FPA Congress Insights #2 – Transcript

Episode details

Fraser Jack
Hello, and welcome back to this very special episode of our special podcast which is coming to you live from the Financial Planning Association Congress, Danni and I are very, very proud to bring to you two special guests and I’m gonna let you introduce them Danni,

Danni Visser
very special guests, we’ve entered lunch. So that’s when you know, people have got enough energy to have the really important conversations. So we’ve got a name that is well known within financial services, Michelle Levy, joining us and, and also Sarah, the CEO of the FPA. So thanks for joining us, this is going to be a really nice opportunity to get to the heart of a lot of work that you’ve been headlining Michelle, and really, first, we would love to understand because I’ve I’ve heard you presented a number of conferences like the FPA Congress. And so we would love to understand, you know, what were the things in your review after you delivered your first sip? You know, your first surprise Oh, yeah. That you? You were surprised and how they received like, what were the things that made you a little bit? Yeah, what caught you aren’t aware?

Michelle Levy
I think the some of the things that we’ve been talking about at the conference today, in fact, was really the fear. I think it’s fear around among financial advisors that I suppose unscrupulous or poor, providers of advice will be let back into the industry. I don’t think that’s right. And, but I was, I think, surprise that that was a real, genuine fear, which I need to really work hard to try to give confidence that, you know, that isn’t what will happen.

Fraser Jack
But is it now I wanted to ask you a question around this process, because this is a huge undertaking. And I could not imagine how you would even start this process. And so I want to, I want to go back a little bit from the beginning and go, How did you even start this process? Where did you start? What were your thoughts are on the the profession itself? Do you have a financial Have you been through the experience, or all those sorts of things? From the from the get go, when you’re asked to do this to take on this mammoth task, what many just

Michelle Levy
don’t say, I’ve started this 20 odd years, no more. I, my first financial advisor was 25 years ago, and I won’t tell you what I invested in, but it was a good lesson. Anyway, it’s not a mammoth task, it’s an important task. There are loads of people to talk to and hear about, but it’s actually a discrete piece of law. That applies to a very large industry. So my job is to look at the regulatory framework and how that affects how the industry operates, and what can be changed. So that of itself is it’s big, but it’s kind of discreet, and I felt confident that I understood it really well. And I do understand it really well. So I know what I’m dealing with, I suppose I didn’t know that it would be so passionately felt by people, and then me, I’ve kind of become really attached to it as well.

Fraser Jack
So tell me about that transformation for you. You mentioned that it’s so deep and personal for you now tell, tell us about that transformation in your from being a task in a job and a discrete set of law to being something you’re so passionate.

Michelle Levy
Well, it started, you know, I was, I am a lawyer who kind of gives in the main fairly dispassionate advice to my clients. And so it was a bit of the academics wrong, because you want to help your clients, but it was a bit more, you know, at arm’s length, I think. And then I started it, and I sort of saw it in that way initially. But then I started talking to people and I thought, wow, this is, you know, you know, shouldn’t be a surprise. I’m, you know, fairly passionate about my own profession, but this is their livelihoods. And they, you know, feel it, live it. And then I thought about how it’s affecting the people. I know my own children. And so that also became, like a personal project. How do I help my children? They’re really in my mind all the time.

Fraser Jack
Yeah, never sounds exactly like the video stories. I’ve interviewed advisers on how they fell into financial advice. So we might get you to be your financial planner yet. Sarah, thank you for for joining us, as well as part of this conversation. Talk to us a little bit about your process at the beginning from the beginning of this process and how you and the association has been involved? Well, I

Sarah Abood
think it was clear right from the start that this was a really critical review for our profession. So we put resources on it very, very quickly. But the other thing that we wanted to do was really identify where people are agreeing in our profession and things Sometimes there’s a perception that we disagree or that, you know, there’s lots of differences of views. But I’ve been struck by how many views are actually consistently held by a wide range of different people. And, Michelle, you use the analogy on stage. Earlier today that you haven’t heard anyone defend the fee disclosure statement. There are lots of areas like that where everyone’s in heated agreement, it’s kind of a captain obvious that we need to do X or not do Y. So ourselves with 12, other associations have been working together to try to identify those areas where there is strong agreement and make sure that it’s known that we all agree on facts, whatever X might be, and ensure that those things where we do agree, and we’re solidly behind a particular change or reform, can be exposed and known by government reviewers, and so on.

Fraser Jack
Yeah. Now, tell us a little bit about the session, because you’ve just come off stage. Tell us about how that went? What, obviously, the you know, there was a lot of questions. And we might get to some of those questions, too, because they’re on the event app that we can get to tell us a little bit of the presentation, what you think was some of the key takeaways? Yeah, look, I

Sarah Abood
think it’s really clear that of the first round of proposals that that Michelle and her team have made, their proposal for product issue was to be able to offer some form of simple advice to their to their customers and not charge for it. So that that’s perceived to be not like the personal advice that of personal financial planner with would provide. That’s the one that for us has generated the most debate, the most concern amongst our members. And we did spend a fair bit of time on that today.

Danni Visser
So in those things that everyone agrees on that we’re trying to highlight, has that changed over the course of the discussions? Are those things morphed and evolved? Or?

Sarah Abood
I’m just reflecting on Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of because, you know, we’ve had sessions, we’ve Michelle and her team from Treasury, we’ve had sessions amongst ourselves, sessions with members. And I don’t think that people so much changed their minds or change their positions along the way, I think it’s as we came across issues, would come together and say, Well, what do we think about this? And almost use it as a brainstorming session to say, Well, do we are we concerned about the outcome? Or are we concerned about the underlying principle? Are there ways that this proposal could be perhaps finessed or tweaked a little bit? So that the concerns that we have could be, you know, done away with or at least, let us go, you know, overall, we like the proposals, can we just fine tune this a little bit over here in order to give us greater confidence that it’s going to be a net positive change for ourselves and for consumers? So that’s where most of the debates been, and where a lot of the discussion has been, as well? What are those tweaks? Someone might think this is a better idea. What about that idea? And there’s a lot of discussion, what’s

Danni Visser
the biggest misconception? Oh, sorry. You go. Michelle.

Michelle Levy
I was just gonna say I think one of the things that people do agree on is in the almost universally, people accept that financial institutions, product issuers have to give some form of advice to their customers. I don’t think that your members are concerned with that as a proposition. They are, as you say, there’s concerns about how and about what, but I think there is an understanding that

Danni Visser
feels a big advance, it feels a big gap.

Sarah Abood
Yes.

Fraser Jack
Yeah. So I’ve had this conversation with the people around the concept of how do we get financial products, which often help people to be fair, in most cases, they might not be as sophisticated, but they’re, in many cases help people. And there was a bit of a bottleneck of getting those products to consumers. And some of the suggestions have been what you’ve put in place, I always like to like in this profession to medical profession. And I say there are chemists and chemists prescribe the products that doctors prescribe. But then there’s also over the counter products, which aren’t as strong. And then there was vitamins as well as unveiled on the chemists and there are other products. How much of this proposed obviously, your proposal are very much around the the personal advice piece of this. But how much do we bring into the concept of product providers providing products that are advised products and in non device products?

Michelle Levy
I think there’s a really big difference actually, and this is something I’ve talked about a lot. This goes to this thing about vertical integration. It doesn’t make sense not to have vertical integration in the world of financial products, because you’re the doctor and the chemist are both selling or recommending whichever word you want. Drug prescribing, prescribing drugs issued and manufactured by somebody else. And that isn’t what happens. So we use the word product to describe a financial product, which is a weird thing because you can’t pick it up. They’re not a good they’re On a legal relationship, and so legal relationships don’t exist without a relationship and without a conversation might be, might be online, or it might be in writing, but it’s there’s an interaction. And that interaction will invariably include advice. So those people who don’t like the idea of vertical integration, I say, Well, what do you think is going to happen? How am I going to? I’m not going to go and pick up my bank account from the chemist?

Fraser Jack
Yeah, okay. So I’m sorry. So

Sarah Abood
attacking your analogy, I didn’t mean to

Fraser Jack
help out the conversation.

Sarah Abood
We had another take on it. Interestingly, because one of the paths we went down as a group was, Well, should we use an analogy from another profession? And the idea of well is cryptocurrency is shedule. Light drunk, for example. Whereas is like a vanilla non geared Australian equity share fund ETF? Is that a box of Panadol that I could get from the supermarket shop. And we do go quite a long way having that discussion. But I think at the end of the day, the other challenge for us is we know that not everything we do is financial product advice, but that’s Michelle’s remit. So you know, we had a lot of discussions about whether, you know, there should be a financial advice that we should recognize that advice about aged care about Centrelink, and so on, is part of an advisors remit, and is currently not regulated in the same way. But the reality is, that’s not in the remit of this particular review. So we had to really focus quite narrowly on what is the opportunity with this review? What are these? What are the ideas that are going to work and make our profession that up from this review?

Fraser Jack
They actually released the first draft proposals paper, I’m gonna get my terminology Correct. We’ll get it right by the end of this podcast. Terminology details, by the way. Tell us about that after Were you surprised at what happened after there? Or were you expecting quite a strong debate?

Michelle Levy
Oh, I think we were expecting it, because we’ve already met with people. So I knew that by this stage, I’d worked out that people were pretty passionate about their topic and their profession and their interests. So yeah, no, no, I was expecting it. We’d all, you know, set up lots of meetings and roundtables and we didn’t have a, this is where Treasury has been really helpful. Great. They’ve, you know, we had always anticipated from the very beginning that we would do lots of consultation. I think the proposals paper, I think, was a suggestion that somebody gave me early on. And I’m very grateful for that suggestion, because it was really helpful to, it’s allowed me to find the problems and the issues that I need to address and the areas that I’m changing.

Danni Visser
So we thought, all those submissions that you’ve received, and I know the second round of submissions are now closed, what were the where are there a couple of things where there were significant insights that have sort of shifted a perception for your view for you, there are a few that you can talk about that there that sort of come to the top. I know, there’s probably lots of nuances. But from those submissions, were there a few things that you said, Well, I hadn’t considered that from that angle,

Michelle Levy
was actually quite hard. Because there were no, there was more division, perhaps than I thought there might have been. It’s the same concern that Sarah referred to that a lot of advisors are worried about people other than advisors giving advice, but they didn’t address that all in the same way. So they had. So that made it really hard then to say, well, there’s not a single idea out there. And without going to the content, if I adjusted x, then that would make a whole lot of other people unhappy. So these things all work together. And as soon as you shift one little bit, there’s a whole lot of other people over there who will be unhappy. So what I walked away from, in fact, feeling was it was my job to persuade much more than change, because the package, I think, most of all, it’s good for consumers, which is my job, but it’s actually good for advisors as well. So even though it’s not perfect for them, it may not be their absolute wish list, it ultimately is good for them. But if I was to just say, well, let’s draw a wall around this and one of the proposals is that this subject should be subjects to your earlier suggestion that non financial advisors should be able to give advice on then there’ll be a whole bunch of other people who will say, well, actually, those are the wrong subjects and that’s really hard or they’ll be upset, you know, so that was the difficult that is the difficulty I think so a whole lot of voices, not necessarily uniform.

Danni Visser
Do you have a comment on that Sarah from the pet from the voice He says that you hear from, you know, various associations in your collective work. What What would your comment? Yes,

Sarah Abood
I think that’s fair. There are areas where we agree there are areas where we don’t agree. And one of the challenges we’ve faced through this particular review is the time to reconcile those viewpoints. So getting 12 associations together things. So what do we reckon verdicts, exploring what the what the views are, and then exploring the solutions, it takes time to do effectively. And sometimes we haven’t had enough time to get all of the groups together. So there are a few occasions where we might have submitted jointly with one other association or three other associations. So whenever we have got to the endpoint, with a group, we reflect that, but that’s an area where we would have loved to have had more time because I think if we’d had that, we probably could have given a more coherent, consistent answer, but I don’t take it as necessarily a done deal, because when Michelle presents the the final paper to the Minister, I think there will probably be more conversation. So we’re certainly not going to stop and you know, all take our baton ball and go home on 17th of December, we’ll be continuing to work on this and continuing to advocate for and put forward the solutions that we think will help.

Fraser Jack
Yeah, fantastic. And what was one of the questions that came up on the on the, on the chat that was in the room, but also something that I’ve always been interested in as well, the concept of general advice, and the definitions and all those things. We talked about product advice, but, you know, you know, having all those different clear definitions of from a consumers point of view, I guess, is the is the is the point there, because we can come up with all these terms, as because we know that legislation that consumers that it’s that consumer facing isn’t as trying to work out if they understand what the difference between personal and yeah,

Michelle Levy
they don’t, they don’t, which is why I want to get rid of I don’t want people it’s one of the reasons I was quite keen to get rid of general advice out of the whole regime. So my proposal is that what is not covered, defined as personal advice, which is advice that considers the client’s personal circumstances would be broadened. And that’s so that to assist quality by requiring the provider of advice to take into account their client’s circumstances, in a broader range of cases than they do now. But that isn’t a term that needs to be consumer facing general advice needs to disappear from our vocabulary, in my view, financial product advice, also something that could disappear from our vocabulary. And that’s why I haven’t spent much time worrying about labels I say don’t make them consumer facing. They serve a purpose in the act. That’s it.

Fraser Jack
I love the term professional advice, by the way, just to throw that one in. Thank you so much for coming in and chatting with us today. Really appreciate your time and effort. And obviously, that would have been a pretty busy Congress. Say we’re gonna ask you a couple of things about the Congress. How’s it been? You’ve obviously been pretty involved.

Sarah Abood
Yeah, look, it’s fantastic to see it coming to life. You know, this particular one’s been a very long time in the making. Because of COVID. It’s been three years since we got together this particular one was postponed twice. So to actually be here and see it and to have such a great show up, right. We’ve got 1200 People here. It’s just fantastic to feel like we’re back. Yes, face to face is back. And it’s great to see everyone.

Fraser Jack
Yes, the hustle and bustle is certainly that as everyone walks in to have their lunch. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time and coming on the podcast.

Michelle Levy
Thank you. Thanks, Fraser. Thanks, Danni. Thanks.

Fraser Jack
Hello, and welcome back to this incredible podcast series that we are making from live from the Financial Planning Association series mini series. I don’t want to say live but it’s kind of obviously when you’re listening to this is not in the moment, but you know, we’re recording it and we’re having a great time. Danny, thank you for joining me again.

Danni Visser
Thanks, Fraser. And we’ve got a familiar face. Joining us someone who is no stranger to the X Y community and also the FPA community. Welcome, Corey.

Corey Wastle
Thank you, Danny. I can hear you well, but I just kind of see you through these ferns. Because we all place ferns. Yes,

Danni Visser
we are between one second. We certainly we have someone out there that gets that joke. I’m pretty

Fraser Jack
sure we’ve got the copyright on between one firm

Corey Wastle
full disclosure, I’m pretty sure before we went on air, I was the first one that picked up on

Danni Visser
trotting jokes all morning. No one’s got it. But thank you.

Fraser Jack
See, we have an amazing Fern, but it’s only one. So we’re definitely not Between Two Ferns, because that would have already taken

Danni Visser
Yeah. Now to the matter at hand. Cory You are well known, but there might not be people who know your story. Before we get to your session that you were part of a panel today, which has quite a bold title. Before we get to that. Can you give people the highlight reel of what your business does, how you got into advice and what your business looks like to date?

Corey Wastle
Sure. I’ll give you a very condensed version. So got into financial planning in 2011. That was off the back of doing marketing and PR at uni, but started investing when I was about 16 had a margin loan at 17, I always thought that making good choices with money was integral to living a great life. So I was always keen to build independence and freedom financially early in my own life and decided to get into financial planning, thinking that the role of the advisor is to help people make great choices, to set goals to work out what stresses they’ve got this wholly or partially caused by their finances, and really, coach people guide people and help them get more out of their life and got into financial planning on that basis. And my first role and advice was an associate advisor at one of the big four banks, and it was probably the tail end of the bad old days, and I think is it on the quotation marks here. And, you know, the advice was very different to what I anticipated it would be the role the advisor was playing was very different to what I anticipated it would be. And from my perspective, that’s a shame because I feel like when advice is done well, and it’s personalized, and it’s done without some of the traditional conflicts, it can be really impactful. And for the right kind of the right time, it can actually be life changing as well. So on that basis with that intent, I wanted to start a firm, which ended up being verse which we started in 2015. And we kind of had a two step goal in mind, which was really take this traditional low value to a degree two dimensional financial planning experience, and make it something that is more holistic, more purposeful, more personal, more valuable, and try and deal without the traditional conflicts and so on. And, and then once we figure out how to do that bit, which took a while, then try and figure out how to scale it. In terms of where up to now we’ve we’ve kind of solved problem one to a very large degree, like we’re always trying to get better and deliver more value. But we’ve got a lot of things right over time, thereby getting a lot of things wrong. I guess that makes sense.

Danni Visser
I’ll we’ll dive into that later. I’ll just I’ll just noted that down, we’ll get into what went wrong to produce the right yeah,

Corey Wastle
but you know, we’re kind of at this, I guess a bit of an inflection point where we’ve got like one client experience with the audits largely technology enabled, scored on the clients go ease intentions, financial well being, it’s pretty consistent and repeatable. We just need the right people advisors to drive it. So we’ve gone from a team of five to a team of 15 1617, the last two, two and a half years and still on the lookout to add more advisors to the team, we’ve added four female advisors so far this year, and hopefully more soon. And, you know, we’re, you know, a lot of things are going in the right direction,

Fraser Jack
that you can sum that up in a two minute conversation. And yet, in that we know in reality that starting a business from scratch is no easy feat and has taken several years to get to where you want to do that. And the first few years I imagined were quite hard slog

Corey Wastle
Absolutely, there were Yeah, I’d never want to go back there to be honest. I was overworked I was burnt out. It puts downward pressure on your own health and well being your relationships, your finances all those things. And, you know, I do recommend for those that are beginning that journey in their early in their business life. Absolutely. Make sure you’ve got mentors that have walked a similar path to the one you want to walk with, what they can do is point out the obvious errors that you’re making in your thinking and your execution to help you sort sidestep some of those issues, whether it’s a product to market fit, or how your price or your commercial thinking or what type of clients are going after how your marketing or whatever. Because, you know, it was a it was a rewarding but really challenging at a point it’s painful experience the first three to three and a half years.

Fraser Jack
And I think it’s the same for most practices, as does that out in the net phase.

Danni Visser
And I think it’s a nice segue into into what you were speaking about today, which was is tech, the Savior and you talked about this really arduous grimy journey, did technology play a part in alleviating what was quite heavy in addition to the mentorship that you’ve obviously played a part in that did play a role? Can you comment on that?

Corey Wastle
Okay, yeah, I can. It’s interesting how things unfold because some things have unfolded for us in ways we hadn’t anticipated. And I think we’ve become recognized as a firm this integrated technology really well into the client experience and operationalize the business really well on the on the back of that. But some of those things really been fortuitous. So we’ve got a great head of ops, about four to four and a half years ago, Daniel Donovan, who you’ve interviewed recently, Fraser, you know, he comes from the Apple Genius Bar. So he’s really helped advisors and people that, you know, or advice might have, rather than technology might have helped us kind of solve common consistent problems in the financial planning experience. So I think when you think about the role of technologists be what we spoke about is it’s not trying to replace the human and the nuanced conversations and emotional Intel diligence and all those things. It’s taking all the simple things that happen consistently through the advice process for client and advisor and firm and try to remove as much friction from those as possible to do them better and to do them, do them faster, whether it’s booking meetings, getting pre meeting tasks on file, noting, capturing data, transferring data, preparing documents, doing documents, signed off all those things. So, you know, it’s Overtime, it’s take a bit of a life of its own and experience is pretty well, technology enabled. But you know, a lot of these things are just kind of happened organically with an intent to, to improve and solve problems rather than to find technology. But they’ve kind of converged together, at the same time to solve a lot of

Fraser Jack
problems used to the promoted that culture within the business of you know, the solver and innovate and continually improve, which has been a big part of the drive and the technology has sort of come after that, you know, you’ve worked out you need something and you find something for it. You know, I know you got a large technology stack, you use a lot of things products, I’m interested around, what business should you be spending as part of their budget, budgeting towards technology, what they should be, you know, how deep they should go, obviously, it takes requires a lot to be able to have the resources to take the time. And then like you said, you’ve got, you know, a lot of staff now and you and you can you can divvy that up split by even in the initial years. What sort of investment should businesses be making? And then technologies, then?

Corey Wastle
It’s good question, I probably can’t answer that definitively. But I can talk perhaps more more generally, to say that a lot of the tech that you’re going to find in the tech stack isn’t actually that expensive. And it’s not really advice tech a lot a lot of the time. So a lot of the things that we’re actually doing through the advice process aren’t, you know, they’re not, they weren’t born out of financial planning, like getting documents signed, capturing data, transferring data, getting surveys done, reminding people about meetings, or mining what happened to Peter to pre meeting tasks. And there’s lots of great apps and tools and tech out there to do these things. And a lot of these, like, works type form with us for online surveys, or it’s Calendly for online bookings, or its loom for recording meetings, or zoom for doing meetings. One of these quiller for client agreements, like it’ll always cost like under 70 bucks each a month. So the cost is really minuscule relative to the ROI. So it’s dependent upon the business and the clients and what problems they’re trying to solve. But I think you can get a lot of what you need to solve a lot of consistent problems at a really low price point. I think when you think bigger picture, and you’re thinking about like, what is our CRM? What is that we have a client portal and how those things integrating that’s another conversation, there’s much higher costs, but I think I think there’s a lot of low hanging fruit for advisors and firms out there.

Danni Visser
And we were having a quick chat before we jumped on air. And you were mentioning, I guess that that person who really enjoys that space and exploring what might work and what might resolve that friction point. That’s why that person like if someone’s going to make an investment to your first question, Fraser is it’s probably the person who seeks out the solution to that little friction point that happens repeatedly through the business. And that’s just so native for them rather than like, someone who’s trying to do advice, do all the things and then go and find some sort of tool to solve a problem. Like it’s it is two distinct roles we’re finding what would your comment around absolutely

Corey Wastle
concur. And I think this is one of the things that holds a lot of businesses back from better integrating technology, you know, I kind of feel it’s gonna like the brain, like they say, we use like 5% of the brain or something less advices would use way less than 5% of the available tools and technology to help solve their problems. And to your point, Danny, I think they need to be thinking more so about who rather than how not their advisors and but they’re doing peril, planning and implementation and trying to market and run seminars and trying to be compliant and all of these things, and then at the same time, they’re going, Oh, well, I’ve got to use technology. I know, I’ve got to do it better, but I’m not sure where to start and what to use. And you know, and and you mentioned about the selection of the SEC, the technology, that’s just that’s one component, but once you actually select it, you got to launch it, you got to integrate it, you’re gonna have to you got to train people, you’re gonna have teething issues, you got to problem shoot. So I don’t I don’t think you can build a really efficient advice business that at the same time is growing without having someone in your business. That is not advice person. They’re more of a technologist and they own that. And you’re not saying to them go and find me tech, they’re collaborating as part of a conversation with a broader team to go What problems are we facing? What slowing us down and how do we solve those problems? And when it comes to the how do we solve those technology quite often is part part of the solution. Yeah,

Fraser Jack
I think that’s that’s the right order and putting things because it lot of the time we see shiny things go, that’s a cool tool. I wonder how I could use that in my process, versus I’ve got a problem with my process. And now I need to find the tool. Exactly right.

Danni Visser
We could talk about this for a very long time. But I, you know, we could go deep.

Fraser Jack
I love

Danni Visser
this. Look at vases, like, can we keep going?

Fraser Jack
Can we get going? So tell us a little bit about the future? What does it hold for you and your practice? And where are you think this is all going with? With the technology stack that you’re using? And in the future? What do you think is going to happen?

Corey Wastle
Good question. I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future, because normally don’t have a crystal ball. Exactly.

Fraser Jack
There’s an app for that.

Corey Wastle
Intent, I guess, in terms of where we’re headed, as far as, as far as I can see, is we’ve got this client experience that now well organized, and it’s quite repeatable. And it’s built again, on those values, intentions, financial well being of the clients, and, you know, we’re trying to expand our reach to have more clients. Now, I mentioned at the top of the chat, you know, that two step kind of goal slash vision when we started verse, you know, and we’re kind of on to phase two, which is trying to scale it, you know, so we’re looking for advisors, and good people across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. And when we hire them, we’ve got co working spaces to put them in, they can work remotely as well. And we give them the tools, train them in diverse client experience. And, you know, we turn more of the marketing spend on, we’re lucky to get, you know, a lot of leaves and inquiries which we can kind of dial up. So, you know, the short term plan is to bring on more great advisors, get the people around them to support them giving great client experiences. And, you know, beyond beyond that, you know, more more broadly, you know, I think that, you know, advice is, is moving into a really good space where we’re going to be, we’re going to begin thinking about building businesses that have client experience lead rather than compliance lead, and I think Michelle Levy’s proposals are going to, hopefully, really kind of catapult us in that direction.

Fraser Jack
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right now when we’re talking about scale with a couple of quick questions on scale, scaling with more people, but also, how are you scaling with getting more clients or more advisors looking after more clients? And I think that is the scale. The question

Corey Wastle
is a few elements to it. So I mean, firstly, to bring the advisors on, we’ve got to have the leads the new clients, for them’s with scale, our marketing, a lot of our marketing is digital marketing. We’ve worked with digital marketing agency for two and a half years now, a lot of that’s run through Google ads, we’ve got a high predictability around what we can spend based on search volumes in these in these cities, relative to what kind of volume of leads we’ll get and what quality of leads we get. So this relatively predictable at this point. We know we’ve heard a lot about a lot of upside there. But then to the next part is well, when we’ve got the advisor, we’re bringing them on how do we get them through things more efficiently, so they can serve more clients. I probably owe you a thank you, actually, Fraser because we launched video, our own version of video SLAs, six weeks ago, inspired by you and Ben and the work you guys have done with the FPGA. And over the course of last six weeks, we have almost got rid of paraplanning you know, the average SOA is gone from being eight and a half hours to being a two to two and a half hour document. It’s not even a statement of advice. It’s called a summary of advice. It’s 20 pages, five minutes to consume seven of the 20 pages of pictures. It’s just the good stuff, none of the jargon. We don’t do file notes. Every meeting is recorded in person or on Zoom, very little arrows. And the statement of advice, there was a digital folder. So think Dropbox, but call statement of advice. And in there is the recording a summary of advice. PDS is meeting sides. And it’s the things that are evaluating that the client would want that irrelevant. And we’ve made really significant inroads recently and yeah, yeah. Yes, I’m here to say thank you, Fraser. Jack,

Fraser Jack
Thank you very much.

Corey Wastle
I owe you a fireball later on. That’s the drink of the Congress. Debbie tells.

Danni Visser
Trying to avoid tonight, suddenly becoming drinking Congress.

Fraser Jack
Thank you very much. It’s amazing to see that has been a pet project or a passion project of mine take off and then help firms in such a great way right away. We probably should finish it there. Thank you so much for coming and chatting with us on the on the podcast has been amazing. And

Danni Visser
lots of value. As per usual, Cory, thank you for dropping by.

Corey Wastle
Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Fraser. Great to see you.

Fraser Jack
Hello, and welcome back to this special podcast series we’re doing from the Financial Planning Association Conference here in Sydney, brought to you by x y nd FPA. Danny, thanks for joining again.

Danni Visser
I’m still here, Fraser. I believe it, believe it or not, I haven’t gone anywhere. Even though lunch is served. I’m still hitting you sitting here just looking at it because we have a very interesting guest and I’m just Nicolette we’ll get you to introduce yourself because what you’ve done and what you’re looking at doing and your session is so unique that I can’t put a summary around it. So we’ll get you to Explain that climate and finance professional. So, Danni, Hi, thanks for joining us, tell us about yourself would be great so that we can all get a better understanding of how these two things meet.

Nicolette Boele
Okay? It’s actually yeah, it’s not an easy answer. I have been, I suppose, involved in clean energy and climate policy for many decades, I have retreated a little bit in the last decade and found myself in finance. So most recently, I’ve spent around or probably seven years as an executive at the Responsible Investment Association, Australasia, who is exhibiting here today, as well. And my role has been research policy, but one particular interest is of mine, in my job there was running the certification program. So that’s the kicking the tires and lifting the bonnet of anybody out there who’s trading with any kind of product that makes a sustainability claim.

Fraser Jack
going ask a quick question. Do you start that up? Was that that certification? Or was that something that was existing when you started, it

Nicolette Boele
was existing, it’s been around now for probably around 14 or 15 years. But when I came on board to help out, it was going through its very first governance review. And we’re gonna have to tell you, but it is a rapidly rapidly evolving space. And so the governance structure to be really nimble, and adaptive to all sorts of new products coming on the market. And people wanting to add these interesting things onto their ACLs. And we needed to put an assurance level over the top of

Fraser Jack
that. Yep. And we’ve, we’ve we’ve done a lot of series on next slide, the podcast before we get into this are in and around this subject,

Danni Visser
infrastructure as well, that an advisor needs to put in their business to make sure that there’s credibility and what they tell to their clients. So huge, huge subject, we could be on that.

Fraser Jack
As we will be better not. So tell us about so you’ve done that. Tell us about what led you into today’s

Nicolette Boele
Yeah. Okay. So my whole career has really just been about redefining what God is. And that’s the certification program was part of that. I have most recently run as a community independent in the electorate of Bradfield cities up in North Shore. People say, Oh, you’re a failed to your so actually, this is stunningly quite impressive success in a short runway, achieved the largest primary swing against a sitting member anywhere in the country. And the once was quite safe conservative seat is, is marginal. And so what Dave Ray, my financial planner, who I’m talking with today, in conversation, and I will be discussing is really having look at the extent to which understanding how people voted in the federal election in May this year, might give planners an insight as to how some of those people who live in those areas of Sydney and Brisbane and Melbourne might want to also change the way that they invest their money, not just their vote.

Fraser Jack
Yeah, it’s interesting. We don’t often get into the concept of politics on the Expert Advisor podcast, but we kind of teaching absolutely relevant to the conversation around that you’re presenting on today. I’m a bit oblivious to a lot of the politics side, which I’m quite happy to say. But tell us about. So did you pitch this idea to the to the conference, or was this something that was having this conversation come up?

Nicolette Boele
I’m not really sure. It could have been Dave Ray, my planner. I think there was just, it’s just a different place. Now we had some six, seven different electorates that went independent. Some of them also went from some blue to red. politics aside, this was all about issues. This time, this was about largely integrity, and improving public trust between the people and the parliament, really heavily about climate action. And then there were other issues that had prevalence in different states, such as the treatment of women, refugees, and other things. But by and large, I mean, there’s, there’s something that we talk about now in in the Sydney area is that you can no longer take a Sydney harbour ferry to a liberal seat. It’s completely changed. And so I don’t think that the people so much to change, the party is a little bit changed. But what we really saw is that the people who voted differently this time, are in areas where there are highly educated professional women who work over represented compared to the Australian average in finance, insurance, science and professional services. And, and they have financial means and so they said, that’s enough. We really, really want to see action on climate change.

Danni Visser
And I can actually add some credibility to that because it’s it is very rare and this is You know, lots of mine personal opinions. So if you don’t agree with them, that’s fine. Just send them a note. I think there is a lot of people are a bit disenfranchised, because climate change, big issue, how much impact do you think you’re having, that I live in Bondi, I was one of those people who, who just wanted to make a statement. And I have always been, you know, interested enough to my level of knowledge of and who I’m voting for. And I just was like, I’m just gonna make a statement. So it’s a very, it’s a very true fact that people said, Well, how else do I have a voice? How else do I you know, is, and I hope this has taken around a bit. Taking a keep cup and getting my coffee isn’t really making the change that I want to see. So how else do you do that? It was so it was so interesting that everyone’s little independent independence sort of statement was so widely done. So I think it does have a huge influence. So that’s why I was very interested in this conversation, because it’s, it’s very real to me, and I’m sure many of the conversations that I had with people after the election, and it was very real for many people kind of stickers. Not a lot happening.

Nicolette Boele
So yeah, Danny, that’s really interesting. I have spent my whole career looking at different ways that businesses, government and consumers can be part of the climate solution, and hands down the most effective way. Yes, you’re right. It’s not the key part. But every single thing counts, right. It’s also not necessarily buying electric vehicle, or even taking public transport, leave over our fence, they are fantastic options that are available to you. What is the most impactful is how you put your money to work. And so many people expect that their money is not doing harm, when they hand that over to a planner who then invests or advisors to whom they should entrust their money in funds. And, and the Responsible Investment Association has done longitudinal consumer research, which shows that apart from just not doing harm, a large majority of people now expect that their their money is being invested to do good. And, and there’s different definitions around what good is Yeah. So my big challenge to the conference, later today is going to be understanding how people change their vote is probably, you know, the canary in the mine. I know, that’s not the moat or the, the, you know, the red bellied parent on the blade of the wind farm.

Danni Visser
Coming coming into the mainstream,

Nicolette Boele
exactly that got people in these places already choose where they put their kids into schools. Yeah, we we make decisions every day about our values through the decisions we make when we consume eggs and schooling for our children. How and where we put our money is just another thing, another way that people are starting to really take action. And so that’s all it is. It’s easy. There’s a real risk, if you’re not involved in don’t you don’t understand how to have a conversation with your clients about these issues. And there’s only an uptick to improve your skills. And and maybe, hopefully your your approved product lists as well.

Fraser Jack
Yeah, I think I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the word values there. It certainly is, the conversation isn’t it’s got going one, what we’re talking about in the what you’re talking about in the session is the fact that a lot of the clients in the databases of the the planners in the room will be in those seats, or run around those seats. And they’ve definitely made a stand around what their values are towards, towards their lifestyle, I guess. And when we talked about some of the publications that you’ve produced around how that money that investment, money influences companies, whether it be you know, directly because they’re not investing in them, or whether it be I have seats on the on the boards of those companies, and what sort of a change that makes but it starts with the decision between the consumer and the financial planner about how it’s being invested.

Nicolette Boele
That’s exactly right. And often, you know, the consumer or the the investor themselves, doesn’t know how to have those conversations. So the onus of responsibility is increasingly on the planet. I think it’s just good business to when you really want to seek out to understand the goals of your client. I think it goes hand in hand. You know, it’s not just about retiring a certain age with a certain level of material wealth in certain different types of asset classes, but also, yeah, do they want to where they sit on the spectrum of avoiding harm to doing good to making real genuine, Deep Impact? And I

Danni Visser
think the conversations on anything ESG are quite prolific in x y. So we have a community where advisors share and learn from one another, and they do that sort of digitally. And so there’s lots of conversations on questions and queries. And it’s apparent that, you know, there there’s a everyone’s sort of proud not everyone There’s a, there’s a trend for people to want to step into this space. But perhaps there’s a hurdle of infrastructure of knowledge gap there of, if I enter into this arena, there are so many avenues, and someone who is the trusted, professional and providing advice, what would your what would your suggestion to be to people that you’ve maybe seen them take this new journey of conversation? How would they start? So it’s not overwhelming, and they don’t feel like oh, my gosh, I’m gonna get into this situation, we’re opening Pandora’s box. And I don’t know how to manage that and really come across as someone who’s credible and knows their stuff

Nicolette Boele
is a really good question. And I think a lot of planners ask, and it’s a reason that some planners or many planners, don’t take that step. And it and I have to be completely honest, it’s really messy. Yeah. So you need a big courage injection. But it’s doing things like people are doing today by coming to this Congress. It’s about mucking in and listening to peers, people that have gone first hearing their war stories of things that they ought not to do next time. And it’s about building. It’s, it’s not jumping into becoming a ethical investor or advisor. It’s this is about who you are, and what your mojo is. And it’s about adapting it and branching it out, just gently changing the conversation. I’m really looking forward to listening to Dave Ray, because he’s done this. He’s been a mainstream investor, or sorry, financial planner, who had what I call the Johnny come lately. His eyes open and went, Oh, I saw this ethical stuff. And so he’s gonna have some hopes, some good tips about how he did it. But it’s gentle. And I think, personally, I think it’s okay to start with a fact fine. That’s just a handful of questions that help somebody, just as you have a question around the spectrum of risk, you ask a question about your spectrum of interest of avoiding harm through to doing good to making a really good impact. And even if that is all you ask the first time, you can start to build out questions and go deeper.

Fraser Jack
Yeah, I think there’s obviously a great community within the within the XY community within the financial planning association communities, where people have that genuine interest in helping other planners do do these things and helping other advisors. So I think, you know, there’s obviously a few superstars, we sort of stand out in the space, David being one of them. But just to be able to reach out to those people and ask them how they how they got started. I think it’s a good start. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today. We wish you all the best for your presentation. I feel like we got a sneak sneak preview. Because it was before the presentation that we recorded this, but thank you so much for coming and sharing your gym. Absolute welcome.

Nicolette Boele
Thank you, Fraser.

Danni Visser
Thank you. Thanks, starting.

Clayton Daniel
Today, how’s it going? What do you know, strike a light Clayton here. I’m finally back on the airwaves. What’s happening here with Jason Andreessen. And of course, Danny is made, how was the presentation? How did it go talk to us? What were the what were kind of what was the key messages that you were looking to get over?

Jason Andriessen
So it was a peer to peer session? Practice Management around probability of clients and how to make every client profitable. And we were targeting as much wisdom coming from the floor as as much wisdom was coming from the stage. And I think we achieved that was a really good discussion.

Clayton Daniel
When when you come up with the concept of making every client profitable, how much do you lean on your financial planning chops, compared to your research chops?

Jason Andriessen
Probably both equally. The research chops, help with measuring it and keeping it objective that the technical advice elements are essential as well. Yes. Interesting. Question,

Danni Visser
Jason. For those playing at home and listening in, can you give us a little as to why you’ve got these different elements to your experience? Can you give us a little bit of a quick highlight reel of your background and why the FPA I’ve actually asked you to do a session which is really valuable to give every advisor could make sure they’re dealing with highly profitable clients. That would be a great outcome what what’s led you here,

Jason Andriessen
so I am a proud CFP professional and have been for 22 years. nonpracticing at the moment, my practice in the future. I spent six years practicing as a financial planner. I’ve worked in a white boy but I’ve worked in boutiques, a bank, and an industry super fund. So I’ve really had all all facets of the industry. And I spent 10 years in executive management of the large licensee and then got out and I’ve been a researcher now for five years. So And the research is the best move I’ve ever made. Never before, had I actually enjoyed, I enjoyed work, and that it was mostly about the achievement and working with people. But with research, I actually enjoy the work.

Clayton Daniel
And that’s because of the nature of the discovery. You’re you’re you’re casting a net, and you’re creating new intelligence that that that’s what appeals to

Jason Andriessen
you. Yeah. Curious to, to learn, frankly, and to have a mechanism to have the resources to find out what you’re curious about is is an amazing opportunity. Right? Yeah. And we can do it quickly, please. Yeah. Well, an example is when the levy proposals came out into the ground the the furor around the two tier advisors. We went to 400 consumers and ask them where the super advice is all they need and their confidence as to whether they are in the right Superfund. What was the answer? 67%. Two thirds of general population over 45 said that they would would just take superannuation advice. So simple, scattered advice, wasn’t framed like that. It was framed as free advice in relationship by superannuation? Yeah,

Clayton Daniel
well, I mean, and I guess this is probably where your research leads to, who needs advice, and who can pay for advice and the types of clients that advisors have been looking after for a long time? They’re not going anywhere? I honestly believe that. Scout advice is simply filling a hole for people who do not yet have access to solutions. I don’t see it as a threat to the existing financial planning business model in the slightest. I think that two completely separate separate services and it goes to this two tier if that’s the best way to think of it types of advice.

Jason Andriessen
Yeah, I agree with your Clayton to a nuance. I think the I think of the markets, the client bases for consumers as being in three cohorts, okay. The wealthy currently advised people with complexity, they’re going to be served more efficiently. Fantastic. This cohort in middle Australia, that our research shows they actually benefit the most, and I’ll come back to that interesting, and they have been orphaned by the institutions leaving. Yes. And they still want advice. And they want active relationships. And, and they’re having trouble finding that that the financial planners to help them. The superfans are absolutely going to help the lower tier. That’s not necessarily middle Australia, certainly I think, and all power to the Oh my god.

Clayton Daniel
Absolutely. Yeah. In no way. Is that seen as a horrible thing? I think, although that? Yeah. Okay. The financial planners, there’s no revenue for us to make in that in that space, but good as it should definitely exist for that segment of society.

Jason Andriessen
Yeah, absolutely. The benefits to them will be extraordinary. I agree. Come come back to the middle of Australia argument. Our research mavens research shows that 45 year olds plus, middle Australia benefit most from the financial aspects of financial advice and the non financial aspects. So they benefit from paying less tax, saving more, allocating their money better in the long run, right? They get wealthier, they’re able to do more, achieve more in their lives, their the financial aspects and non financial aspects. They they’re able to envisage advised. Middle Australians are able to envisage a positive future. When you can envisage a positive future. You can improve your emotional experience today. So they’re happier, we’ll probably put on that. They also have a sense of control, which is important that they’re more resilient when things go wrong. They’ve got more confidence in their ability. You’ve got more capability. They get got a better understanding of their values, and their living in accordance with all good things of the thing. Yeah, so I think that is the opportunity for financial planners to, to reach out to, to middle Australia with a more affordable platform.

Danni Visser
So how do you see that working kind of tangibly like what’s, you know, to ensure all clients are profitable? What are the suggestions you kind of make the planners approach that with and put a price on it? Because a lot of the questions we get in ex wives around what should my pricing structure be like? That’s one of the most popular conversations in XY like how do I go about increasing phrase? How do I actually price my advice? Do you have any take home tips around that? JC

Jason Andriessen
George Akerlof is a Nobel Nobel Prize winning economist. And he wrote a paper on the market for lemons. Have you heard of that? No. That’s an ad though. Market market for lemons was Mark and for for lemon cars, cars like Bom Bom car. And it was all about an information asymmetry. So the idea is I’ve got a car I want to sell. I think it’s a great car. I know it’s a great car. It’s been running for 10 years. I’m taking it to the market. But the market doesn’t know it’s a great car. So the market price is like a Buddha lemon. So I’ve got two choices, I sell it, or I take it away. That’s that’s when it becomes a market for lemons. There’s a third way. There’s this third way you address it information asymmetry by bringing its kind of value proposition to life. We’ve done lots of research that came up today in our session, what are clients willing to pay for advice? Yeah. And inevitably, there’s a proportion that are willing to pay a maximum

Clayton Daniel
nil. Naturally.

Jason Andriessen
The average is generally three to 500 bucks. But it’s it’s an unfair question because they don’t, they don’t know what’s involved, and they don’t know the utility of it. They don’t know the benefits of it. So what what the combination of that is is, is that we need to bring our value proposition service offers to life and be generous upfront, to show how we can solve the client’s the client’s problem.

Clayton Daniel
Actually, you raise a really interesting point here with the question, how much are you willing to pay for advice? And going along with that theme that you were just speaking about? Unless the question is even asked with the illustration of what the outcomes and the value and all of the benefits of advice are explained to the person who’s being asked the question, then they’re naturally going to not attribute much value to it. So it’s, it’s, I understand what you’re talking about. Yeah. It’s almost like the original research question. Whoever conducted this, you know, maximum that people are willing to pay for advice $500 story that got out there. I think what you’re saying is the issue here is a part of the question is the question was a wasn’t a great question.

Jason Andriessen
It wasn’t a great question.

Clayton Daniel
That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of that before. Yeah.

Danni Visser
Something that I really loved in what you said there you to address it, you have to be like, say someone does have, you know, has to understand the value of of advice. And that often evolves over many years. Got to be generous upfront was two words, you said, you know, to overcome that, say that pricing barrier or concern, be generous upfront. And that was such a lovely way of sort of putting what the I guess the challenge that every advisor has, in a client interaction, particularly with a new client, what does generous look like?

Jason Andriessen
Generous looks like at the 80% level, not not not getting into the weeds. Clients come to you with a job to be done in their minds, something has gotten them out of bed and motivated them to make an appointment. Answering that job to be done to the 80% level. is really where I would start.

Danni Visser
It’s a fantastic insight.

Jason Andriessen
Yeah. Don’t tell them how to do it, just show them that it can be done.

Clayton Daniel
That makes sense. And then so to I guess, give us a summary on the topic that was just being discussed, which is how do you make all clients profitable? What what what is what what is your sort of take out from that?

Jason Andriessen
That needs to lead with the client, so client segmentation, and working from there. So there are many ways to the segmented client let’s let’s choose a common way. Wealth and complexity. Let’s just stick with that. Matching the value proposition the service offer To the client need in that segment, is really what it’s about. Now, at the moment, that’s much easier to make profitable when you’re dealing with people with 3 million bucks, you can charge them $10,000 A year. Yeah. And, and make a healthy profit margin. And with the advice gap that’s possible these days, right? The selected whiskers you deal with? Yes. The opportunity down the track is to is to have a different proposition where we don’t need to produce an SOA can be more strategic, more goals based, and could be delivered much more cheaply than the 17 or 18 hours that the advisors take it managed to deliver advice, that that all swings on being able to deliver, deliver on the cost customer service reductions

Clayton Daniel
as a result of the review that’s going on at the moment.

Jason Andriessen
Yeah, yeah. Cool. Make sense?

Danni Visser
Jason, it’s been so lovely to have this discussion. There’s been so many tangible take outs that I’m sure a lot of I know our our xy network will find really useful and also the people who didn’t happen to make it to the FPA Congress. So thank you so much. Good luck with the two parts of this big discussion. And thanks for joining us.

Jason Andriessen
Thank you. Thanks so much.

Danni Visser
Good afternoon, everyone. We are still here. I’m still here. Actually, Fraser has gone to do us a speaking session at Congress today. So we have a guest co host. Yes. Hello, Clayton. Hello. Welcome to the seat. Thank you. Yeah, he’s on a good behavior bond. Intro anymore. Look, this is really exciting. We get to take people who are spreading amazing ideas on the Congress stage. And we get to figure out what that session is all about who they are, why they’ve been asked to speak. And we have Melanie Drago.

Melanie Drago
Thank you, Danni.

Danni Visser
Thanks for joining us, Melanie. Okay,

Melanie Drago
pleasure to be here.

Danni Visser
So people listening, can you tell us who you are. And then we’ll get to what your session is all about. And then what you want people to take out of it? For sure.

Melanie Drago
So my name is Melanie Drago has been introduced. I’m the founder of tango, which is a platform that connects paraplanners and financial advisors like an air Tasker type thing. And it’s really for those small businesses that just need out of a pair planning or just really cost effective pair planning and flexible solutions. Clayton’s doing really cute faces me Yeah. And our last

Clayton Daniel
guest to the exact same thing.

Melanie Drago
The other day that I’m also the admin for the power plant, which is just a community, specifically for power plant is mostly sharing ideas. And also, I’ve been a power planner for a very long time, I started back in 2000 2002 did that for a while, then I worked at AXA managing the boss documents and template team for those that were there. And then we’ve done a bit of other work with digital industry funds, services, and all that sort of stuff. And that’s why I’m here now. So I think the idea was me to bring some insights on where you could go to as a power planner, what power planners do, because, as you know, or you may not know, there’s no real definition of a power planner. It’s sort of just formed and became what it is today because of evolution. There’s no really industry. paraplanner is someone who does the technical stuff, maybe doesn’t add me and maybe helps a planner in doing client work. There’s no real definition. I’d love that to change. But my idea was, is that going to evolve into something else with the new changes to choir, and all that sort of stuff. A PowerPoint is still going to be needed. And that was sort of the theme of the today’s session.

Clayton Daniel
Right. Yeah, that’s an interesting concept. In the event that that Michelle Levy’s proposals were to be accepted as they are. Yeah, that’s a good point. Power planning would would change it naturally. It would. Yeah. And I think

Melanie Drago
some people going oh, this nurse away is you don’t need power planners. And I think that’s really sort of minimizing the jobs and the roles that power planners do. And I think that was part of the what we discussed today. What do power planners do, and it’s not just running in SOA, they help with doing the projections and understanding the software well enough to do the projections and doing the research and, and being that second set of eyes on compliance and actually helping the adviser maybe being a stepping, stepping stone to advising and that’s business succession sort of person as well. So there’s a whole heap of things that paraplanners can do, and I think, to say that if SOA is gone, which maybe it’s not going to be an SOA in the current format. That might be another document. It’s got to produce it Don’t think PowerPoint isn’t going anywhere to

Clayton Daniel
documentation isn’t going to do. Maybe it maybe is the existing statement of Yeah,

Melanie Drago
precisely. Maybe it’s not gonna say you have to have a statement of advice on the front screen. And it’s gonna be there. Yeah, it might be you can have a visual, you can have an in digital, you can have it. Yeah, yeah. So I think that they all need

Clayton Daniel
to be created. Can you still gotta do research? Yeah, reviewed and someone has to speak to the product provider. And,

Melanie Drago
and one of the questions was, how do you how do you prove that we still need power plans at all, like, I’ll send an advisor down in front of one of the modeling softwares and ask them to punch out three scenarios and they’ll go get staffed I want the

Clayton Daniel
best response would be fire your power plant and see how long you live.

Melanie Drago
That’s right. And power plant is love being that person that back in person helping us because love for them, I did a survey. And the majority of them are like, I’m not a climate financing person. I’m not a people person wanting to be in the backend, I want to do all the number crunching. They want the advisor to do that. And they respect and love advisors being there doing that client stuff. Yeah. So

Danni Visser
when you’re hiring and you’re looking for someone to be a power planner and being your business for a long time, what are you hunting for? Do you always go for the EXP because talent is a big issue in advice at a at an advisor level? And I’m presuming as well at a power planning level? Yeah. So how do you find great power planners?

Melanie Drago
I think there’s a massive issue here. There’s really some really good power planners have been around for a long, long time. They were trained up by the corporate so the train up in small businesses, you got all the skills that you need to be power planners, but they’re far and few between. Some of them are leaving industry, some of them might be advisors, or what have what have you. And there’s this new Genet we need this new generation of para planners, but the problem is one who’s trading them up, boutique, I would say boutique offices, maybe not the best stomping ground to get your hands in paraplanning, you need to be trained properly. So that’s an issue for talent. We don’t have new paraplanners that have been trained properly. And that needs to be addressed by the industry.

Danni Visser
So it has city Yeah, what

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, so how what do you think that booty isn’t a great because the advantage is you’re everywhere.

Melanie Drago
I do agree. But do advisors have time to commit to training a power plant properly? Or letting go quickly just do like this? I haven’t got time to show you the proper way. That’s definitely true. Yes. So I think that like, and it’s not that they won’t do it properly if they had time. But who’s gonna they need someone to sit next to them and show them how to do it properly? Gotcha. Yeah, so boutiques not the best place. So that’s a port. But when I look for a power planner, I like someone who’s detail oriented, obviously. I mean, and Goodwin numbers is good. Obviously, you’re doing numbers all the time. But I think the other thing, which is important, which most people don’t realize is to have that big picture overview of a strategy, because this might be right here. But when you look at the big picture is not correct. So people that can see the bigger picture and understand for strategies, right? And just look at the holistic view of that advice, which is really important. Not just looking at the detail, the corrections and all that the numbers, but just the big picture, which is what financial planning is about, isn’t it? Totally. Yeah. Strategy. Yeah. So so

Danni Visser
your marketplace correct me if I’m wrong, it’s it’s based in Australia. So you’ve got Australian based paraplanner. So there’s obviously a trend where there’s there’s a lot of offshoring in this space. What would your comments be on that? Like, what what sort of business owners seek out that Australian because you know, you’ve got different options and different options suit different businesses, when does an Australian base paraplanner suit and when does an offshore paraplanner suit? Definitely space

Melanie Drago
for both? Offshore is an excellent solution that people are more cost sensitive. They want something that’s cheap for their business because they haven’t got that capacity to pay for an onshore onshore power planning in your office could be at 100 grand for really experienced power planner, that’s a lot of money for a business to fork out. So offshore is a great solution. Tango has contract Australian paraplanners. Some planners and licensees want their stuff to be onshore, just from data reasons. And that’s fair enough. Others like the fact that they can just they know they’re around the corner. And they’ve been in the industry for a long, long time and got that experience where you find more offshore pulling more, not as they haven’t been doing it for 1015 years, or probably newer paraplanners. So they want that experience. So then what they’re really good technical PowerPoint is and I find that the Australian ones are sort of in that realm. So I think that’s a differences. But then I’ve got some that would have both. So they have offshore for the smaller, less complex as always, then they’d use onshore for the really technical complex ones where there is always got to be spot on language. Everything’s got to be right. So yeah.

Danni Visser
My final question to you Melanie is, if I’ve got a great power planner, and talent is hard, how do I keep that person happy? What’s my employee value proposition got to be so that I have a really good relationship and a long relationship with this person who I really value and it’s an important contributor

Melanie Drago
and paraplanners I find they can to lose it. have planted when you’ve invested so much time and energy in that person or training them up is really heartbreaking. And I find a lot of advisors come to me because of lost their power planner. I can tell you now if you want someone in your office, it’s definitely flexibilities what power planners go for. And often they will go to contract prior planning and leaving office because of the flexibility that contract paraplanning provides. So if you’re in office and you want to Office paraplanner, I suggest flexibilities key development and training. So paying for them to come to something like this where they can get exposure to this sort of environment. That’d be great value add, giving them CPD training, giving them education and even developing like it if they want to sit in front of clients develop in that way, because you won’t get that as contract prior planning. So given things that they weren’t, but flexibility, I can tell you now, and probably sorry to say it but salary if you’re going to pay them really low wage, and they can get more during contract prior planning with the flexibility, you’re never going to win

Danni Visser
what’s low, medium, and high? Because we often get a lot of responses to when we put out like, what did someone get paid? It’s really important question in your experience. What’s that rain,

Melanie Drago
I just did a survey I can tell you the average salary for a power planet based on the survey that I did was 160 people for in house office was about 70 to 85. And then if the more senior ones that have over 15 years experience, you probably pushing over 100 for a contract power planner, they usually charge between for a standard couple SOA, say retiree going into retirement phase, you’re probably going to see about 500 to 650 for an SOA. So then you work out I think that’s what businesses need to do. Is it worth if I’m only doing one SOA a month? Is it worth just getting a contract paraplanner. Or if I can resource out that power plant in house to do more than just paraplanning and maybe do some sort of succession planning and helping with the advice, then I would think that a PowerPoint in house would be better proposition. So Yeah.

Danni Visser
Fantastic. That’s been such an amazing business planning strategy insights for people. So thank you for sharing them with us, millennials and claim Do you have any other questions before we sign off?

Clayton Daniel
I just like, I just liked that, um, you know, that you got a passion for power planning? Like I started out, I came over from accounting into power planning originally. And yeah, it’s a super, super valuable part of the advice of the entire vise advice process. And yes, I’m just stuck that someone’s sort of making sure that people are paying attention to it more than anything. Yeah,

Melanie Drago
industry needs. To be honest, the industry needs to pay attention to it because one, there’s no definition of protoplanet there’s no qualifications for powerplant. So you have someone who’s doing all the calculation strategy and stuff like that, and essentially doesn’t need any qualifications. Yeah, so why is that? We’re talking about an industry that doesn’t look at compliance people what do they need to be to compliance people we got people that have probably done no law, nothing like that and building licensee rules, auditing and doing all that. Why is that? Why hasn’t industry decided and advisor needs to do this, but also these industry participants should have these qualifications to make sure we’re all humming beautifully. Great. So

Clayton Daniel
fantastic. Thanks for coming on.

Danni Visser
And before we before we, we get out of this particular episode, the FPA do have support for paraplanners in this paraplanning hub, which is no

Melanie Drago
okay, but I think they’re coming there working with me.

Danni Visser
Okay to bring Yeah, so so we’ll be the secret squirrel, but it’s something exciting. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us, Melanie. Welcome, everyone. We are entering deep afternoon time. And you’ll be probably able to tell that from this particular fireside chat. So throughout today we have been taking the speakers the people who are deeply involved in the FPA and understanding the highlight reel of what their session is about who they are, how they got there. What what’s their role within the FPA community? So Fraser’s darted off because he’s got speaking commitments, and we have a steadying Clayton Hello, Welcome. Welcome. And we have a very important guest who’s done a lot for this particular Congress. So we’re about to bring in some margaritas just for some sugar. So thank you for joining us, David. David, you’re welcome. Give us a little bit of your you hold a lot of roles. You’ve run a business, you’re the FPA chair, you do things on radio. I can’t explain all the things you do its best you give everyone a little summary of who you are and how you ended up being involved in the SBA.

David Sharpe
Biggest time coming in at the moment is I’m also involved in cricket I’ve got three boys who play cricket. Now tell people this 20 hours on the weekend of cricket every weekend right if you if you have a look site on you’ll see I’ve got the sunglass tantrum prove that that is indeed actually the case. So that’s my weekends and you know, maybe in the lunch breaks, I do some work and stuff as well. Yeah, look, get your right Got a number of different roles that it’s definitely a juggling act? Yep. So I’ve got a small practice in Perth on a financial planner, I just got a job. I sit in front of clients all day every day we get to learn about their lives and what’s important to them and help them make good smart money decisions. That’s that’s fundamentally what we do from a device perspective. I fell into the to the FPA onto the local chapter, colleague of mine was getting off the chapter. And I think the rule was if he got off, he had to find someone to go on. As you read David to you. Okay, no worries. So I got the chapter love being involved, put myself up for the ball and managed to get elected. So awesome. So that was that was sort of my journey into getting into into the FPA. It was interesting. And I’ve met you know, subsequently you meet, you know, former CEOs and former chairs, and it was actually a former Matthew row. And Mark Rendell many years ago, basically went around the country and said, You know what, we’re not going to apologize for some of the poor behavior we’re going to strive on and be a professional be the best damn group of financial planners, we can be. That just engage me. I went, yep. Yeah, you had me at hello, top scenario that I went, yep, this is who I am. This is who I want to be a part of going forward. And so ya know, I’m naturally someone who gets involved in their community. So I’ve got balls in the FPGA. And, you know, I don’t know whether it’s last person standing. But you know, here I am now, as chair, maybe a real stood back and I was like, What’s it like going backwards? For? Well,

Clayton Daniel
actually, what we could say is, under your tenure, you brought together the, the to be associations?

David Sharpe
I wouldn’t say definitely like it is this is a team. Right? This is a collective and, and I hate that. Personally, I hate the whole individualizing of it all. It is such a group. It’s, it’s too important, you know, associations coming together. And it’s not about it’s not about us, it’s about the members, right? We are member associations, and this is this is all about members member value member benefit. And that’s why I should come together. So yeah, it looks. There’s a team that put this together. Certainly the collective board spent a lot of good faith and good spirit. And there’s nothing really too controversial. You know, this legal document I have to get through the only controversy is that I’m trying to read a legal document, but as a general, it’s it’s pretty good faith working together.

Clayton Daniel
Hey, yeah. Any any Chatham rules here? Obviously, this isn’t going anywhere. Any preview on? How do you previews on the names?

David Sharpe
This is not like I can generally tell you, we don’t we don’t have an idea. We’ve just got engaged an agency to help us formulate one Boston, right. So I think I’ve got an appointment. Someone’s in my diary at some point next week or week after just for my views, right. Yeah. But we want to go and get ideas from members as well. Right. Because interesting, I think this is almost the most important thing that people care about. What’s it going to be cold? Yeah. We don’t know know, when the FPA was formed out of a merger of two other previous heritage organizations that weren’t called the FPA. Sure. And so we’ll come up with a name and look this, there’s two ways of looking at it. There’s the it’ll involve a p n, F N, N A, and n is some you know, finance and professional advisor and planner involves something like that. And you gotta be careful that the acronym doesn’t spell something that a bit too rude or that people are gonna laugh at. Or you go the other way and go something that’s quite, you know, sort of inspirational or whatever my gut feeling is, I think the general consensus is people would like something with finance and advisor or advice or plan or something. And look, I’m not a creative person. So what you know, colors, just look, you know, just all that sort of stuff is I’ve got

Clayton Daniel
a strategy for you, right? Yeah. So

David Sharpe
you give me a name?

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, so So BHP Billiton merged to become BHP Billiton. Yeah. Then they just dropped hilason. So just bhp.

David Sharpe
That wouldn’t be I would say, though, that wouldn’t be good faith, right? To go down that path.

Clayton Daniel
So it’s just the FDA FA Yeah, it’s the FDA.

David Sharpe
Yeah, I’m not sure that’s gonna fly commercial.

Danni Visser
To the experts. Out of all the things you see what is it that excites you about advice and what’s going on in advice practices at the moment? A

David Sharpe
lot of colleagues and who so a lot of colleagues, no one’s struggling to find clients tomorrow night Sarah mentioned this on stage earlier like this actually never been a better for those who are still around, there’s actually never been a better time. Yeah, this if you think about it from a pure crass point of view, a lot less competitors. Yeah, lots of clients wanting your services and a sounds like on the whole firm the regulatory future, a lot of things are gonna make our job a lot easier to deliver better and better advice to our clients. I just think I I feel like we’ve gone through this dark tunnel and kind of say this as well. We’ve had a lot of our colleagues go through some dark times as well. So we can’t talk about this without acknowledging the hurt and pain a lot of them have faced and right and so that’s really important to acknowledge that but it’ll also be a massive light at the end of the tunnel and I just spoke before here at like an emerging professionals and students session Congress. Oh my god, like it’s so awesome. barring walking around here, and seeing all these, you know, calm young upstarts emerging, I must be submerged, right. And it’s just like these guys, you know, I think about the alumni that that started, you know, the baby steps of a profession. And we’re just custodians at the moment traveling through, and it’s going to be this younger generation that’s going to drive this forward, and they’re going to be the most trained, ethical EGA, they’re going to find you and they’re not going to be, you know, I sit here I took fsra came out in 2003, when I basically started becoming an advisor and my fear and people started at the same time, if you don’t give an FSG yet, and time six months jail, right, that was that I still it still leaves with me. But I’m hoping this, this cohort come through, and they’re not tarnished by some of the rules and regulations that we’ve had to carry now for 20 years. And they can think of new and innovative ways within the legal and ethical framework to really deliver for their clients. Yeah, that’s gonna be super exciting to see how that goes.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. What you just described is, is basically, I feel there is a big positive shift in financial planning as a whole. I just got back from not just got back. But earlier in the year, I arrived back from UK, where what you just said, is what all the advisors have been saying over there for the last couple of years, which is they went through the tough times. And now all of a sudden, there’s this bounce of bountiful opportunity. And then the rules and regulations that came in. We’re a we’re a a soft landing, almost after all this turmoil that had gone on for years. And the way that Paul Barrett talks about it, as at NGA, he says that he thinks that we’re at the start of a 20 year boom, in financial planning, and I actually couldn’t agree more.

David Sharpe
I think that’s probably pretty relevant with what is there 26 27 million people in this country? Yeah, just under 16,000. Advisors, totally. We we can’t serve a snow that many. So you’re in a profession where there is endless, like, demand. That’s like, he has like, you know, who is like a mining boom. scenario, you know, but you know, and that’s all hopefully, our biggest challenge right now is then attracting that new talent. Yes. And making, you know, financial planning. Oh, you know, when you grow up, I wanted to be a vet, right? Because I thought being a vet was as you help sick puppies, when you get a little bit older, you realize it was was what you did to those sick puppies that are no longer sick, but not for the reason you thought, right. And so, you know, I didn’t know about financial planning totally. If you know, most people, most will fall into it, because they’re doing something else. They go, Oh, well, what’s financial plan? And then you love it? Right? So we’ve got to make sure that people when they you know, year nine year 10, and they’re studying, they go, yeah, financial planning is, you know, what, I want to dive in career path. And the job opportunities at the moment? Totally, I mean, if you’re a student walking around here, you’ve probably got six job opportunities already. Right, Eric? Good, Mark, you’ve got the pick of the litter.

Danni Visser
Totally. So quality of advice, review, what, uh, what’s your views on that big proposal? The final submissions have been submitted, what are the things that you would like to see come out of that whole process and that review,

David Sharpe
but broadly speaking with the quality of it is fundamentally going to change it’s, my fear at the start was, Is this going to be just a you know, polishing and a little bit of this is not, this is like, rip all the band aids off, and make some fundamental changes to financial planning. I want to give Michelle Levy her jus, she had the way she has engaged and gone around and spoken to everyone numerous times, like countless times has been so impressive. This is not someone that says sorry, here’s our here’s our findings, take it or leave it, she’s really wanting to engage really broadly. And that doesn’t mean we necessarily have to agree with everything she said. But I think it was a scenario with take the whole package or take nothing, absolutely be grabbing and taking the whole package to share. And so there’s a couple of there’s a couple of things in there that in particularly, you know, were iffy on in terms of, you know, loosely called the irrelevant providers, right, people providing advice to one financial advisors. Yeah, yeah. And we understand that the challenge she’s got, which is I mentioned before, 60,000 advisors, we can’t serve us. That’s right. And people might call up with a really, really basic question. And generally, they’re probably not going to be our client at that stage anyway, yes. But it’s how deep does that go? Right? Like, what how far can they go? how complex the advice can they create? And so that’s a challenge that we’re going to have to somehow force and not for forces that the wrong word somehow deal with and put the guardrails in so that consumers aren’t the ones harmed? Yes, but equally, maybe this is a way of the pipeline of the advisor of the future and one of the things we’re pushing for is or maybe those doing the simplest advice, like get some simple calls, maybe get do two units, right, like, like nesting, so you get your bread dip, now it’s eight units. So what if that are true to those eight units? To do that, or now we’ve got a pipeline I’ve done to my I can do basic stuff like this, I’ll do more cool, go into units and become an advisor. And so maybe this is a great way of getting a pipeline of more people into the profession, as well,

Danni Visser
because I like what you said like good, good advice is better than perfect advice, or some advice is better than no advice. So where do you sit like, not everything’s going to be perfect. But what are we comfortable with so that people can access some level advice rather than no advice?

David Sharpe
The potential for consumer detriments really important here. And we’ve already got that somewhat. Brexit, we’ve got the small advice exemptions at the moment, you know, under 10, or $15,000, we can give some simple advice with that. So there’s there’s this where we see that in our current laws, and so, you know, she’s obviously looking to expand that a lot further than just that. So we’ve already got that principle already. So there is this whole point, and we have a medical right, we can go and buy paracetamol, shows that the chances of consuming now as it just turned out parastatals go the other way at the moment. But there are some things that we can do for ourselves because there’s limited. So where’s the Parasol paracetamol and Nurofen. At the financial advice level, and where’s the schedule six narcotic Yeah, that you really want your doctor prescribing, right. And so that’s where we need to help help frame that. So even if the quality of advice review isn’t going to frame it, yeah, we need to make sure that we’re the ones then framing and say, Well, no, we don’t think that providers should be able to go that detail that’s quite complex.

Clayton Daniel
I’ve got an existential question, actually. And it leans on everything he talking about at the moment in terms of consumers, you’ve got consumer groups, right, such as choice and they will come out with in they came out just this week, or last week, it was recently with some ideas around Commission’s and, and to me, it’s not really so much whatever it is that they’re coming up with, right, that they’re going to come up with things all the time, with the merging of the associations with a with a across the board improvement in the quality of advice, and the quality of advisors and the new influx of you know, the education standards and all these things. Here’s a tough question. Do you see the association playing a role as, as an as a unified advocacy group? Again, so in terms of choice, whatever it is that they come out with? And then saying, Actually, no, because the issue has been, and you’re very well aware of this, as everyone is because of the function of financial planning, because there were things that there have been issues in the past and yada, yada, yada. There’s always been a well, we know we need to do this. But unfortunately, just due to everything else, we’re unable to, you know, put forward a unified confident stance. Do you see that happening? Again, with everything that’s happened recently,

David Sharpe
we’ve talked about advocacy we’ve worked with the Joint Action working group is 12 groups have already come together. And with the AFA, we’re already having a lot of joint submissions on a number of topics already. The thing is, if this merger goes ahead, there’ll be one large dominant voice for financial advice, right? This is the lion’s share the majority of financial planners good in this country, you’re always going to have maybe the audit. And we’re Broadchurch. Right. If you we asked our members a rare question last this time last year around what are you thinking about? I think there’s a relaxing of some of the educational requirements. I can’t quite remember it was we had a we had a wide range of views. 70% were One Direction 30 the other, so we’re never going to get perfect total. But you’re there to represent that broad membership. Absolutely. And when it comes to what choices got to say, or other groups, where we agree with them. Great. Well, we’ll but we would disagree. It’s our job to prosecute our

Clayton Daniel
argument. Yes, that’s that was kind of the question because I, I haven’t seen what and I guess, advisors in general, haven’t felt like that has happened a lot. Now, of course, and I will give the caveat is because maybe it wasn’t already always at the role of the association to defend some of those things. But I think now that I think we’ve got a stronger leg to stand on, and it’s good to hear your response to some Well,

David Sharpe
we are educated. Yeah. Ethical. Yeah. Experienced. Yes. And examined. Yes. Right. The 40s Yeah, we basically from 2026 the hallmarks of a profession that anyone listening who’s done the ethics unit was is earnest Good, good, something non 60 had the hallmarks of professionals to remember from my ethics unit that I had to pass Greenwood, Ernest Greenwood. You know, the hallmarks of proficient will be then we can call ourselves profession going forward. And, and with that up lifting of professional standards across the board for everyone, yes, we now get the benefits of that, which is the trust that we can sit in front of a client, not go through 37 steps, so 400 steps or whatever it is minutia of saying, Okay, you’re not trusted to do it on your own. We actually have that trust. Now, we gotta we gotta guard that preciously ourselves as well, right that we don’t, we don’t breach it. But what have you know a client comes in with a simple request, we can give them a simple answer rather than I’ll come back to you in three weeks, because I’ve got to write a 16 page document, get a compliance check with my licensee, and then I’ll come back to you. Oh, by the way, yep, pay that money off your mortgage.

Danni Visser
Yes. And as a follow on to Clayton’s question, and tell me if I’m well off, but you’re much deeper into these conversations and sentiment than we are. But because there’s been such a journey to get to that profession, there seems to be a trend or a bit of a sentiment that you don’t, you don’t want to go back to the wild west, but almost that the simplicity and flexibility that Michelle is trying to, I guess offer. It’s almost because this has been so hard. I don’t want to lean into that, because I’ve gone through so much. And it’s interesting to look at a future and try and bring things that have weighed you down as a professional and because you’ve been flashing certain bad outcomes, to take that into the future have you know, of what that could be.

David Sharpe
I’ve mentioned this before, in a way, we’re a little bit institutionalized as advisors, because we carry the scars of fsra. We carry the scars of FOFA. Rock, we carry that with us. And I mentioned that’s what’s so great about this emergent cohort, they don’t have any of those scars, they’re gonna go, what are you?

Why are you doing that? Yeah. What do you mean?

Clayton Daniel
What’s Bopha?

David Sharpe
Yeah? What’s that? So I look at that guy, they’re gonna be the inspirations to take us forward, you know, that look, licensees are gonna be probably the hardest shoe because they’re dealing with two maybe 200 or 300 Different advisors, they’re trying to set a setting for everyone. Yes, I get the sense that maybe self licensed businesses will then start taking the lead. Because it’s something that can be more agile and move when it comes to Okay. Let’s say Essos. Go. That’s part of it. Michelle Levy, there’s going to be nervousness about that, Rob, some people go no, no. What do you mean? No, I’m giving you this. Even if it’s even within five days, if it’s a critical, I’m definitely like it because

Danni Visser
this process is fine and perfect. And now they get it and I don’t want to let it go. Because it’s taken me so long. Yeah, like you’ve just started you’d like that’s what I was trying to explain. It’s taking us so long to get here. Yeah. But could the future just be easier?

David Sharpe
Yep. Yeah. And so what you’ll say is, and I’ve said this, Michelle said, it’s not going to change day one, because advisors are so scared conservative, they’re so worried about breaching a rule. And they’re all live in fear of that. Yes. And they’re not. And there’s more worried about that, that actually will, what’s the end result of the of the advice that we give? Yeah, I mean, I’m sort of there. But I think as soon as we get some of these changes, we’ll get some early adopters, right. And as soon as the early adopters go through it all sudden goes, you know, it’s a bit like when the the buffalo crosses the river, you cannot, I mean, I’ve middling one or two of them, they end up getting done by the crocodile, but you’ll just see an ad.

Clayton Daniel
Just don’t be that. Don’t be

David Sharpe
that one. But you’ll see a couple go through and then a couple more, and then all sudden, the hurdle follow. And it won’t take that long. And then we’ll have a congress like this, and we will have another birthday. And we’ll look back and go. Do you remember when we had to do those 112 page documents? Yeah. And we’ll look back. And we’ll laugh about how ridiculous it was

Danni Visser
talking about the early adopters, Cory was giving all the work that the FDA has done a huge shout out because he’s now moved to video SOS. And he’s like, that’s gone from eight hours to two hours. Wow. There’s people already pushing through and just so excited around what this future could be

David Sharpe
all your questions. It could be I have a question this morning on video. So why is why is the FBI prosecuting video Essos? If so, why is it going right? I said because you just get rid of the SMD Oh, it becomes video advice. But it’s not a statement. It’s a video advice. And so how good would it be a client’s email? Do you realize you can’t get back to them? You pull out your iPhone, you record it and say, Hey, yep, I know you’ve got that tax return. Your strategy was we want you to make a non concessional to super, this is what we’re going to do. It’s for grant, get it in and we’ll send you the forms tomorrow, bam, record, email, a file note job done.

Danni Visser
And the advice is still pristine. Yep. Because you know, the recorded it’s been understood

Clayton Daniel
that it is so good that the world a world like that would be

David Sharpe
now if a client comes in and they go, Look, I want to borrow my commercial property. How can I do it? Or do you know what you can set up a self managed Superfund we might have to gear? Let me tell you, I’m not doing that in a three minute phone call with a recorder. I’m actually going to spend a lot more time going through because it’s complex. Yes. And so it’s the same as when you go to the doctor and they go, yeah, you’ve kicked a toe, put a bandaid on it, see you later. I can do with it. You go in and you know what, you’ve had a bad result we’re gonna have to spend a lot of time investigating going through it. But we are the professionals and professionals correct. So let us use our professional judgment. So when it’s simple, we’ll give you a simple result. And when it’s complex, yes, I’m telling you that I won’t do an SOA but I’ll do something that is documented Yes. That they can walk away with absolutely no, I’m gonna use my judgment as to when I use which

Danni Visser
David our 10 minute conversation has gone into a fabulous 22 minute conversation tend to shed so many valuable insights and perspectives. So thank you for joining Clayton and I we’ve really enjoyed this discussion.

David Sharpe
You’re very welcome. Pick it up. Have a fabulous Congress thank you thank you.