#33 Kirsty du Toit – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today I’m really excited to have Kirsty to join me in conversation. Kirsty is the Head of Financial Planning for Asset-Map South Africa, who also happens to be a sponsor of the show. Kirsty, thank you so much for being here.

Kirsty du Toit
Thanks, Louis. It’s great to be here.

Louis van der Merwe
Also before we started this conversation, I mentioned that we’re gonna dub this the COVID show, because unfortunately, I managed to pick up COVID. So please excuse the slightly different sound from today’s conversation. But I’m sure our listeners will get as much value from your insight. just prepping for this really got me excited for today’s conversation,

Kirsty du Toit
Same, and I’m glad you’re feeling better.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you. Thank you. We’re getting there. We’re getting there. So Kirsty, for the people that might not know you haven’t had a chance to have a conversation with you. Give us a little bit of the backstory of how you got into financial services.

Kirsty du Toit
I think, you know, like a lot of people in our industry leery, I sort of fell into it by accident. I finished school and I started studying a be common finance sort of part time through UniSA. And at the time, I started working for sage financial, as a junior broker consultants that was sort of my first entrance into the industry or, to be honest, I knew nothing about it. Prior to that, I didn’t know anything about investing. And I was, you know, got the opportunity to work there. And it really opened my eyes to a wall that I knew very little about. And it lasted a few months. And then I don’t know if you remember but sage then close down at that time. So it only lasted a few months that I got to work with some incredible people there and really just get exposed to this industry, you know, that I that I didn’t before know much above. After that I went across to access and I started at access in an administration position, there was actually someone going on maternity leave, and I was employed as a temp position to to cover for that person. Luckily for me, after she returned there, they added another role. So I got to stay on permanently. And I worked there for for many years and access. Starting in the administration team gave me an awesome grounding and just really understanding where the rubber hits the road. You know, what investments are, how they work, how they work, practically, you know what the taxation is, what the different options are, what investing in a fund really means. And so I think that it gave me great exposure and understanding and I learned so much in that space. And, you know, from there, I finished my degree and they encouraged me to do CFP and looking back. I still fondly remember that as being sort of a milestone and an achievement I’m really proud of but also represented a shift for me, you know, shift to focus more on financial planning. And I spent a few more years there and I got to work with all of their strategic partners. So they worked with you know, some of the great planners in our in our industry. I got to work with them understand their practices their process, you know how what their client experience was. So I’ve been really fortunate to just be exposed to, you know, a lot of amazing people in our industry that I got to learn from from a very young age, and ended up doing coaching course and focusing on advice, development and the development of financial planning tools that support advice. And that is that access, and then we moved across to old mutual wealth. And luckily, I got to do that there too. So worked on their advice, methodology, and their philosophy and the tools that support it. And then about three years ago, I learned of asset map, and I just loved the simplicity of it, you know, just the ability to show a client’s on one page, everyone that’s important to them, and everything that they’ve bought up till now, you know, the assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and insurance. And just the idea to, to be able to show it on one page, and the engagement and conversation that that would create. It was really intriguing. And the, as they say, the rest is history. But, you know, at that point, we started work that matters, you know, me and a few colleagues, and to bring acid map from the US into South Africa. And it’s been an awesome journey, I got to work with some of the same planners that I’ve worked with for the last 15 years, and a whole lot of new planners that I hadn’t worked with before. All amazing. Santa. So it’s yeah, it’s been a fun, exciting journey.

Louis van der Merwe
Kirsty, I’d love to hear a bit more about dealing with financial planners specifically, seeing that you haven’t had financial planning experience, how difficult is it to get across a new idea, or implement something new to these advisors that you’re coaching?

Kirsty du Toit
I think it’s interesting, Louis, you know, if I think back to at that time, you know, I was, as you said, hadn’t been a planner before, young, you know, in my 20s, at the time, and working with very established experienced planners, you know, and working on the process, and, as you say, trying to bring new ideas, and, and I think it’s your own self doubt, that comes through more than others. So I felt that, and I remember sharing that, you know, one day with one of the planners and saying, you know, I haven’t done this before, you know, will people be open, and his thoughts to me was, you know, the fact that you haven’t done it before means that you haven’t been influenced by practicing financial planning, you know, you haven’t picked up any potential habits. So you come from a really true space in, in your understanding of it, and the vision of it. And that, therefore, you bring a different perspective. And I think that’s gave me the confidence, I think it’s more your own thinking. And, and people are really open to, to getting ideas from, from any anyone, you know, we all bring a different perspective, and because of our experience in one aspect or another, can bring an idea that can move the practice forward. And I think what I found in my experience was that pandas were very open, and actually very willing to hear your ideas and take it on board. So I think we’ll see more of that. But it’s more your own your own fear that that comes through.

Louis van der Merwe
I love that blank slate that you coming to the table saying, Hey, I don’t have all these preconceived ideas. This is something we can work with. And these all these industries that can influence it. Over the last couple of years, there’s been a lot more talk about kind of looking at other industries, service industries, production industries, to bring into a different flavor of delivering financial advice. Have you seen an evolution in terms of how we deliver advice?

Kirsty du Toit
I mean, I think the one thing this industry is constantly evolving and changing. I mean, even over the 15 years that I’ve been in industry, I’ve seen so much change. And that’s what makes it exciting. And I love this idea of looking at other industries and seeing what we can bring in from a service point of view. But I’ve definitely seen an evolution in panning. I mean, if we think just over the last 15 years in what I’ve seen, we’ve had the likes of you know, phase coming in and bringing a bout of changes with that six step financial planning process, you know, more shift away from, you know, product, product planning or selling a product to more advising the clients, building financial plans, we’ve seen a big shift to a more comprehensive planning. I think the idea there is to create this credibility, you know, to build trust in in financial planning in financial planners. I think the next it’s going to be interesting, though, Louis, it’s sort of I think what’s to happen with that is that planning has become quite complex. If you think of the average plans are 2030 pages long fold with calculations graph cash flows, you know, so maybe we’ve through that evolution that we’ve needed to create that credibility, I think it’s created an opportunity for the next step, which I think it’s going to be about simplifying advice and simplifying to focus on the conversation. And it reminds me of this, this quote that I love. It’s a bit dated, because we don’t generally write letters anymore. But the quote said, I’m sorry, this letter is so long, I didn’t have the time to make it shorter. And I think that sort of reminds me or is of where planning is at the moment, you know that the next shift is going to be around? How do we take all of this information and this complexity, and translate it in a way that clients can really understand and engage with it, you know, and always think of it as that in the meeting, instead of sitting back as the client leaning forward? You know, how do we get clients to lean forward lean in, be part of the conversation. And I think that’s where technology will, will play a role in, in simplifying that I also think that’s going to be the next step, the next evolution,

Louis van der Merwe
just roping that client into the conversation. And yet, at the same time, just trimming out all the stuff that’s not important in your role as the head of financial planning. How much time do you spend with advisors, you know, looking at things that they should be trimming, looking at things that they should not be doing? Because I found that oftentimes, that is the part where, you know, we should be spending more time saying, Okay, what shouldn’t we be doing, and that frees up to time and space for the things that we should be focusing on.

Kirsty du Toit
Now, in my role at asset map, I spend 80% of my time working with financial planners, in one on one zoom sessions, working through actual clients, actual conversations and their process and how they can do exactly that. And then I think that comes down to to change, you know, changes is tough when you’ve done something, one way for a long time, especially if it’s been successful, you know, it’s hard to to bring about a change in practices. But what I find is, you know, we hear often about this mismatch between what clients find valuable, and where we spend a lot of our time as financial planners. And the one thing that I see a lot of is we spend a lot of time working on financial plans. And the amount of time is spent on the calculations on tax calculations on cash flows on reporting, building those plans. And, and yet we hear, you know, when you’re sitting with the clients, they’ll page through that, that plan, often being distracted by it in the meeting, you know, paging through it, trying to find something that jumps out at them. And then once they leave the meeting that they don’t look at, they don’t look at it again. You know, so I think that’s the biggest thing that we’re trying to see and change. We’re trying to encourage us to what is valuable for clients, it’s that conversation, clients really come to you with one question in mind, am I okay? You know, and if I’m not, what can I do to be okay? And if we spend too much time working through all these, you know, different things, we lose sight of that question, clients lose sight of that question. So the real tangible we need to see is how do we use technology to really condense what we’re doing, you know, all of that back end calculations and speed that up? So that we can spend more time sitting in front of clients having those valuable, meaningful conversations around? You are okay, or you’re not? Okay, this is where you’re at? That’s where you want to go? How do we get you there? And I think there’s so many examples of that. If we think of things like estate planning, you know, when we talk about estate planning, the focus is generally around while there’s calculations, we need to calculate the state ut executives fees, capital gains tax, you know, and I think the real value lies in if someone in your family passes away. What does that mean? You know, is the family Okay? Can you sustain the lifestyle? Do you know where everything is? I mean, that’s the biggest, probably stumbling block is is there at least a significant other? Do they know where everything you have is, and where it sets and how to access it? What happens to your social media accounts, who’s the first call that you make? You know, that’s the conversation that’s, that’s meaningful, that’s that the clients require. So we need to find ways to take the things like calculating the cost, which is important because we need to understand how it impacts the client. But that’s why it’s important to understand how it impacts the client. So how do we take that, you know, use technology to sort of speed up that part, so that we can get to those results quickly and not spend too much time focusing on that, but more to say, Okay, what does this mean for you? And how do we move this client for With that knowledge, and I think that’s just one example. But there’s, there’s lots of and that’s what’s exciting, right is there’s so much opportunity to really speed that up so that planners can spend the time having these meaningful conversations with clients.

Louis van der Merwe
I love that question that you phrased. Am I okay? If you put on your coaching hat and you just think, you know, from a client’s perspective, why do you think that is so important?

Kirsty du Toit
I think it’s the fear of unknown, you know, it’s that anxiety, you know, often talk about it as as anxiety that it’s just not knowing, am I gonna, am I, okay, am I on track. And then often we hear, you know, when we showing a client, some clients are okay, and there’s a, there’s a joy in that, you know, being able to show a client, you’re going to be a ride, and not just telling them, but showing them if this is everything that you want for the rest of your life. And this is what you have, you can see you you over 100% funded, you can enjoy the things that you you want to do and, and not have that anxiety, and you can always see in those sessions, the emotion that comes with that, you know, you can see that anxiety almost dissipates, you know, from the conversation. But I think the converse is true as well, you know, if a client isn’t necessarily Okay, at this point in time, just knowing that this is where I am, you know, that, in itself removes some of that anxiety, knowing that there’s a plan, because there’s always something that can be done to improve the client’s situation. So how are we going to progress? What is the next step we’re going to take, that’s going to move this client forward? And if we can focus the conversation there around, this is where you are today? Yes, we’re not 100% on track, it’s not 100% funded, but look, let’s work through together, what we can do differently to move you along this, this path and on that journey to being okay. And you know, the sooner somebody can have that conversation and know that, the sooner that fear starts to dissipate. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s the crux of it. Am I okay? And if not, what can we do together to move you forward?

Louis van der Merwe
You spoke about this anxiety and the financial anxiety around it? What are the things financial planners should be looking out for? Because I think sometimes we get so busy presenting a plan that we could miss this anxiety, at the risk of going too deep on this, like, what would you say to financial planners that might be rushing through the meetings? How can they pick up on someone’s anxiety levels? Or specifically financial anxiety?

Kirsty du Toit
I think it’s, you know, remember learning that that first question, you know, that you when you sit down for the meeting is, you know, the scarf is a great model on that, you know, if you if you haven’t heard of it, or anyone listening hasn’t heard of it, to look that up. It’s by David Rock. And it stands for creating status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness, in all meetings to give clients the ability to not feel that anxiety, and but maybe just a starting question is to say, to provide certainty, this is what we’re going to do today, I’m gonna start the session. This is, you know, the things we’re going to work through, it’s gonna take this amount of time, and and then pause there to say, but is there anything on your mind before we do that, and it doesn’t mean that you then go into that, and you know, because that you may, I mean, it may be something that you you need to talk about. But I think just giving the client the ability to say, this is on my mind, this is where I’m at and what I’m thinking about right now, you know, giving them the space to say that, acknowledge it, and say, Okay, I understand that, let’s work through this, and then see if that changes how you’re feeling, or if we need to spend more time on that, because then the client can sort of be released a little bit from, from worrying about that in that session, and will be more present for for what you’re working through for that with them. So I think just the key is creating that certainty right up front of what to expect from the session, but also giving the kind of space to just reflect and share what what is top of mind for them at the moment.

Louis van der Merwe
So it can be as basic as having your agenda and saying this is what I prepared for us today. Mr. or Mrs. Client. What else is there that you’d want to see? A non city that was on the podcast earlier, mentioned that your agenda is really just there to help you prepare, but not necessarily all the things you need to discuss with your client.

Kirsty du Toit
So I love that. That’s so true. I think in that the agenda, yes, it’s for you to prepare and working through that. It’s just provides a an order for the client to to just have that certainty. Okay, so that’s what we’re going to talk about today and the space to say, Okay, I need to add this as well because this is top of mind for me. I think asking those Questions.

Louis van der Merwe
I was reading a study, in the last couple of days while I was isolating, that spoke about how advisors think that they’re very comfortable with extreme emotional responses from clients. And the survey conducted that about 60% of advisors felt comfortable when clients show extreme emotion. Yet, when they ask their clients, less than 20% of them said, they felt comfortable that the advisor could handle that, I’d love to hear your thoughts around that.

Kirsty du Toit
I mean, I think that that type of thing happens so often, you know, we feel like we’re creating the space for people to be emotional and be vulnerable. And yet, they’re not feeling like they can be family, I’m, I think the only way we can sort of change that is just creating more space for the client to talk, you know, just by creating the sense that, you know, I don’t have necessarily, you know, all the answers in the space. But I’m just gonna ask questions and hear what the client has to say. I think that could go a long way in just giving clients that space to share that. And knowing that you don’t have to have the answers always for those emotional situations. But just to be the person who hears it to to hear where their fears are here with underlying, and asking questions, you know, around, how do you feel about this, any open ended questions will elicit a lot of that information, and give clients the space to be vulnerable. Because the interesting, it’s

Louis van der Merwe
wonderful to hear as you talk through these things, how much of your coaching training comes through. And I think personally, I think it’s a critical skill financial planners need to have, I would just love to hear your 10 cents on, you know, how that’s changed the way you show up and the way you interact with your clients.

Kirsty du Toit
I think, for me, that the coaching journey is is always continuing, you know, to bring it into more aspects of your life. So you know, you start on the course, and it’s easy to work through it. And then you feel like you slipped back into into default, but, but it’s nice that you you’ve picked up on I mean, some of it is is does stay with you and comes through. But I think it’s a practice, you know, that you need to keep practicing in order to bring it to into into aspects of your life. But I think what it, what it gave me, you know, a face on it is that you don’t have to have all the answers. You know, as a professional, I think we think in each session, I need to be able to answer and know the answer to everything and just stopping and asking a question. And it’s just a great way of releasing yourself from that, you know, I don’t have to have the answers to everything. Yes, be the expert in all aspects. But I could I can use coaching to to ask a question and actually get thought deep into the conversation and understanding what the client really needs. With if, if, for example, a client asked a question, I immediately feel okay, now I need to be the expert, I need to know the answer to this, you know, maybe the answer I give is just satisfies the need maybe 10%. But if I’d asked a question, you know, I could have got so much more understanding around what it really means to the client, why they’re asking that question, what sits underneath it for them? You know, what’s the emotion behind it? Is there a fear perhaps, or, or a joy that sits below that? And, and I think that’s what coaching gives you it gives you that release of you don’t have to know the answer. If you ask the right questions together, you will come to an answer that’s better than probably better than the one that you thought of immediately. So I think that’s what coaching can give us.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you. And there’s such a valuable resources now out there to build your coaching skills. As a financial planner, I’d love to hear your advice for younger financial planners coming in, what would you think the foundation of delivering great advice should be built on?

Kirsty du Toit
I think, you know, it starts with the client. So I always say, you know, I think when you’re younger coming into the industry, you know, a lot of starting paraplanning, maybe the focus becomes quite technical quite quickly. And I think that my advice for certainly would be always start from what I tried to help this client with, if I’d look at this kind of situation, how would this client move forward? How do I show them what I need to show them in a way that they can easily understand it feel empowered to make decisions to move forward? And have them make those decisions on a journey that takes that client a step forward so that every meeting ends with the client in a better position than what they were in before? And I think for younger planners, it’s try and focus there first. So in everything that you’re building, think about what is it that this client needs to see that’s going to help them move forward. And how do I work on this model or this tool? Whatever tool it is to to enable that conversation that’s going to help that client move forward. And remember that those that those three things clients want to know, where am I? Am I care? And what can I do differently to move forward? And if you keep the focus there? Yeah, I think that’s that would be my my advice to younger planners stay there.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s brilliant. And I’d like to tie that with kind of the acid map approach of helping someone get financially organized that question you said, Where am I is one that for a lot of financial planners can take days or hours together, all of the technical information about when you bought this asset, in how much you paid for it, and clients deemed to not know, what is your approach been specifically using acid map to get someone financially organized?

Kirsty du Toit
I mean, there’s something about the picture, right. And just showing that to a client is sort of this human behavior where we see we see everything we have in a picture format, maybe we’ve seen it in schedules before, but there’s something about seeing it in a picture, where you immediately see are this is missing, you know, or no, that actually doesn’t, isn’t in my name that’s in the business, or that’s in the trust, or what about this Learn accounts, I think that in itself creates a space for clients to share more, and not not even share more, because they didn’t want to share before but it just seeing it in a picture, they can spot it easier. And and also this idea of, you know, misunderstandings, where we think something sits here, it actually sits there. That’s another thing that’ll come out of seeing it in a picture is just no, this actually is here. And that’s there. And what about this, but what I really love is, as a map, spawn the balance, so that the design philosophy of acid map is a concept called Simple, rich, and it’s rich enough that it still provides the credibility, you know, it can’t look like we’ve just thrown this together, you know, needs to be credible. And so it’s rich enough to do that. But simple enough that clients can easily understand and engage with it. So just by showing it on a picture just removes all that complexity around, you know, what is it? What’s the policy number? Where is it? What’s a call to? Okay, what do I have, you have life cover of this amount, you have a retirement fund of this amount. And in a world where, you know, our focus, our ability to focus is extremely limited. We need to find ways in that engagement with clients to just draw their focus and having it on one page. So between the two of us, we both looking at this one page or on the screen, you know, one screen, it immediately drives that focus, because you’re not looking at a million different screens or a million different pages. We’re both together on this page, working through where you are now. And what does that mean for you? And I think that’s, that’s where the power and it lies is just that simplification of saying, this is everything you have and where it is not let’s understand is that we are how do we move forward?

Louis van der Merwe
In the financial transitioners Institute, they talk about using one pages. And the idea is that you build a story using a series of one page visuals that really just simplifies it so much for the client that they can actually connect to it. And I’m curious, like acid map shows everything on one page. But you also have the ability to hide things and show different layouts, or the interesting ways that you’ve seen financial planners build a story using different layouts and hiding things?

Kirsty du Toit
Yes, I think it you know, it, again, comes down to, I would say what is the the conversation we want to enable today, you know, with the client, because that changes over time. It’s not always, you know, every other same conversation, maybe this year, it’s you and your family. And we want to talk about where everything is there and how we move forward in terms of maybe retirement. But maybe the next meeting, we want to really understand and unpack your relationship with your business, or your relationship with your business partner. And then it’s about creating those layouts, it’s okay, today, we’re going to take away everything else, we’re just going to look at you on the page and your business on the page and understand this relationship between the two of you, or between you and this entity entity and and what the financial implications of that are. And I think SMF gives you that ability to each engagement. It’s all a little bit deeper. You know, what we’ve seen, specifically around businesses and business owners is that traditionally, we would say this client has a business, this is the value of the business and you know, we show that for the client. But this gives you the ability to delve deeper and say, well, let’s unpack what sits inside that as you know, because it’ll have its own assets, liabilities, and those will all have implications on your financial plan. You know what happens is In the event of death, so really just using each engagement with the client to expand on what we know about them. So in this session, let’s expand on your business and really understand what sits inside there. And it’s been really interesting, really seeing that, and the things that come out of that things that can completely derail the plan. If you didn’t know, before you know it, I think it’s like a learner cards. I mean, I think that is, in South Africa with a lot of, you know, business owners, there’s a lot of change that happens rapidly from year to year between that individual in the business. And understanding that and understanding how that changes is vital because it impacts all of the planning that you’ve done up until that point. So I think, yes, 100%, and is used as a map, save different views, vertical layouts, for the clients, to enable different conversations, maybe the next time it’s looking at you and your business partner on a pitch and unpacking what that looks like. And the same as we move into the target map space, you know, which shows how on track the client is to achieve their different goals. I always say you want to design that page, because you can, you know, move them around to tell a story. You know, this is where we add, but what can we do differently? What if we did this and you want to work through that with the client. Because we know that if a client is empowered and engaged in a session with the planner, and you co create the plan together, you know, this is what we agree are the next steps, it’s far more likely that the client will stick to that plan than us saying to the client, this is what I think you should do in these events, or this is my recommendation or advice. So the more we can build these stories, and enable these conversations with clients around unpacking their story and how that impacts them, the more likely they are to succeed.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s so true, you know, having a plan that you co created with client with the clients plan instead of it. Oh, Mr. Client, Mrs. Client, here’s the plan I made for you. You don’t have that that ownership. You mentioned the speed at which things change up? I’m curious is the annual review date?

Kirsty du Toit
Yeah, I mean, that’s interesting. Larry, I have my views on on on the annual review. And in particular, I would say it’s it’s evolving, it’s changing. I mean, it’s obviously necessary to continue engaging with clients. So in no means is that dead. But how we engage, and what we engage with in those annual reviews, I think is changing and will change rapidly over the next few years. And I mean, just even the word I think the word should change first, it just represents this looking backwards or or looking at it again, you know, reviewing what we’ve done. And I think if we approach that engagement with a client, and often approach it by saying this is where we were and where we are now. I mean, that’s mostly what we want, what is being shared, then it’s almost like we’re reviewing the performance of the plan up until now that that’s the focus of the conversation. This is what has happened so far. Which means that the conversation can only really be about performance fees should what should we have? What should we have done differently? Whereas if we can shift your views to say, actually, what this meeting of this engagement is about, is always we start with, where are you now? And where are we going? And we can just shift it from being, you know, looking in the past and looking at, where are we going? And if the conversation is always around your progress to where you want to be, then if you just think about just the amount of conversation and the difference in the engagement, that just that one shift creates, because now the client saying, Oh, but you know, what, if I do this, what how does that impact my progress or Anapana? Saying, well, let’s take a look. And let’s see, if we do this this mess? How does that progress? You? It’s completely different to, you know, why did this investment perform differently to this other investment? You know, so I think that shift is going to happen, more and more going forward. And I think that’s, that’s really exciting, because it’s just a much more positive way of, of progressing a client and always looking forward to what are the things that are in our control that we can do differently that that moves you from where you are to where you want to be,

Louis van der Merwe
you know, we often miss the planning part of financial planning. We spend so much time looking at how did we get here? What happened, I missed the client, we did do our job. But then we miss the part that we’re looking forward and saying what is there that we need to plan towards and kind of pull someone along on that journey or even sometimes nudge them to stretch those goals a little bit? What are the stories that you’ve experienced or heard from financial planners about the impact that financial planning has made in the life of their clients?

Kirsty du Toit
I mean, I think that’s the part of my my role. that I get the most or I have is when Panisse share with me experiences that they’ve had with clients. And, you know, I think it’s, it’s experiences that range, you know, from clients that, you know, there was one example recently where a client have been retrenched, you know, over over COVID, they’ve been saving their entire life. And, and the question was, she wanted to work again, but really know what she wanted to do. And could she take the time to figure it off? You know, and because the planner was able to show her, even if you don’t work in, you’re going to be okay. And I know, that’s not often where clients are, you know, going to be okay, no matter no matter what, but because you could show her that you’re going to be okay, that anxiety was removed immediately. And the client felt like, okay, it’s an I can take the time and and find what, you know, what brings me joy and what I want to pursue. So I think planners sharing experiences like that, or even experiences where they showed a client their picture, it wasn’t, you know, on track, to what they want to achieve, but they spoke through, and they’re together, have a plan in place, and the client walked away, knowing I can get there, these are the things I need to do, but I can get to where I want to go. You know, it’s those stories that really bring me joy, and just clients seeing the picture of an acid map and saying, you know, this is something I’ve always wanted, but I didn’t even know I wanted it, I just snapshots of what I have. And where I am, you know, thank you for showing me this. This is what I needed to see. So that those those are the stories that I love to hear

Louis van der Merwe
on. That’s brilliant. And as you talk, I kind of gather this picture of someone being able to zoom into the details when it’s necessary, but also zoom out and look at the bigger picture, when that’s what’s most needed for the client. Do you think we spend enough time on skills that allow us to visualize information or just see a bigger picture? Or do we spend too much time on the kind of technical skills? Or how do we find that balance?

Kirsty du Toit
I think, I think that is the the talent and the opportunity, you know, in finding that balance, because I think we we do tend to focus on the on the technical side, you know, a lot of the time we, you know, we and we have to I mean, it’s a space we’ve we’ve had to pay and to build credibility over the years, you know, to show how they’re calculating things to be sure we were doing the right things for clients. So it makes sense that we do that. But finding that balance, as you said, is, is what’s most critical. And I think, you know, we have to rely on technology and technology has to be the the the means for us to do that. We need technology to make things simpler and easier, so that we have more time to focus on that. And I think that that also lends to this idea of, you know, the biggest challenge or opportunity for our industry right now is how do we make advice more accessible? You know, how do we how do we take more people and move them forward? I mean, if you think about every day planners are working with clients, and everyday clients are in a better position than when they started. So if you think of the compounding effect of what we’re doing, daily, moving people forward, the challenge is how do we move more people forward? You know, how do we make it more accessible to to more South Africans. And that’s where technology has to play that role in giving us the ability to spend less time on the calculations, the report creations, the complexity and, and make it more simplified, so that we can see more clients work through more clients and help them or move forward. So I think that’s, I think technology is one aspect of that. And the other space is teams, you know, creating more team purchase in financial planning. And, and we’ve seen that quite a bit. We’re really seeing that more and more at the moment where practices are bringing on more planners, and it’s so encouraging or even interns, you know, you’re seeing a lot of interns join, experienced, established financial planning practices. I think that, that if the space is right, and we create the space for everyone to share and bring their ideas and learn from each other. It’s that team approach, combined with technology that I think is going to help us make advice more accessible.

Louis van der Merwe
I want to spend a bit more time on that team approach. Because surely there has to be foundations in your business that has to align for the delivery of advice in terms of a team. What do you think has been the barriers around you know, in historically creating financial planning teams and why is it now different?

Kirsty du Toit
I think it’s a it’s again, an evolution. So I think there’s a lot of space for it to grow, but I think we’re on the right track. And we’re seeing more and more of it. It reminds me of one of our practices, Louis and it’s, uh, you know, the team approach. There’s the founder of the practice, who’s obviously been there for many years created the practice. And he said to me, you know, over over his time in the business, they’ve brought on younger planners. And if you look at the business, now, they actually have planners, sort of representing three generations or so three different, different generations. And he said, to me, the key thing that he learns over time was that when you bring in a younger planet into the business, yes, it’s your role to, to impart your knowledge to share your knowledge and your experience that you’ve learned with that person. But you also need to create the space and be open to that person’s unique perspective and changes that they want to implement. And I thought that was so you know, profound, because that’s hard, you know, it’s hard to to to make those changes, especially if you’ve been doing something for 20 years, and it’s worked for you. But But he said, that was his biggest learning that he had to do that he had to also change, he had to adapt to, you know, these ideas from from younger parents coming into the business that they want to do. And that’s what moved the business forward. He also said, when they bring the they had a power plan, and the business had been there for three years, I think, and had now was moving on, he wanted to work in an investment house, and he was, you know, going in that direction, and very excited about that next step. And he said, You know, when, when someone leaves, you know, after they’ve been with us for a few years, his he feels a sense of pride, you know, it means that it was successful, the time that this venture was successful, because three years ago, he probably wouldn’t have got that position. But because he’s been here with us, and we’ve worked together with him for three years. Now he can, and I thought, you know, that’s different, you know, often we feel it’s kind of hard when someone leaves, we’ve worked with them, you know, have to find somebody new. And it’s, you know, it’s not, you know, it’s probably more difficult, but just shifting that to say actually, that means it was a success, that person can move on. And he said, uh, nah, they can bring in someone else and do it again, you know, just together again. And I thought, it’s that type of thinking that I think is needed in team approach. It’s just this idea that we all bring a unique perspective, based on our different levels of experience, and, you know, different knowledge that we have, how do we create the space where we all changing, to create a better, you know, different outcome that that meets all of those changes. But I’m encouraged, I see that a lot. I see it happening a lot now. And I think that’ll happen more and more. And that’ll definitely help with with accessibility to advise,

Louis van der Merwe
that reminds me of the story of the two business partners, and we’re talking about investing in this stuff. And the person said, what if we spend all this money training them and they leave? And the other business partner said, what if we don’t spend the money and they stay? Right? Brilliant. So just investing in your staff, and building their skills, through the journey of delivering, you know, advice, and this team approach that we’re talking about makes me very excited. But at the same time, what we’ve seen in our business is that it’s difficult to move a client between different advisors, probably because, as advisors, we tend to want to hold on, and I’m sure there’s a big ego part of that, that we have the base to deliver this advice. What advice would you give to someone that might be struggling to transition from one advisor to another within the same business? So moving a client over to maybe let’s call it a junior advisor, or someone that’s better suited to deliver that advice?

Kirsty du Toit
I think it starts by saying, what is that advice experience that we deliver. And if everyone in the business is aligned, this is the the process, this is the advice that you know, the client engagement experience that we want to create, and aligned behind that vision, you know, this experience this process, and you have something that brings it all together that whether a client deals with this panel, or that planner in the business or whoever they’re dealing with, they know the experience is consistent, though the relationship side, you’ll find they’ll have different relationships with everyone in the business. You know, we often see the clients have relationships with the from the admin staff that are processing it to the panner have different relationships with everyone in the business already. And I think that that’s fine, that will continue. But make sure the experience everyone is aligned to that experience that everyone buys into and is behind. This is the experience we want clients to walk away from when they work with us, then I think the transition is easy. Clients can easily transition between different panels, but have something that grounds it, you know, in every meeting, you know, we start here, and whoever we’re dealing with, this is where we start and obviously I’m going to say that as a great way of During that, but it’s just having something that says, you know, in our process, this is the experience we give to clients. And they feel that experience regardless of who they deal with. Because clients feel value, you know, and they will, they will feel that, then I think it’s easier, but it is a journey. It doesn’t happen overnight. But as you said, invest in in the people in your business, and invest in, this is what experience we’re trying to create and make sure everyone in the team buys into that, then I think makes that easier.

Louis van der Merwe
I can attest to that, you know, just having an acid map means that it’s a little bit easier for someone to take over that meeting, because they’re already familiar with that client’s financial life. The part sometimes that’s missing is, you know, the institutional knowledge you’ve built up with their client, around their family and the experience, is there a way we should be capturing that better or documenting that better?

Kirsty du Toit
I mean, I think often, you know, we’ve seen in practices that just as much as putting everything on one page on the asset map is great for clients. It’s also great for the practice, because often, as you say, the there’s plat different patterns have been dealing with different clients, all that knowledge about the client sits in the head, including, you know, what are the children’s names? How old are they? Who are the other people in the family? You know, here’s the mother in law, you know, lives with the family, or their father lives with them? What is, you know, what does that mean for them. And I would say you want to capture all of that. So obviously, you know, as a map, it’ll show all the people that are important to the client, with, there’s notes, photos that you could put all of that in. But often, in the practice, building the asset map is the plan is coming together on showing a one page for the client. This is our understanding, collectively, of who this client is what’s important to them, who’s important to them, just as much as it is for the client. But however, you’re doing that, I think the key thing is, is about sharing and collaborating. So let’s bold a picture of who this client is, and, and use the knowledge that we’ve experienced over time, because we see a lot in practice as well when there may be a planet exiting the business. And that transition or relationship is difficult, you know, from a kind of exiting to, to the planet taking over. But just being able to say, this is how you know what that plan knows of you. And now I know it, you know, it can easily transfer. This is where you are I understand you I understand who is important to you and where you are. And we’re just going to continue along this journey. So however you’re doing that, I think that is the the key is for you to collectively create that picture.

Louis van der Merwe
Brilliant. Kirsty, what’s next for asset map South Africa? What are you working on? And what’s what’s exciting that you can share with us today?

Kirsty du Toit
Yeah, I mean, what’s next for for as a map, as a path has something compared to record the six hours, which is the six financial fire drawls again, it was created by the the CEO of asset map, which is Adam Holtz. And essentially, he was driving when, when he thought about it, I mean, if you’ve heard him speak, you’ll know the story. But it’s really about what are the six things that can derail a client’s plan? You know, and, and they all happen to start with an L just to make it easy to remember. So it’s, you know, liquidity, long term disability, loss of life, legal liability. And there’s one more Oh, longevity. Thank you. And, and the idea, you know, around the six hours or so is to show a client, their asset map to show them their picture. And to ask the question, if this event has happened, something happens. And you need liquidity. You show me on this picture, what your plan would beam. And it’s just a subtle difference. But instead of saying this is the plan for those things that we were talking about earlier, because most clients in the head have some sort of idea around, you know, this is what we’ll do. These are the steps we’ll take. So it’s about showing the client that picture and working through this to say, let’s understand, do you have a plan in place, if someone in this family passes away? What does that look like? You know, what are the next steps? What sort of cover do you have in place already? Or what would your process beam and working through these six hours with him? The idea then is to say, Okay, now we know where there is a pen where there isn’t a plan where we need to review it, we can go check how that’s going to pan out and together work on will that you know, allow you to meet your goals, or will we need to do something different in the next step. And acid map is something they call signals, which is really this check engine lights. And basically it’s starting to bring in algorithms to say well, if this is the picture of where you’re at now, we based it on some formulas, where you read Green and Amber so that the planet can immunity article K, liquidity is read, I need to, I need to go and delve a little bit deeper in there and look at that a bit more. So that’s one of the things that’s that’s coming down the line with as an app that we’re quite excited about. But as of this whole drive behind it is this simple, rich philosophy. And so always everything that we bring in to asset map, as enhancements or features will be around how do we find that balance, rich and credibility, that simple that it makes it engaging for clients? That is always the number one goal is to be that translator to be that ability to say to a client, simply, where are you? And how do we move you forward?

Louis van der Merwe
That’s wonderful. I think Michael Kitsis, recently grouped acid map in terms of what he called client engagement software. And it’s now more than just financial planning. It’s really engaging your client during meetings during their planning, and sometimes plugging in, you know, maybe a little bit more technical tool if you need that. But what we’ve seen in our business is that becomes the stable, that becomes the place that you can go to first and say, Okay, how does this impact it? And do we need other pieces of information?

Kirsty du Toit
I mean, we were really excited about that new category. I mean, just having that category, I think is great. And being part of that course, is extremely exciting and feels good and feels like we’re acid map fits. So that’s super exciting. But it’s exactly that theory, like you said, sometimes you maybe do need to get into more technical, and there’ll be other tools that you can use that support that. But it’s really about saying if this is how we engage clients. So if you think of that translator hours, I talk about it as a translate that just taking the complexity of planning the thing, how do we simplify it, so we can show clients, what they need to know and how to move them forward. And that’s where acid maps focuses. And it can be that way of engaging with your clients.

Louis van der Merwe
So financial jargon in on the one end, and actionable steps out on the other hand, so that clients can feel that they’re okay, or what you mentioned that they’re not okay yet. I really love that kind of yet. We’re going to be working together to

Kirsty du Toit
get them there. Exactly. 100%.

Louis van der Merwe
Kirsty, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for being here today. For the people that would like to reach out to you what’s the best place for them to do so.

Kirsty du Toit
Now the best way to to get a hold of us is to click on the link that is connected to this podcast. It’ll take you to a website where you can book a demo introduction with us and we’ll take you through as a map in more detail. That’s wonderful.

Louis van der Merwe
And this shows all about the positive evolution of financial advice. And you have played a massive role in this and I want to thank you once again for being here today.

Kirsty du Toit
Thank you, Louis. Thanks for creating this space festival share and learn from each other. So really appreciate you asking me to be here.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you, Kirsty.