#32 Georgina Smith – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today I have Georgina Smith with me in the studio. Georgina, thank you so much for joining me today.

Georgina Smith
Thank you so much for having me, Louie,

Louis van der Merwe
brilliant, we we were just having a bit of a laugh trying to figure out what your official title is. But I guess the stab at it is kind of involvement in and around building out innate as a platform within the Liberty stable. And we’ll keep that for a part of this episode. But I want to start the early part of your journey because you had a very fascinating path into financial services. Give us the background, you know where Georgina came from? Because your your accent gives it away a little bit.

Georgina Smith
Thanks, Louie. I mean, it feels like years ago that you and I were having this conversation. When I joined financial service. I’ve actually been in the industry now for five years, which, which, you know, makes me feel a little bit like more like an old timer, I suppose. But so yeah, I had quite an interesting journey into financial services. If I think back to my early 20s, just as I graduated, I became an accountant in an FMCG firm. In fact, it was Unilever, great company loved working there. But I don’t think being an accountant was ever really my back and actually moved quite swiftly into training and development. And really carved out a niche for myself in that finance for non financial managers really training people how to read numbers, how to interpret them, and, and really make the most of them. And that’s really what I what I did for quite a long time. But meanwhile, some of your listeners may know, but I used to be a rugby referee and I used to travel around the world. In fact, I came to South Africa and refereed here, but on some of these travels, I met my husband, because I sent him off. And it was it was probably one of only about four or five red cards I ever gave. Anyway, that’s probably a story for another day, but But I met my husband and he’s a dentist, and we decided that we would set up a dental practice together. And this was really where I started to really put my training and development not just financial training into practice, but also the leadership training the team building trading from playing sport at a very high level, to really kind of, you know, putting it into practice in a corporate world. And we just went from strength to strength, we built this practice and we bought another one and then another one, and it just, it just kind of grew. And they did really, really well. And in fact, one of those practices when I put in place all the systematization that it needed all the efficiencies that it needed, and really freed up the clinicians to do the things that they needed to do. But actually became one of the biggest independently owned private dental practices in the SouthEast of England. And really, you know, we were on this train, you know, my husband and I were on this train and and you know, but but never quite really finding time to be with the family. It was it was really very busy time and one day I said to him, I said you know, there’s there’s a there’s a better way than being in this crappy weather in the UK, trying to you know, sitting in traffic, picking the children up, you know, We got to find a better way. And he said, Well, let’s go and have an adventure. And I said, Okay, let’s, let’s go and have an adventure. We sold up. And he said, Where should we go? And I said, I’d love South Africa. I traveled there with rugby many times loved it. Why don’t we give it a go? He said, Okay, let’s go. And he’d never been. So we turned up here, six and a half years ago, with the children, and just loved it made such a lovely life for ourselves here. And a year after I arrived, I met the guys that innate in who at the time, were part of Stan live, and we’re still kind of standing up in the Liberty world. And they were looking for a head of training. And they were very much looking for, you know, some energy and some, you know, to really kind of bring the whole thing to life. And I just got on really well with him straightaway with the passion in the team. I mean, I think I was only number six through the door. And yeah, I mean, I had to learn a whole new industry, built all that training material and, and really just loved it. And from there

is opening opened up for head of distribution. I thought, yeah, I know quite a lot about sales. I’ve done a lot of sales in my time. A long time ago, I started in telesales, and life’s all about sales, I think, I think I’d be quite good at that. I’m very good at building teams and that sort of stuff. And so sure enough, I’ve started to build this, you know, this, this distribution team to sell the innate platform. And that’s gone from strength to strength, you know, when you look at our NMg feedback, and, and the way the market is receiving us is just brilliant. And then we decided, at an eight to bring the client services side, which is always, you know, varied at the backend operations, we said, they said, no, no, let’s bring it to the front. And so I look after the Client Servicing team as well now, so I look after the Client Servicing team, and all the distribution team. And putting those two together means that we can get this really coherent experience for advisors as they come onto the platform. And I’ve learned so much in on this journey, from the bottom up, really. But I think what’s really given me a really good grounding is just knowing how teams work, knowing how people tick, knowing what people want, and knowing how to make people feel special. And that you know, that caring nature is actually what makes a platform work really, really well for our advisors

Louis van der Merwe
to georgeanna, Can we pause a little bit there around the team component. And so I think it’s quite striking that you started with the technical side, you bolt on, you know, more human skills around team coaching, and, and learning and development, get financial planners that tend to be successful. At some point, you know, you find yourself building a business and you have don’t necessarily have any training around building your teams. Where should you be starting if your financial planner with a smaller, medium sized team, what are the things that you should be doing? Or what are the people that you should be hiring in those early days of building a startup, an agile planning business?

Georgina Smith
Lily? I mean, it’s such a great question. And I reflect and again, it comes back to my dental practice days, running a dental practice is incredibly similar to running a financial services practice, you see people in a highly anxious state, you have to manage support staff very closely, you have to manage the cash flow very closely. And there’s a hell of a lot of compliance. You know, there, it doesn’t get more similar than that. I think so. So that experience, I think, is is is key. When you think about building a team, you know, it’s all about communication, all of us from the team level to the individual level. So what systems do you have in place to engage your team? How often do you connect as a team? And that runs from a daily stand up? As you know, I’m thinking back to my dentistry days, you know, who’s coming in today? And it’s very, very focused. Who’s coming in today? Have we got all the materials we need? Is anyone coming in? who’s disabled? Is there any anything special we need to be aware of as a team who loved them? That’s 10 minutes done first thing in the morning, and then there’s a weekly meeting for everyone as well. And that’s got a different flavor, very different agenda. But it’s very much a reflection on the week, how can we get better? What went well? What went wrong? What what do we need to be aware of coming up? And then there’s a monthly meeting, which is about your finances and where you are and and it’s for everyone, you know, I used to include everyone in that. And then there’s a quarterly meeting, which is about strategy, where am I going? What are we trying to do? Are we close to our targets? So that’s your skeleton, if you like of how you engage everyone and there’s a discipline in this you have to be very, very disciplined about how you engage with your team. And if you start falling away from that, then people start to feel unloved. They start to look elsewhere. And then there’s that individual motivation. So I think it’s, if you look at most most surveys and research papers on what makes people tick, you know, when you look at your business, and you put them against those four things, and these four things that make people tick are, the first one is do I feel appreciated in this job? That’s the first one. And the second one is, can I see a path? A progression path? So can I see a way in which I can improve? The third one is am I remunerated properly? And the fourth one is, do I have fun? And they’re in that order, as well. So you work through that order. So when each of your team members, you can go through that tech list and go, am I appreciating them? Can I show them a path through to what they want? Which it might not be very much, but am I able to keep them interested? Am I remunerating them properly? And are they having fun now, nobody leaves a job because they’re not being remunerated properly. But they will leave a job. If they’re not being remunerated properly, they can’t see a path through and you know, that they aren’t being appreciated. So it’s usually a combination of those things as to why people leave. So if you get those four things, right, on an individual level, and then you put the structure in on a team level, you’re on eCOGRA. Wrong. It’s that simple.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s so true. Because as you put it so nicely, those four elements, I think the one part that stands out for me is that a lot of businesses are maybe not growing fast enough for their staff members to see a career path and to think about themselves, still working there five or 10 years later, where do you start tackling a business that’s slowing down in terms of growth, yet still want to motivate and attract new people or retain the existing talent?

Georgina Smith
Yeah, that’s a brilliant question again, Louis. Yes. And that’s a really tricky one, you know, how do I keep someone interested, and you’ve got to find the right fit of person. But what you can’t do is seldom down the river, and you can’t pretend you’re being something that you’re not. So you actually have to have quite an honest, open conversation with people to say this, this is where I am in my life cycle. This is where I am in my business cycle. I happy to be on this journey. I will try and make it as fun as possible. During our time as we’re winding down, I’ll remunerate you properly, I won’t be able to show your path of progression, but I’ll definitely appreciate you. So there’s only one of the four that’s missing. Now, if you get the other three, right, it’s probably enough that you have to be transparent about it all throughout, you know, and that’s a key thing, I think, for running a really successful team. Just be as transparent as you possibly can.

Louis van der Merwe
I love that. Love that. And we should be having fun, you know, financial services has this image of a very boring, broach and you know, like you’re comparing it to the industry? And how do we make it a little bit easier? You know, someone like Gary often talks about how acid map changes that experience for a client. And Nick also compares it to dentistry, and how people have this massive sense of anxiety, or the practices that you see are including that fun element more so and you know, what are the rewards that they are picking?

Georgina Smith
Yeah, and it’s, I think there are some practices out there that do it really nicely. And you have to perhaps do a few different things for different groups of people. But it is really, I mean, it takes quite a lot to create creativity to get everyone together, doing something that everyone is going to enjoy. And that’s what I would always strive for. So whether it’s, you know, a trip to Kirsten Busch Gardens and a picnic together and just, you know, chilling out together, or it’s getting on scooters and going down the mountain, or it’s, you know, at for brunch, whatever it is, I think it’s so important to try to have some have some fun as a team. And you can do that, whether you’re small, whether you’re large, just getting out of the office, having lunch together once a week, you know, just Friday, burger night on Tuesday, burger night, you know, try to make time to get to know your team and your staff on a personal level without having to talk about clients, things that you need to, you know, order things that you need to put in the diary. Get away from those conversations and try to it’s a marriage, you know, being in a team, particularly if it’s a smaller team, it’s a marriage, you need to work at it. So it’s really important to try and find that downtime, and it’s not wasted time. It’s absolutely crucial time to spend with a team to make sure that everyone is on board. That’s that fourth element, having fun and the first element feeling appreciated.

Louis van der Merwe
Know your team members are probably your most important asset because in the service delivery business, they are on the frontlines even though you might be seeing the clients they interacting with your clients, you know, and they can pick up on these small things. In our business. We like the term surprise and delight and that As you mentioned, you know, bring that creativity and try and find things with someone actually feels both surprised and delighted. Oh, you thought of that, even though it’s a small, a small thing for them, it makes a massive difference,

Georgina Smith
Louis? Absolutely. And your team have the best ideas, they have much better ideas than than the principle does. Inevitably. I remember when I was in practice, we also have very similar mantras to us surprise and delight. And it was it was all about, you know, how do we make someone feel special that was very much armor mentioned, make someone feel special. And we were looking at ways and brainstorming ways about how to get referrals. And that’s always a pretty difficult thing to get, right? How do I get referrals from the client base that I have already? Without sounding tacky? You know, Can Can you please tell your friends that you like me and refer them on? You know, it’s just a horrible, horrible thing. So one of my ladies in the practice said, Well, I’ve got an idea, why don’t we have four or five really great gifts that we can send to someone when they refer someone, so but we don’t just send them the gift to their home address, we send it to their work address, so that they have to open the gift in front of of course, is pre COVID, in front of all their friends at work. And all their friends at work crowd round this brilliant gift, which is being opened. And it was it was anything from you know, there were there were four or five different ones. And it was a box of capes, it was some lovely spar stuff and soap stuff and things like so. So yeah, and all those friends that work with crowd round this person open this gift. And in there’ll be a beautiful handwritten note that said, thank you so much for referring Mr. X to our practice, we’ve really enjoyed seeing him. And we thank you very much for referring him, it was something that you know, something very personal like that. Now, from that one, exercise, you’ve made someone feel amazingly special, you’ve also had to meet everyone else in that office, go, geez, my dentist doesn’t do that. At all our problems go there as well. And it was so incredibly simple, but successful. And that idea came from one of my team members. And it was it was a brilliant, brilliant way of building a practice of patients that you really like treating, because once you’ve got a book of patients who like you want other patients like that, to come into that practice. So that referral was just so important.

Louis van der Merwe
It sounds like you approach that almost as an experiment to say, we don’t know if this is going to work. Let’s try it and see if it works.

Georgina Smith
Am I right? Absolutely. I’m the queen of the pilot. And I do it at work as well. We tried a new servicing model recently, and we call it yellow word. And and it’s a marketing’s probably going to get upset that I’ve used that externally. Because I don’t think it’s supposed to be used externally, but but our advisors know what we’re talking about when you say project Yellowwood. And this was where, when we launched in eight, we said to a select group of about 20 advisors. And you’re going into this pilot, we’re calling it yellow was and it was all about yellow was being you know, the the national treasure tree of South Africa, they, you know, they’ve been around for a long time that hopefully here to stay. You know, it’s all about that kind of longevity. And they and these 20 advisors, we lined up and we said this is the experience we’re going to give you with this is the piece of tech we’re going to use to give it to you we need to test it, would you mind being part of this? Wow, it went so brilliantly, we were able to demonstrate to the business within eight weeks that it was, it was actually the right thing to do. And we’ve now rolled it out as part of our servicing our servicing proposition to our advisors. And it’s just gone from strength to strength. So pilot is absolutely the key way in which you can prove that your ideas are gonna work.

Louis van der Merwe
How do you approach these pilot ideas? If it doesn’t work? You know, I think your team can get despondent if you’re after iteration iteration, you see things not working. So how do you approach that? And how do you position it beforehand to make sure that even if the actual project might not come to fruition, people still feel excited to tackle the second pilot or the third pilot?

Georgina Smith
Yeah. And it comes back to this, you know, fear of failure, doesn’t it? I think we see this in growth mindset, you know, don’t and failure is his only another way of getting to success and all that. But you’re right, it does feel a bit crap when something doesn’t go as you wanted it to go. But the key you actually touched on it there, Louis is to to to actually map out those criteria up front. You know, if we haven’t nailed it within eight weeks, what are we going to do? Are we going to count it or are we are we going to keep going and we’re going to how often we’re going to try and tweak it to reiterate it? What’s the feedback going to be like? So as long as you Though as long as it’s not like a, you’re not flogging a dead horse, you actually put those ends milestones in, and then you just chalk it up to experience and say to yourself, well, thank goodness, I didn’t go big bang on this. And we did only do a pilot, because that’s exactly what Kyle is there to do is there to prove it or disprove it. And disproving is as valuable as proving it.

Louis van der Merwe
You’re bringing in that fun element again, because you’re not certain, if you follow the process that everyone else is following and you’re certain of the outcome, then you didn’t push your team hard enough.

Georgina Smith
Exactly, exactly. And you know, it. And you know what, even if it doesn’t go well, the team then sees that, you know, everyone puts their hand up and go, that’s why we do a pilot, and that’s okay, failure is fine. As long as everyone knows that, there’s a chance it’s going to happen. So really important that everyone is on the same on the same page. And that also comes down to KPIs as well, how are you going to Word and put those KPIs together for your team, if you know, if success of a certain pilot is part of your KPIs, that’s going to feel a bit a bit awful as well, you actually want to say, completion of the pilot is your KPI. whether it’s successful or not, is is actually for the business, then to determine what they’re going to do with the outcome.

Louis van der Merwe
It reminds me of those input versus output goals, saying, if you focus on the things that are, you know, that are going in towards your goal, you know, if we talk about finance, your monthly contributions, and did you do the things that required, then the outcome is often not in your control. And it’s a random outcome. Right. But your process and your decision making was still sound and it still worked.

Georgina Smith
So Louis? Yeah, I mean, the point you make about inputs is so important. And I say to my sales team, of course, they have targets, every sales team has targets, who doesn’t. But the you can’t concentrate on the target, you have to concentrate on the inputs, you those behaviors you employ to, to actually get to the target. So that is about how you make your advisor feel special, how you look after them, how often you engage with them, how quickly you engage in how you’re able to resolve issues, how you’re able to actually add value to their business, insightful value. So so there’s a whole range of inputs that we measure, and then the outputs just come, they will follow later, if you’re doing all the inputs, right, the outputs will come,

Louis van der Merwe
Georgina, can we talk about the role of the broker consultant, specifically, they’re relevant still today, in businesses that are more and more digital, that are more and more streamlined, I can see within our practice, the engagement with broker consultants has been reduced, majorly over the last couple of years, just because systems have become more efficient. And I guess, you know, sometimes they even bypass to give me the thinking around how your team is set up? And why that is the case? And what kind of value can you still contribute as a broker? Consultant?

Georgina Smith
Yeah, it’s again, it’s a great question, you know, because then, you’re right, with the digital world, and particularly a platform like innate, which is a digital platform, a self service, we can possibly make it, you know, to the point where it was born digital, you know, it was born after, or, you know, it didn’t move from paper to digital signatures, there just aren’t any signatures, you know, so. So, that point about self service so important. And your rights, you know, there shouldn’t be much need for an advisor, to use a BC A broker consultant, in the way they used to, you know, you think of those old fashioned VCs who used to rock up every week, collect a stack of AP forms, say, hi, bring some cakes, and take them back to the office and, you know, the back office will process all those apples, you know, that’s, that’s not a value added your world, that’s for sure. And it was just unnecessary, unnecessary irritant in our world if you like. So the way I want to see broker consultants engaging with advisors is very much around that value add. So and it’s not just a visit to the, to your practice, it’s, it’s, it’s, Hey, you know, these are the webinars we’re running. There’s some really interesting people that I think you get value from. I’ve been looking at your data, Mr. Advisor, and I can see that you know, there’s, there’s something happening over here. Can we have a chat about it, and maybe I can help you with it. Not only that, to understand your world in such a way of the sort of clients you’re trying to, to attain and key and then what what you need to do that so for instance, in the offshore world, what do you need, you know, to help penetrate those high net worth clients, you know, what, what, what help, what support do you need, can we give you that can we help help you with that? Also, you know, to the point that we’ve got lots of experts in the business tax experts, you know, propositional experts, product experts, you know, how can we help you with that as well. So, I mean, not that long ago, I was in a in a practice. And we were talking in very deep terms about the audio review and where that was going, and perhaps the potential changes to the cat two license. And this advisor was thinking about how to structure his business, legally, but also, operationally to make sure he was well set up for those RDR changes around the cat two license. So it’s all of that value add that actually, we should be bringing to you. And it’s not that traditional VC turning up on your doorstep once a week to collect a stack of AP forms. I don’t think that does either of us any any good.

Louis van der Merwe
So this sounds much more like a mentorship role and being able to connect people with the right resources. But at the same time, how do you make inroads into that practice, because you need to be able to identify those problems for you to be able to solve it. So how are you managing to do that?

Georgina Smith
Yeah. And again, it comes back to that referral, actually, because you guys are a close network, you talk to each other. And what we find is we have a cohort of like minded advisors who talk with each other, and they say, Hey, I tried that new innate platform, it was actually really good. And I had a great experience, someone else tries it, someone else tries that you’ve got that referral thing going on. Now, once you, you know, go back to my dentistry days, we always used to find that if someone was referred to as a client was referred, patient was referred to us, they were three times more likely to stay with us than someone who just came in from advertising off the street or, you know, any other way. So that referral is so important. And that’s when we come back to our tribe. So So what are we doing with that tribe? How are we? How are we actually forming a tribe of advisors who get together, and that can be through one of our dinners through one of our events, and they chat, they network, and they, they get on exchange stories. And before you know it, you’ve got, again, this reinforcing behavior of Yes, I had a good experience, and I’d recommend it to another friend. And we very rarely, I can’t even think of the last time I had my team cold calling advisors, you know, that doesn’t necessarily happen anymore. It’s very much about referral,

Louis van der Merwe
you open up the door to data analytics and talking about Mr. Advisor, this is what we seeing. And even it sounds like in your previous role, you use data to inform your decisions. Yet, advisors received very little data from the client behavior. I’m thinking things like how often someone logs in, when they tend to go to the website, what it is that they do. Is there any interesting data points that you can share with us that surprised you over the last couple of years from maybe an advisor or a client activity point of view?

Georgina Smith
Well, one thing I can say is clients log on a lot less regularly than perhaps we think they will. I think, when I look at the client log on data, the average client logs on less than once a month, to look at their look at their portfolio. So So that’s I think that’s, that’s interesting, something

Louis van der Merwe
worth celebrating itself,

Georgina Smith
which which means, you know, they must be having a, they must be not anxious. I mean, he tends to be those who are anxious, you tend to log on a lot more, and that’s credit to the advisors who are managing them and managing that behavior around perhaps market movements, or whatever’s going on. So yeah, I mean, that’s one data point. And then And then really, this is this is the stuff that’s in development, you know, so so so that that overall view of your practice, one of the things we’re looking at, and there’s all sorts of ideas we’ve got around that, and there’s some great stuff from overseas as well. I think advisors love to know where they are within a cohort of other advisors, you know, am I putting through the same amount of apps as everyone else, I should recall that split pieces of new businesses, everyone else is my average case size, the same as other advisors, you know, being able to share if you like a league table of us have actually information without digress without divulging any sort of, you know, individual stats, you know, without breaching copyright or anything like that, but just show where people are in terms of what the what the overall view is, of our platform, I think will be very, very useful. So it’s those sort of ideas were thrown around at the moment. And in fact, transact platform in the UK do this very successfully. And it is, you know, that they pull out their top 100 advisors, and they say, Hey, these are these are, this is what these guys are doing. And I think that’s quite interesting.

Louis van der Merwe
You’re there’s so much that you can do with the data. I’m even thinking, kind of prompting the advisor when a client logs in too frequently so that you can start reaching out and we hear so match around investor behavior yet, I feel like a lot of the software and the providers aren’t really giving us the tools to be engaging better with clients. I’m assuming that you’re spending a lot of time thinking and listening also around the behavioral side, do you see that being implemented? Well, in practices,

Georgina Smith
all the behavioral side of clients are the m&s, there’s a huge variation isn’t there in terms of the style of financial planning that people people give anything from. But I do see a move a very definite trend, away from products away from all of that towards behavioral coaching, financial coaching, and in fact, in the UK, it’s almost a sin to call someone an advisor or a financial planner. And that’s a much more holistic title. So there’s definitely a move from advisors to try to move towards that behavioral coaching, which of course, frees that means they have to do that they need to free up more time. So you see, other time hijackers, if you like, being being offloaded to other people, so you’re fun picking, you know, you’re seeing a much higher adoption of your DFMS. And, and going further down the chain as well, you know, I think there’s a real opportunity to for D FM’s, who can scale to move into the, the, what I call the GP market, a general practitioner market, and actually access that that end of the market and take some of that burden off those advisors who want to move a lot more into that financial planning mode, then, of course, you’ve got the compliance. So how is compliance being being done in a practice? And how much time is that sucking up? And when you think of all these different things that advisors are having to manage? And keeps them up at night? And where are my new clients coming from? And what about RDR? And am I going to be, okay, you are seeing this big migration of advisors, particularly a sort of one man bands into those networks, where you’ve got a lot more security, you’ve got a lot more, a lot more support, and succession planning as well, people who want to extract value from their business you’re seeing is we’re seeing really quite a migration of those guys into those networks. So I think there’s, there’s all sorts of trends, which I think are incredibly interesting and exciting in our industry. And this is actually very similar to what’s happened in the UK, but just a few years behind them.

Louis van der Merwe
I think we’re fortunate to be in South Africa, because you can almost look at the US, the UK and Australia, and make an educated case of how things are going to play out from a compliance perspective. But also from a business succession point of view. You mentioned now, you know, these businesses buying up smaller size practices. Yet, if you look at the US data, it seems like it’s the medium sized practices that are struggling, the one man shows or one man bands, and the larger businesses tend to be quite profitable. Yet it’s these guys in the middle in terms of advisors, aging and getting to retirement. Do you see that as a threat for the platform that you’re building?

Georgina Smith
No, you say, so isn’t it funny? I don’t know how you feel about this, Lou. I mean, you’re clearly a lot, a very young and successful financial planner. But it feels like and I have to, I have to defer to people have told me this, because I’ve not been in the industry long enough to experience this myself. But it feels like this industry has always had an echelon of wealth managers who are in their late 40s to late 50s. You know, that doesn’t seem to change. They, you know, and it seems to be a pretty consistent number. So what I think is probably happening is, is you’ve got those younger guys learning their trade in the risk space in the tide space, in the one man band space, they move into, in either into a network or into an investment specialist or into an even into a holistic advice, practice. And then they by the time they’ve done that they’ve they’re in their mid to late 40s. And so you just see this constant feed of of advisors coming through who our wealth managers, but they’re just at that time in their career. So I don’t see it as too much of a risk. I think. I think there’s there’s others other risks perhaps that that I should worry about more,

Louis van der Merwe
you’re that average age tend to stay there in the kind of early 60s. And I guess it makes sense as younger people come in and older people retire. You mentioned these other risks. Are there any any ones that come to mind that you want to unpack?

Georgina Smith
Well, I think I think there are I mean, there’s there’s it depends where you’re looking the industry, there’s always risks around the industry, or do you think there’s they’ll we’re in for an interesting few years, as we see platforms replay form. So let me just stop there and and explain what that is so, so we have the standard platform, we decided to build a brand new platform, which was, which is the native platform we bought, we bought this brand new technology virus supplier who is a global supplier and has delivered this, this sort of technology in Australia and UK all over. So when I think about risks in the industry, I think there’s there’s several really, there’s certainly some interesting movement in the platform space. And it’s not necessarily a risk, it’s just an interesting development. And that’s in in what I’d call the replatforming space. So we have, we’ve got the standard list. And we’ve taken the reviewer technology and built in a Thomas bravura technology, which has been proven in other markets around the world. And it’s been South Africanized and regionalised, for us here. And now we, we’ve come out the other side of that, and it’s taken a while, you know, it’s taken four to five years, and during that time, there was no investment in the standard list. It wasn’t a happy journey, you know, it’s not easy, it’s never gone. There is no platform in the world that has done this smoothly. But in actual fact, we did it relatively quickly, compared with other platforms around the world. But what you’re seeing actually, is what advisors need, the technology that they need means that these old legacy systems, which inherently are butchered life systems, butchered bank systems, which have been cobbled together to be something that an advisor might like, they’re reaching the end of the life end of their life, which is what standard was. And then what you do is you build something which is absolutely purpose built and advisor inspired, which is what the amount one is. Now what we’re seeing is momentum have come out and partnered with FM Zed, and they’ve announced the their re platforming their platform. And that’s going to be an interesting, an interesting journey. Having been through it myself from the from the innate perspective, it’s not easy. You’re also seeing the acquisition. We’ve also seen the acquisition of silica, by FM Zed as well. So those guys that that operate on silica may well be looking to adopt the FM Zed technology. And then of course, you’ve seen in it’s still going through the approval with the competition’s commission, but you’ve seen the acquisition of aims by Sunland Glazier. Now, that’s also going to be a consolidation exercise. So there’s a hell of a lot of stuff going on in the platform industry, which I think could make for quite a bumpy ride on the old legacy systems. So so that’s that’s one area, which I think is watch this space, see how that all plays out? And then then you could look in the advisors space. So So what’s going on there? And what’s what do we need to look at there? I mean, perhaps Louis, what would you say is one of your biggest risks in the adviser space? What are you worried about?

Louis van der Merwe
That’s an interesting one. Because I often think that I have the luxury of thinking a little bit further ahead. You can think 30 years in terms of, you know, how will our industry still make an impact? How will it be monetized? You know, obviously, the kind of shift away from products, becoming someone’s decision maker or assistant in making better quality decisions, not only about their finances, maybe predominantly about their finances, but in their lives, and the impact that you can make through that. And then thinking, Okay, how do you? How do you monetize that? And how do you create a sustainable business, because as you rightly said, your business in dentistry, or your business in any other service industry, it’s still the same business structure, we just happen to deliver advice, and there’s a clear method of getting paid. And so the biggest concern probably is that race to the bottom, you know, that squeezing of income to a fee that is reasonable for the service that you deliver. And I’d love to pitch that back to you to say, you know, do we have a decoupled ment, of the fees that are being charged and the value of the advice that’s been delivered? Is that still reasonable to be charging? You know, let’s call it 100 basis points on a large investment, for the impact that you’re making in someone’s life or the quality of the decisions.

Georgina Smith
So Lily, I think what you mentioned there about value of advice, and then how you charge it charge for it is a really interesting and quite a philosophical conversation. Intrinsically, clients want to know that the more they earn, the more you earn, and that those two things are really closely linked. So So actually, I think that model has got quite a lot of legs, you know, charging a certain bit rate on a person’s personal AUM, if you like, but then you’ve got a group of people who are uncertain different groups of people, but one group of people in particular who I think we’ve got to see some more innovation in pricing around. And I think of that group who, who we call the Henry’s, you know, the high earners, but not rich yet group. You know, what how do you how do you put together a model for that and making sure that you as an advisor have paid it paid appropriately, knowing that actually, they’re not going to be rich or accumulate assets for quite some time. And then there’s that, how do I quantify the value that I’m giving to clients? So and you’re so right, you said, you said that, you know, it’s getting much broader. It’s not just about products. It’s not even about risk and investments anymore. You’re seeing people having to give advice on you know, clients going in saying, I’ve got these old MTM shares, and I don’t know what to do with them, what should I do with them? I’ve got all these reward cards for all these store shops. And I’ve got, I’ve got this, you know, my bank reward card is sitting at 200,000. Rand, what should I do with it? My health, vitality points, how do I navigate that properly? There’s a whole load of financial advice, actually, that that is needs to be given. But it’s not necessarily in the traditional remit of what a financial advisor or planner is used to giving advice on? And so how do you monetize that? And how do you charge appropriately for it? And I think we’re gonna see quite a lot of innovation around that sort of area,

Louis van der Merwe
you’re to me, that still feels that it’s productized, almost saying, okay, you know, you need to make a decision around these things. I think the shift that I’m seeing is more in terms of these major decisions, kind of even something like what is the end of life stage look like? If you have been suffering with cancer for a really long time? How do you engage with your family and those types of decisions, money is a big part of that. But this kind of think about the life transitions that people go through. And we’ve had quite a few guests talk through the financial transition models, and, you know, registered life planning and how that’s playing out. So if you want to, you can always listen to one of those episodes. But it is a journey, I think what you’re highlighting for us today is that you need to be investing in yourself, you need to be investing in your team. And you need to be investing in your clients to remain at the top of that kind of service that you want to offer so that the monetization is less of an issue 1020 or 30 years from now?

Georgina Smith
Yes, I agree. And it’s also about understanding your client really, really well. And we’re seeing a lot of innovation around that sort of that that really kind of environmental impact side as well. So I’m certainly seeing a lot of trends around that I was, I was lucky and fortunate enough to host a webinar with Ram Singh from PwC, who is written a super super paper. And what you’re seeing is, is innovation around financial products, which are aligned very much to to the to the client’s goals, a client’s own goals. So for example, you can have a credit card now, which, which is available to Scandinavia, which analyzes the carbon footprint of those of those companies you’re spending money with. And as soon as you reach the limit that you’ve set yourself for your carbon footprint, then you know, it cuts you off, it cuts off your spending. So it’s I think there’s really interesting innovation, which which will allow in lots of different ways to get closer to your clients. And then it’s going to be about how do you scale that, you know, how do you how do you give this bespoke and make people feel special surprise and delight? How do you make them? How do you how do you scale that? That’s, that’s really interesting, because the two are intuitively juxtaposed.

Louis van der Merwe
Georgina, when you see cryptocurrencies and NF T’s fit into the platform of the future, you know, is it worth spending time exploring that we recently had Steve Sandusky, on who’s a thought leader in terms of how advisors should be embracing this new wave of digital assets? And it seems like there’s a lot of traction in the US market yet in South Africa. This led very little conversation around this. So I’d love to hear your take on that.

Georgina Smith
Yeah. So I’m not qualified to give any kind of insight into crypto currencies or anything, or NF T’s you know, that side of things. But what I, what I am really excited about is the technology that sits on the blockchain technology. And I think that is the place where platforms are really going to start making some real inroads. And that technology actually there’s a focus group and a pilot group, my favorite word, a pilot group in Standard Bank, who are exploring how to really extract value from blockchain and how that could work in in in platforms and finance. adviser world. So we’re taking it really seriously. But for me, that’s the obvious place where I think I think we’re going to see traction reasonably quickly, in how we do business.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, as the volatility of these assets continue to throw curveballs to clients, I think it’s a valuable piece to be able to talk to clients about and give them a framework to see where it fits in, in terms of building their wealth and looking after their wealth. It is a tricky space, because it’s not well regulated in South Africa. So I think we’ll continue probably to see the same the same structure, and hopefully, it’s included in some of the platforms, at least from a reporting perspective. Yeah,

Georgina Smith
I think it really is a very much a watch this space. But once you what I can say is, I think once you see, once you see it starting to come, it’s going to come very quickly, you know, I think, you know, everyone’s gonna jump on and you’ll see development in this area very, very quickly.

Louis van der Merwe
I know you spend a lot of time kind of working on working on your, your fitness journey, and you spend a lot of time in the water. Share with us a little bit how that keeps you motivated to function in your role.

Georgina Smith
Oh, yes. So yes, you’re not wrong there. So having swimming is an interesting thing, isn’t it? So I was never a swimmer at school. I never really, I never really was that kid who loved getting in the Pool. Swimming was a, you know, you have to go in the UK, you go to a verrico infested indoor indoor pool, you have to get in your pajamas, collect a rubber brick from the bottom. And that’s the end of your PE lesson. And that’s kind of our my middle memories of swimming. And then I arrived in South Africa, and I thought, Gosh, how am I going to make friends? You know, what, what should I do? And I joined a local swim Swim Club. And my friend, Craig, who I met there, and he said, you know, you really should try some overwater swimming, you know, the swimming down the pool, it’s all very well, there’s a bit boring. And so off, we went to Fisher, where I was, I thought they were, you know, there was a shark around every rock, I was convinced there were millions of them. And I I hovered a long way from the shark net on the inside of it, and was petrified about all the holes in it. In fact, kelp scared me to death. And then the group grew, the open water group grew. And before I knew it, I was actually doing pretty well at this thing. Then we went into lockdown. And we were in that awful period. Remember that awful period where we couldn’t swim at all. And I came out a lockdown, lockdown, and we couldn’t exercise or anything. I came out on lockdown. And I was so frustrated. A friend said to me, you know, there’s an opening to swim around Cape Point, why don’t you give it a go? I said, Oh, no, I don’t I don’t think I could do that. And she said, Well, what’s the worst that can happen? You get in the boat, you know, that’s the worst that happened that can happen. And you know, there’s only this window of weather comes once every year, maybe 18 months. So this is it go for it, why not just give it a go. So I did and before I knew it, I had swum the eight and a half kilometers around Cape Point. And by that time I was hooked. Wow, I can’t believe I did that. So then went on and did a couple of Robben Island swims and various other stuff. And it’s just grown from strength to strength. And I’m now busy training for a crossing across Force Base. So I’ve already crossed force Bay, from Miller’s point to Royals did that in a team of four last year, but now this year, in the first week in March, I’m doing it as a team of two so we will be the first ever female relay to man relay team. And we do it in I never swim with a wetsuit is always just in a costume and hat and goggles. And yes, it’s 35 kilometers, so 17 or so kilometers each. There’s some some tricky marine life to negotiate, and making sure that we stay alive and make it to the other side. And I’m doing it for a charity called swim for rivers. And they’re a wonderful charity Craig, who I mentioned earlier, he’s he’s a big part in that charity. And it’s all about getting water to those rural and often neglected communities in Eastern Cape. So so that’s that’s what that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to raise enough money to get a borehole for them. So that’s what it’s all about. So that’s what’s happening in that first week in March and and that hasn’t really answered your question about how it keeps me motivated for my job. But there is something about exercise which is just a reset for me. It’s it’s it gives me thinking time. It makes me feel good. It’s a discipline just as life as a discipline. If you’re going to be successful, it is all about discipline, discipline, discipline, of course, have fun, but you must get those habits in place. Otherwise you will not be as successful as you possibly could could be. So for reaching your full potential. It’s all about just embedding those habits and for me exercise and achieving those kind of goals that I’ve set myself. He is all about, you know, just being the best I can possibly be.

Louis van der Merwe
That is remarkable to Gina. And for anyone that can see how your face is lighting up, the passion that you have for this is really shining through and the passion that you have for building strong teams and moving this financial services industry forward. I really enjoyed our chat today. And if someone wants to reach out to you, what’s the best place to get hold of you

Georgina Smith
always think LinkedIn is the best place to find me. I’m often on there, often commenting. So please message me on LinkedIn. And I’d be delighted to respond.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you so much, and all the best for that challenge on the first of March. I’ll be rooting for you.

Georgina Smith
Well, thanks so much, Louis. It was great to chat.