk export from the platform, match the names or the account numbers, or GUP date the dates of birth. So generally what we find is so this data is sitting somewhere, you cannot open an account without you know AML Yeah. So if you can get it from somewhere that it already sits that’s not a PDF. Yeah. and do bulk updates, then that’s actually not that time consuming and not a monumental project. That’s all too hard to tackle.

Peita Diamantidis
Yep, for sure. To that end, the data feeds is something that that can be a bit of a bugbear. advices. And I’m imagining you’ve experienced that challenge of the quality of data feeds. And I saw, it’s just taking a look, you know, on the website, then you’ve do have integrations directly to a number of providers. Do you find like, how are you choosing that? Are you just choosing the ones that you know that you can get quality? That it’s not that it’s reliable? Because that’s the other challenge, right? If you start to, you know, suspect, the data and the data feed, we stopped using it, and we start manually entering stuff, right? So how do you handle that?

Stephen Handley
It’s the smile, there was almost as big as the revenue management smile. So we I made the decision when we spun off the software and, and it was because of that integration piece that I knew was necessary. I had a choice, I could go and look for a third party provider, who had already figured out all the connections and feet. For one that would have been easy. But it would have come at a cost. And when I asked advisors who were using other systems that were using third party providers, I asked that question, do you trust the data fee? No, never trust? All right, well, if you don’t trust them, then you’re always going to turn back to the platform. And so it’s kind of that wall were under delivering, why would we even go down that path? You’d be better off saying we don’t do data seeds, and then you don’t disappoint? Yep. So I made the decision to but I knew it was necessary. So I made the decision to go direct to each provider, which meant that if there was a problem that was either us or them, and we could more easily figure out the issues, I knew they weren’t going to be perfect. It meant a longer, more patient process because getting access to all these data feeds and the systems vary the methods of delivery vary the format’s vary, some institutions are more than happy to connect others, like you know, come and talk to us when you’re as big as Iris run and say you’ve got to deal with all that. At this point, we do have pretty good coverage on the wealth side, especially the insurance companies are still dragging their feet. But it does vary. How would I judge it overall, most of the time, as long as the fee doesn’t break, which happens from time to time, sure. The data is actually pretty accurate. Where the anomalies lie can be differences in time between so we’re getting our unit prices from a Central Market Source. And the providers are getting the platforms are getting their unit prices from a source. If there’s a delay, they can be out of balance. So depending upon, you know, if the advisor is more of an engineering brain, they’re going to pick that up and they’re going to care more than if they’re perhaps the sales brain and it’s close enough. Yep. So you’ve got to then coach your customers to say, look at the number of units. If that’s accurate, then it’s just a delay issue. Yeah, there are other anomalies, sell downs, where we’ve sold out a bunch of stock and the dollars are floating in midair and haven’t landed in the cash account yet. Yeah, those and you gotta wait a couple of days. Yeah, it’s stuff like that we can’t control. So for the most part, the platforms where we have a back end feed, often the more modern platforms where the the inflows going in the right direction. They’re perfectly fine. They work really well. But what we do have the benefit of if there’s a problem, we go straight to them figure it out. Yeah. And fix it pretty quickly.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And look, I think this is something that I think probably advisors haven’t felt a need to champion or start yelling, I guess, is, you know, data feeds is one of those things, we need to be making clear to providers that they’ve got to lift their game, we’ve just got to like, this is a bare minimum requirement of what we need out of you as a partner, which they are, you know, these providers who are our partners, lift, we need you to lift your game, you know, whereas I think there was a lot of, what can we do? A lot of Oh, will and like you say, all? Well, if you’re one of the big guys, it’s like, that’s not that’s not how it works anymore. There are so different, so many different places, that people can be getting their tools from that the one dominant player that you can go, it’s just not going to apply anymore. So they know they’re going to need to get better at that, and more willing to engage on that on that. And it’s important for them to, you know, the quality of the data, there’s less calls to the BDM to say, why doesn’t this match these lists, you know, all that sort of stuff, and it’s gonna make everybody’s job easier?

Stephen Handley
Well, it will become hip pocket. stuff. So I was in a meeting with a platform last week, at the request of one of our larger customers who to discuss not just data feeds, but straight through processing back to the platform for opening new accounts. Yep. And that, I know, I sat in that room because the customer said, sit down and figure this out, because we want this. And that, that’s just the nature of the markets and leverage and and that I do agree, the value chain has shifted from what used to be back up at the product end, it’s now the consumer is the one who ultimately decides where they’re going to spend their money. They are going to spend their money on advisors who deliver the best possible customer experience most efficiently. The advisors are going to select the product providers who make their ability to deliver those services as efficiently and affordably as possible, they go to select those providers, because there’s no longer the big dealer group saying you can only use these two plus just another thing anymore. So I think that’s going to actually happen quite quickly. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. I agree with you. So um, we’ve covered a fair bit of the integrations, is there anything? Is there any, like recent autunno tools that you’ve, you’ve integrated, that? I didn’t know your Product Comparison or analysis or any other things that you’ve folded in that you now integrate with any others on the development path?

Stephen Handley
Yeah, lots. So that’s where we’re spending most of our time. And one of the things that’s happened for us over the last, let’s call it the COVID years, because we’re not an industry specific CRM, we’re not explain or zero practice manager or mercury or wingbeat. In general insurance. We are dynamics and all the data structures that all of these services need are pretty much the same. Yeah, the workflows vary, but the data is consistent. We’ve started to find out that we’re picking up a lot of mixed discipline businesses. And off the back of that there’s requests for can you integrate with Xero? Because now I’m direct invoicing, my clients and I would like that data to flow through? Or can you connect to Mercury so that when I do my loan originations, the client data is in sync? Yeah. That so most of our wherever we can find new data feeds integrated with Yodlee, recently to paint bringing a lot of that open banking data, we will do that, but more and more, it’s the functions, what are you doing once you’ve got the data, online fact finds, we’ve got probably three or four integrations now and more coming modeling tools, we’ve got voient, we’ve got dash, we’ve got prime sold, we’ve got x plane, all geared at pick your best of breed, but then let the data flow without you having to do a lot of manual entry. Right. So that’s that. Yeah, that’s our heavy focus is expanding that collection of, of connected apps.

Peita Diamantidis
And it is a I mean, merely you starting free Finn 365. And getting to where it is now as an example of this, of going like, this is the need, and this is where I’m starting. And this is what I’m going to do similar to things like a product RX, where it’s just like, this is a need, we’re just going to deeply solve this problem. Like, it’s, it’s frustrating, and I want to fix it. And in this new world, that is possible people without necessarily deep coding, understanding in the old terms can solve these problems, you know, so it’s great to have tools like like fin 365, that will then go, Well, sure if that’s if that solves that problem. Let’s talk to it. You know that that makes sense. You know, it’s it’s powerful. For practice.

Stephen Handley
It is. Yeah, Nick’s doing great job with product records. We’re partnering with him. The one thing that has made that easier, it’s just cloud technology. It is it it actually is still complex coding. It’s just now that it’s much easy. You don’t have to set up your own servers. You don’t have to have a room full of big machines running, hosting. Yeah. So you know, systems like Microsoft Azure, which is another benefit of being in the Microsoft world, has made it so easy for us to spin up and deploy anyway, we have customers in New Zealand, South Africa, USA, and we’re at 20 person businesses in Australia. Yeah. So the cloud has a very much accelerated innovation, and made it possible to do it affordably.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that’s the key, right? It’s, it’s making it accessible without needing to go and get funding for 30 million and things like crazy IDI bunkers. Let’s talk client engagement because the if ever there was a new black for advice in 2023, I’m picking it’s client portals, right. It’s, it’s the client accessing or interacting with the with the advice, practice. So I know you guys have a web web portal. So talk me through clearly that’s probably going to start with a data, a data so the lane perhaps So talk us through what the the web portal does and how, you know, advisors can use that with their clients.

Stephen Handley
That’s another An example of a function where we did build it because at the time, there weren’t other portals we could integrate with. And it came out of the need of exposing the data that we have for our clients, so will that fact find data in a way that’s meaningful and digestible for the clients? You touched on the historical balances and the growth of wealth over time? So a chart that says, hey, when you first came to us, here’s where you were. And now you’re up here that that richness of experience that used to have to do in in a document or maybe you did a PowerPoint, or maybe you did a bunch of Excel spreadsheets to show all of that, if you’re pulling that information from a database, you can expose it in a very rich interface, or in the web. Yeah. So we did build our own, we have an online fact fine with the client portal. It’s but we also integrate with the shoot wheel, we also integrate with many others. I agree with you client facing the client experience is high priority we’re seeing we’re seeing Santi, in those guys.

Peita Diamantidis
Oh, yes. alumium. And all those tools.

Stephen Handley
Sorry, LUMION. Is all of those lines coming along that are all about a rich client experience? Yeah. Again, they need to draw that data from somewhere. Yeah. And so you’ll see those those client facing platforms wanting to integrate and systems like us, and we will do it. So pick and choose your best. The one thing that’s quite new, which I’ve probably had six in the last month, have reached out and said, because I always ask what, you know, what business problems are you trying to solve? Right? The biggest new one is client portal. So I don’t have to email documents. So not so much the rich, whole of wealth view, it’s, I need a secure way to provide documents, because of all these breaches. So cyber security has caused advisors to say need client portal, which that’s that’s a new one. Yeah. Now, you can do that with things like SharePoint and shared. So there are ways to share documents securely without the need for a client portal. But if you’ve got a client portal, and you’re putting the documents there, and we do this in our own business, you encourage them to go in not only are they retrieving the document, but now they’re seeing their world in a way that only the advisor can show them. Yep. accountants don’t need all of your financial information. Mortgage brokers, don’t, your financial advisors, the only one that can give that whole of whole of wealth you view to the court.

Peita Diamantidis
And I think it is something that, because we’re all you’re absolutely right, we’re all focused on this sort of cyber issue. But probably, we haven’t really fully understood the fact that, you know, email is sort of like, it’s sort of like operating in a food court. Like, you might be chatting about something to the person next to you. But really, almost any big body can just wander past and accidentally hear something like it’s because they all have entry, as long as I got your email address, there’s sort of this ability to get into your world, right, or your clients world. Whereas a portal, at least is sort of more like the private member’s lounge, you know, like you’re actually controlling that a bit better. And I think we probably haven’t fully understand or really grasp that before, you know, and so sort of narrowing that down and making it a more exclusive sense of just you and the client experience is going to be necessary. I just think it’s probably the way we’re all going to have to go, you know, so I agree.

Stephen Handley
The other analogy would be the cone of silence. Yes. And now now showing my age. But I do agree that that creating more of a one on one engagement. Also just the the efficiency gains of reducing the clutter in your inbox. Yes. It’s cutting. Yeah, yeah. As the tools and this is not just with the clients, this is also internal. So back to the question around you get into Microsoft technologies and better use of that. When COVID Hit we I started getting calls just to ask questions about Microsoft Teams. Yeah. Because now people weren’t in the office, they couldn’t look over the shoulder of the person next to them, and they needed to be able to engage in a richer way. In Microsoft Teams is a great tool for that. Yeah. When we switched on teams in our business years ago. Now, the very first thing rule that was put in place now was no more internal email. There is no need for an intern anymore. And that was a major efficiency boost for the business. Cutting down the number of client emails back and forth, is a major efficiency boost.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Yep. And the thing with email is this dreaded embedding reply rubbish, right? And we think that’s a good thing. But it there’s a terrible loss of insight and information in that you know, it’s It’s just horrible, let alone the CC function the if I could go back in time and stop a feature, it would be CC and BCC on email. It’s evil, right? It just clutters up everybody’s inbox. So, so yeah, I’m right with you there. But so let’s talk about things that you that sort of are sitting within the system, you know, current users. What are they not using enough? Like, what’s the what are the gems that you like, feel like they really need to check that out a bit deeper, because it’s got real value.

Stephen Handley
There’s so much functionality in Microsoft Dynamics, that there’s a lot there that people may never need to use. It’s kind of one of those toolkits, that it sometimes can be overwhelming in the in the beginning, the one thing that’s pretty consistent and takes time and a bit of coaching on our part and a lot of business intelligence feedback is how closely are they looking at their data? Yeah, I’ll give an anecdotal example, I had one principal that was chatting to me about, we’re looking at business intelligence. And he said, I just want to, I need to be able to measure how long this particular staff member is taking on average for each lodgement that they do with very specific task in the business. And I said, No problem. Let’s jump in and have a look at the tasks for this particular staff member. And that one of the reports we have is how what percentage of each team members time is actually being tracked in the system? Yep. This staff members about 20%. I said, Well, you’re not going to get average time of lodgements because the lodgement tasks aren’t even being put in CRM. So there’s your first problem to solve? Yeah, that only came about because we were having a conversation with the customer and guiding them on better ways to analyze their data rights actually, may surprise you, because I know how focused you are on the data in your business. There’s a lot of principles that are used their primary role has historically been sitting in front of the client, engaging the client. Yeah, that customer relations. Yep. operational focus on data is not something that comes naturally to many people. Yep, yep. And we can pick that up very quickly by saying, show me your current business reports that you generate, you know, albeit manually to date, and if they don’t have any kind of get a sense of doesn’t matter how rich the business intelligence we give them, they’re going to have to change their behavior. Yeah, so a big one is how much? How often are you stepping out of the business, looking at your data and figuring out where there are gaps that are preventing you from meaningful change off the back of that data? Yeah, the second one would be to your customer engagement piece, things like, bulk emails, so segmentation of emails, which a lot of businesses will use a tool like MailChimp for, for example. But that creates duplication of effort, because you got to keep manually updating the client lists in MailChimp and those sorts of things. There are, there’s functionality like that in a CRM, like Microsoft Dynamics, there’s native, and you can just go in and say, I would like all of my a clients that live in the three to xx area code that light or postcode that like golf, because we’re about to have a golf day. And I need to send them an invitation, some of that sort of richer customer engagement, and communications functionality takes a little bit longer for people to start to utilize, because they’re not used to having in this CRMs historic, right.

Peita Diamantidis
Yep. So it sounds like and it’s when I do coaching or sessions, you know, in groups, people often focus on the tech first, and it’s shiny, and it’s new and woo. Whereas it sounds like what what you’ve discovered is my experience to which is, you know, find the problem first where it where’s the big problem, and then we work out, we solve it, and what thing you should either incorporate or adjust or change. Because the problem I find often isn’t what people think it is. And operation like you say operationally, you could have something sitting say in the admin team, you’ve never realized they are manually doing over and over and over again. And so instead of hiring a new person, you could just fix that problem, you know, slightly, that sort of thing I see a lot of well, there’s

Stephen Handley
the famous quote, If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. You want to lose weight hop on the scales. There’s there’s lots of and I’m sure our customers use those quote quotes with their clients because the very first thing that they do with the clients is not focus on is have better than premium better than net wealth better than panorama. They say what are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? From there they go to strategy, and at the very end, they look at the product. And my my guidance to everyone that comes to talk to us is forget about dynamics versus Salesforce or fin three expired versus this system? What problems are you trying to solve first, then we’ll figure out what your tech strategy should look like, then I’ll tell you how thin 365 fits into that strategy. And ultimately, then you can decide whether we’re the best tool for that particular part of your overall machine.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And because one of the gyms that happens when you approach it that way, and you’ve identified that whatever that big challenge, or problem is, when you solve it, you don’t have quite the change management task or challenge that you might otherwise because when the team see that it directly relates to that really frustrating thing. They’re more likely to go on the journey with you, you know, rather than that being Oh, god, there’s another, there’s just another app, why do we need to use another app, you know, whereas if they can directly connect it to something that’s frustrating or difficult, and their life gets easier, you know, they’re in

Stephen Handley
all over the CRM, it is just like advice, it is a bit of a future promise, yeah, because many of those problems get solved, once you’ve got the quality of the data in the system to solve them. Right. And that’s not instantaneous, unfortunately. So our onboarding? Well, I like to say that within six weeks, we’ll have your business as usual. But getting you to the point where you’re really starting to hum and seeing some significant benefits. Yep, it’s 12 months plus. And that’s just the reality of, of the, the nature of the platform that we have customers are getting from us.

Peita Diamantidis
And I’m betting that then, you know, when somebody’s on board, and there’s okay, we get our data to a certain point, you know, down the track, there’s going to be another upgrade to that, because there’s other things we can collect. There’s other things that we, you know, should be should be keeping up to date. So it’s, this is a perpetual journey. You know, this is something that we’re just going to constantly and it’s an asset, you know, this quality data is is a wonderful asset. In your

Stephen Handley
sales will Jul one last year was like that, was it last year, when we had the annual engagement obligations changed

Peita Diamantidis
this year. Well, they changed. Today by the seat. Yep.

Stephen Handley
Yeah, it used to be a task and you generate an FDS doc with an opt in if signature and that was it. Whereas now it’s it’s which assets are we taking dollars from and who are the signatories, and the start date, the end date, the cancellation date, the next start date, the next update. So we had to re engineer a big an entire process within vin 365 to allow our customers to collect all the data into a single record that could then flow through to the automated documents at the end. Yeah, a regulatory change. That was wisely. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. That was forced upon us that we have Yeah, that too. And that will be that will be a never ending journey.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. So then I’m betting this and things that are coming up for the system, there’s, you know, development stuff. So I’m interested in that. I’m also interested in the your sort of almost wish list or things a bit further down the track that you’d love to get to, you know, that you’d look or hoping one day we’ll get to this point. So what’s on the what’s on the cards for the future?

Stephen Handley
The there’s two, two parts to that line. So the first half, the we’ve got a lot of integrations there will always add more integrations. Anytime I got inherit Australia, I think, haven’t got in front of me, but a estate planning business. One of our customers is using and loves it. They’re a tech platform. We got introduced to them, we’re working on an integration with fabulous anytime there’s a customer that says, Have you seen this, this system, and there’s a benefit for sharing data, we will put it on the list and then it comes down to customer demand our resources, can we integrate this their technical capability of integration. So we’ll always have our eye on that. And that’s largely customer driven. Then, as the system grows, and as any system gets bigger, and the number of customers get larger, there’s periods where you have to just pause, stabilize, improve performance data feeds is a perfect example of this, the more customers and the more platforms the the more efficient your data connections have to be. And sometimes you don’t face. You don’t stress the system until you get to the customer that instead of 5000 accounts got 50,000 accounts. And oh, hang on that just took us 24 hours. All the data feed. That’s not good. Yeah. So there’s what we will continue to take have moments where we go through that. In line with that there’s also integrations where the partner enhances. So x player is a good example of this open virus virus open version one of that API, there were certain things we just couldn’t do in explain because of it was version one. Now they have version two, and we’re looking at the enhancements we can make which will further improve the efficiency gains to our existing customer. minutes using both systems. So that’s all of the what’s in the near term, the Holy Grail. For me, there’s two. The first one is solving the cost of implementation. If you if anyone has ever measured, the total time spent, in the end the duration of each of the stages of advice, Intro prep the docs, review them and implement, you will know that the implementation stage is the most costly. So it doesn’t matter if you can produce an SLA in 20 minutes, the implementation stage is still the most costly part of the process. Yeah, that gets fixed when we have straight through processing with the platform. touched on conversations we’re having. We’ve got that in our on our roadmap for 2023. We’re still figuring out who the partners are going to be who’s willing who is capable of doing it. But to me solving that problem means that all of a sudden, once we solve that an advisor can be just as efficient as Robo advice in quotes. Right? Let’s say that facetiously Robo advice. Yeah. So that’s a big, that’s when we want to solve and we’re that will sort of, for us, that’s that’s an if you build it, they will come sort of strategy decision. Because I suspect if you ask most advisors, if they think that’s possible, they’d say, No, that’s a pipe dream. But it’s absolutely possible. And that’s what we’re working on. Well, and

Peita Diamantidis
the key the key to that, too, sir, the key to that, too, is is you know, you’re working hard on the data feed one way, this is just sort of the other way, like the pipeline exists, essentially. Right. So it’s how can we just go backwards, up the pick up the pipeline,

Stephen Handley
and the platforms have to enhance their their interfaces to enable it? Yep. But the progressive ones that want to see inflows know that that’s something that if, if I can push a button, and instead of taking three weeks to roll from Ozzy super to Ha, that takes me three days, yeah. Then guess where I’m going to be making all my recommendations, because that’s a much better customer experience. Yeah. So that’s coming. The other big one in light of the drop in advisor numbers soon. And the blue ocean of often clients that can’t get access to affordable advice, is taking a lot of the technology that we’re building to enable and equip advisors to be more effective and efficient, and exposing it directly to unadvised. Consumers. Yep. Give them the ability to come in, do do it yourself. Until such time as you are, but not, not the disconnected Robo experience where you do it. And but then, soon as you want to see advisor that asking you your first name, and if you’re married, having a seamless transition from the do it yourself experience to full service experience. Yeah. And even if you want to hop in and out from time to time, that people are calling it the hybrid model. That’s probably the best norm definition of it. Yep. That the technology that we’ve we’ve built with Vin 365. And all the integrations we have facilitates that sort of model. Yeah. And I saw this 20 years ago at fidelity in the US, when I worked at Microsoft, I they managed our 401 K’s, which is the version of superannuation. I could do things on the fidelity website. Yep, I could buy stocks, I could switch my manage funds, I could do a lot myself, get research reports, etc. If I wanted to pick up the phone and call someone to ask, is this infrastructure fund better than this one? What do you think fidelity advisor would answer and we’d have a conversation. Yep. If I wanted to walk into an office and meet with someone, I could walk into a fidelity office. Yeah, so I had that seamless experience. And I got to choose what my level of engagement was. Yeah, that was a vertical model in in less, much less regulated environment, so easier to implement. But there’s no reason that can’t exist here. And it has to because people aren’t going to pay three, four or $5,000 for an SLA every time they want to talk to someone. Yeah, so that’s also fairly in our sights apps a little bit further further out. Yep. But yeah, they’re the two they’re the two partner big big picture on

Peita Diamantidis
strings Yeah, it’s um, the whole one to many model is going to need some of these tools because it’ll mean you know, with some broader coaching behavioral stuff, the individual can be doing what they need and then can raise their hand I mean, I think about you know, outside of advice. A business has done that really well. And you know, there’ll be people listening to to get a better roll their eyes but there’s a website called a door beauty and you can source all sorts of products and just it’s just online, right? You’re buying online, but what they’ve done that a lot of online stuff It says don’t do or purchasing services is, if I want an expert beautician to talk me through choosing this over this, then there’s a human being that can chat with me about that they are happy to even to do video chatter that you’d like. So you can escalate to an ESP expert, get the insight you need, and then off, you go back to your, you know, purchasing and doing what you’re doing. And I think there’s a lot to learn from that, you know, if we can get clever, then we can let somebody trundle along. And then when they need assistance, then we can get the right person, you know, at the right time on the right platform to help. So yeah, I love that as an aspiration. I think that’s, you know, that’s a powerful vision for us to get to, for people.

Stephen Handley
And I don’t think it’s that far away. To be honest. Again, it’s got to take cooperation from a number of different Yep, technology providers, it has to be connected to the full service. Yeah, we’re hearing a lot in the quality advice review, saying that the banks back into advice, industry funds are going to get back into a vise and that’s fine. That’s, again, that lower touch model, yeah. But if it is implemented in such a way that as soon as I saw, I need full service, host plus says are sorry, we don’t we don’t deliver that you got to go and see an advisor, then we will, it’ll forever be a broken customer experience. And so I hope that all of these larger institutions that are looking at it, realize that if they’re not going to implement the full service themselves, they have to then connect into that, that for service to ensure that the best experience is delivered to the customer.

Peita Diamantidis
Because it is what’s interesting is one of the huge barriers to an advisor being able to help quickly, you know, like, like, leaning quickly is the data, like it’s knowing enough that you can go okay, I can see your whole situation, oh, my Yes, that’s a problem, you know, like, or whatever it might be. And so if that can be the thing, that a client can have gone further along themselves further along, and, and it’s richer quality, then it will mean that you can help faster. You know, think of third

Stephen Handley
party authorities, no, white five. That shouldn’t happen in that. So,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, yeah, it’s

Stephen Handley
really practical examples of if that was a problem was solved, my ability to help the clients would be improved. And maybe I wouldn’t have to move them off the platform they’re currently on, right, because I had access to all the information I need to deliver a quality ongoing service. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
And I agree with you, I think there’s a lot of I mean, you know, in fact, Robo advice was the previous black in, in, in advice, but I don’t believe it was focused enough on these smaller issues that have a big impact. And I think that what we’re talking about here is a whole lot of these friction problems, that if we can just solve them, actually, the rest of it all sort of stuff out. So we might, whereas I think we keep on coming in top down a bit too much, you know, these big sweeping things. It’s like, no, no, no, there’s just some stuff we could make easier. And all of a sudden, it show improved.

Stephen Handley
You said shiny objects earlier. Yeah, there’s, and part of this as a problem of the technology world, right, coming in and say, well, we’ve built this new tool, we need to sell it. It doesn’t actually solve one of your core problems. But he’s, you know, it shines. Surely you should consider.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Where we come from, what is there anything we’ve missed? Any core bits that we’ve

Stephen Handley
Holiday plans, Peter?

Peita Diamantidis
Well, when this episode is released, I will have come back from seeing the Northern Lights in Alaska. So that’s I’m doing right, I’m doing addresses yet. So I’m a little bit excited. It’s fair to say,

Stephen Handley
lines, not quite that glamorous, I’m just spending a week by a river at Mount beauty to decompress. And given the amount of snow there was this year, I’m tipping the water will be cold. And apparently, jumping into cold water is good for the blood pressure in the heart. So maybe I’ll come back, you know, looking five years younger.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. We can always hope for sure. All right, advice explorers. If you’d like to find out more about Finn 365, then the website website link is in the episode shownotes. We’ve also put in Stephens LinkedIn details, feel free to poke him on LinkedIn. And I’m sure he’ll connect with, you know, with the right person within the team. Thank you so much for joining us, Steven, that was really actually opened my eyes a bit to what you guys have managed to do in the way you’ve done it. And I love the combo of an experienced advisor with some tech background and I think that’s probably how you’ve managed to make the inroads you have it’s sort of a unique bit of magic, so I can’t wait to see what you guys get up to in the future. So thank you so much for your time,

Stephen Handley
though. It is a weird mix. But it’s it’s, it’s ended me up here. Peter, thanks very much. Really appreciate it. Great catching up with you. Hello, welcome.

Peita Diamantidis
So I you a current user of fin 365. Do you is there anything in particular you love about the tool or you find as a challenge, you know, do you agree or disagree with what we were talking through, I know it was a bit longer that that episode and then interviewed. But I think it’d be great if you do use the tool or have, please share your insights on the Ensembl community platform, as this is such a great way to crowdsource how we select these tech tools, any tips you have for other advisors or practices out there would be incredibly valuable, and I know would be appreciated. Now, as for my thoughts, like quite honestly, Finn 365 has got to be a serious consideration for any practice, already operating in the Microsoft productivity suite. Right. So with most of the tools you’re using, into Outlook, Word, Excel, all those sort of things, teams, you know, if you’re playing in that space, then what’s interesting about selecting a tool like Finn 3655, is, it’s probably going to ensure that you end up getting even more value out of Microsoft, not just out of the advice tool, right, particularly, as it sounds like they’re really very well aware of this. And so sort of incorporate part of that as the onboarding process to sort of help you get further along in extracting great value out of Microsoft, there’s certainly applying energy at all of the, you know, Hot Topic pain points for advisors, and really, you know, bust through some of those bottlenecks we all have struggled with to date, and the fact that they’re constantly working on more industry, you know, integrations with industry tools, then I could see for those of you that are sort of considering more of a best of breed tech stack approach, we have sort of something in the middle, but there’s, you know, you’re picking your other best of breed wants to plug in, this could be considered that, you know, the core, a consideration for the core play, you might put in that sort of diagram for your tech stack. So definitely worth giving them a buzz and checking them out. And, you know, the fact that they’re well across, dealing directly with the providers on on data, and really trying to bust through making everything work together, you know, that’s exciting to me, that’s the approach, we we’d love everybody to have something that came up during our discussion that I really want to take a moment to do a call out on and this call out is to the platform providers in the industry. You know, there’s so many forces in financial advice that are unknown, or that we just can’t have any impact on, you know, we don’t know what the quality of advice review will result in how quickly you know what impact it might have on our business on our clients on how we do things. We don’t know what market shocks are gonna happen, you know, down the track. I mean, there’s so many external factors that are completely outside our control. However, in my view, right now, we have the opportunity to fix one thing, one thing that absorbs unnecessary time for the practice for the platform, and for the client. And this one thing is renewal consent forms, we need one form, one agreed form that the client signs with us and can then be submitted to any platform provider. And quite honestly, it’s simply not good enough that this is still not the case, given how long consent has now been going on. You know, if you’re out there listening to this, and you’re as frustrated straighted by this as I am, and I know lots of others, I get lots of calls about this, then I would love someone within the ensemble community to start a petition on this point, I’ll be the first to sign it, you know, it’s something we can fix. We know if you would have one form that the client signs, and this would have an immediate impact on practices, the clients would love it. And I honestly think we should try and fix these things that we know how to fix them. Get them on the list, get them done, tick, move on to the next thing, right. So if you can on this, please reach out to me on in either the ensemble community or on LinkedIn. And I will absolutely spread the word to get as many people signing that petition so we can get this out there and help the platform providers understand that they could actually get some get a win for us in very short order. So now, as you know, there’s only one skill we need to become bionic advisors and that’s avid curiosity. Right? Now, hopefully we’re a few episodes in so hopefully you really are building your curiosity habit. But to continue that process. Today’s curiosity corner app that caught my eye is focused mate. Now you can find it at Focus mate.com And it’s called basically their tagline is virtual co working for getting anything done. Now as someone that runs a virtual financial Advice business. This is really interesting to me. Because when you’re working on sort of a project style task, you know, something you might be developing, it might be a programming, you might be working on your website, whatever you might be doing, where you know, you need to dive in and really apply a chunk of time, and some dedicated brain energy to it, right, that really focused energy. what invariably happens, though, is you might start, but you find yourself finding other things to do, you might, you know, genuinely procrastinate. And maybe you don’t even end up starting it, you just get all sorts of other things on your plate, by making an appointment for a virtual co worker on focus mate, you’re actually committing to someone else, because there’s somebody on the other side, it could be even on the other side of the world. That is also basically you’re booking in an agreed time with them. And so it’s sort of that little bit of commitment, just like committing to go and play tennis with a mate to get moving, or whatever it is, it’s a little bit of commitment so that we can, you know, ensure we make progress on the thing we want to get done. Now what they do is they match you with a member of their community for whenever you want to focus. And then at the the agreed time you greet your partner, you share what you’re trying to knock off just the headline of the items to knock off and you both get to work, right. And that could just be quietly working in the agreed time. And at the end of the session, you both check it back in and you celebrate what you got done. Now if you really like the focus partner that you got, that you got to set up with, then you can actually make them afraid favorite and you could build a community of accountability buddies that you can make time with to get stuff done. You know, I mean, to me, this is just an amazing concept for this sort of modern working environment. So I encourage you to check it out. And you know, let me know how you find it. But I’m think it’s a really interesting solution in this new virtual world. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week. Now, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get your advice tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And if you’d like a speaker to help your audience debate the business case for client portals, including a step by step process to work out if you need one how to implement it in the practice, then I can provide either a webinar on the topic or even a full blown in person masterclass. We’re also actually going to be using client portals as a case study in our niche down and scale up master classes this year. After we actually help you work out who you’re going to serve. Then we’re going to work out whether client portals are the way to go. So if any of this is of interest, then please don’t hesitate to direct message me on LinkedIn at Peita M D PEITA. M D. Otherwise all look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explorers Stay curious.