#35 Wouter de Witt – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today I have with me in the studio Wouter de Witt. Wouter is a certified financial planner, and has been working with Liberty life for a numerous amount of years. We also have a special relationship where we talk about financial planning and how things evolve every two weeks on a one on one basis. Wouter. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Wouter de Witt
Thanks, Louis. Nice to be here.

Louis van der Merwe
Wouter, it’s wonderful to have you here in the studio today. give our listeners a little bit of a background of how you got into financial services world.

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, sure. So I’ve been in the financial planning industry for about 10 years, and studied at Stellenbosch University, and actually studied financial planning. I remember we were one of the first few graduates that actually started in the financial planning subjects at Stellenbosch University before it became post grad. Or we did the post then afterwards. And so I think it was almost a natural progression that I do me move into the financial space, and always been interested in finances, and financial planning, and you’re now actually get paid doing it. I love it.

Louis van der Merwe
Why did you pick financial planning when selecting your modules at university,

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, to be honest, then myself and my business partner, we always joke about that, because we actually started together at university is when the lecturer actually explained financial planning and sounded like this ideal world. But being young and naive, we don’t really understand what financial planning really is until you start doing it. So it was actually almost by mistake. I actually went my father’s advocate and actually wanted to go into the, to the lawyer top route, changing that with law and finance and then actually turned out to be exactly that accident. So now I do work a lot with financial planning, but also obviously financial planning as a big, legal and tax aspect of it. So you’re really, really perfect for worked out perfectly.

Louis van der Merwe
You mentioned your business partner also studied at the same time. And it’s interesting how we form these deep connections during, you know, our years where we study. When you say business partner, it’s something that people don’t often recognize within financial planning, specifically working for a company like Liberty life, how did that relationship come about? And, you know, how did you guys formulate and to become business partners?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, that’s actually a good question. So it’s, it’s not formalized in a in a way, where independent brokerage is formalized. We use split profits and those type of things, but it’s, it’s more formalized in that we have a working relationship together. We work together each on our own financial planning practices. But if something should happen to us, we do have buy and sell agreements in place. So it’s a partnership in that regard. And then how corn apart is actually good. We started together it was almost a natural transition. I went directly into liberty and he came a year after which because he finished his post grad first Yeah, we actually bought together, we actually bought financial technology programs together. So he’s my business partner on that as well. So yeah, that’s that’s how it happened.

Louis van der Merwe
I’m really looking forward to us having a conversation about, you know, the financial planning technology. And we’ll get to that. I’m curious, the decision behind joining a larger, you know, tide agency like liberty. How did that go? And what other options were you considering specifically thinking of people listening to this that might say, you know, what do I do when I want to get into, you know, the financial advice delivery? It tell us a little bit about how the, what the options were and how you made your decisions?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s a good question. LEWIN I’m actually a very big advocate for starting financial planners, especially junior financial planners on a on a salary based structure. And reason, being myself, my business partner, and maybe five or six other guys in our team, all started with a salary structure for four years. And after that, you moved over to a commission or fee based practice. And I keep on telling people and junior financial advisors that I see that I would not have been in the industry if it wasn’t for that. So I’m a big advocate for that. And I know a lot of insurance companies have a salary base package, but they also have the direct package. And it’s, it’s difficult to start the practice. And so if you starting, I would always recommend start with a salary base practice, you can just find your feet, see if it’s really something that you like to do, and then move over. So when I started, I had a few options. And it is a bit of conservative in nature and a bit of study loans and things when I finished. So I started on the financial on the financial planning, salary structure, and then slowly but surely, moved over and bought my business, I can move off a salary structure. So that’s yeah, like I said, I’m a big advocate for that, because that also enhances professional professionalism, because that’s how accountants and all of TAS all of this other struggle of salary and then slowly transition into taking on bigger projects and doing revenue sharing. Yeah, so that’s, that’s my view

Louis van der Merwe
voter, you mentioned something interesting. They’re saying that, you know, you’re conservative by nature. And I often wonder how the way we show up to our clients, you know, our own risk tolerance, our own way of thinking about investing in financial options, how do you think that affect your relationship? Specifically, if you are dealing with a client that might be very aggressive? Do you think it has an impact? Or is really, you know, we, we take our own hats off, and we, you know, put ourselves in the client shoes?

Wouter de Witt
Again, another good question, Lou. And I’ve actually been reflecting a lot on that, because we, as financial planners need to be objective. And initially, it almost bothered me a lot, where almost clients would give advice, and they would not always take their advice. And I almost took that personally. And so I think, after being in the industry for 10 years, I realized that you have to meet clients in the middle. You can You can’t force your opinions on them, or your risk tolerance on them. And some people are more risk averse, and some people aren’t. So it’s, I think, be objective in it. But it was a bit of experience, I think it taught me to be more objective, and give our opinion. And there’s also structures in place for certain reasons. I think as you move along with the industry, you’ll realize soon that certain clients has to be in certain positions. And I think the big thing with that being, you always have to look at the client themselves. If you spend time with a client, you’ll easily realize what their knowledge base looks like. And then I’ll from at that point, decide how aggressive or how conservative but also how almost pushy I need to be with a client to tell him that, no, you want to go 100% equities, but this is the only money you have, and maybe was looking a bit more conservative. So I think being straight with a client being objective, and then giving you advice, in the end, you can only recommend they’ll have to take their own advice, or they give advice or not take your advice.

Louis van der Merwe
I like that it’s almost a spectrum. You know, you can say okay, for this client, I need to be a little bit more assertive. And for this one, I can dial it back. Dr. Morris summers talks about advice that sticks in a book and just, you know, being able to deliver advice where people actually take action, because that’s a big problem in our industry. You know, we can spend the whole day just giving advice and if no one takes it, what is the value of that? What was the early kind of roles that you know, helped craft the way you deliver advice you spoke about having a fixed base salary and how that’s helped. What are the other structures that companies putting in place to help you be successful? Financial Planner.

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, I think it is, it’s quite difficult initially, to almost build a practice. And most insurance companies that work towards almost certain I don’t want to call it targets, but certain goals that you have to achieve. And initially, that’s it’s something difficult to cope with. But those goals or targets are actually put there for a reason, because then you follow the natural path to get to a successful business. And I’ve mentored a few Junior financial planners, and that’s sometimes a big headache for them to almost think they have to achieve that certain amount in a year. But I think if you change your way of thinking around that, and actually say, This is what I need to achieve, to get to my business goals in three or four or five years, that that helps me a lot. So I do think most companies, they have a certain set of rules that you have to follow. And if you should follow this rules, you will be successful as a financial planner, but also as as your client will be successful. Because, for example, I know I need to do a certain amount of new investment. And sometimes I have to find a client and follow up and we show investment, and we talked about this, and it comes across maybe sometimes salesy, but in the end, if I can just take a real example of this week, I do follow up with a client, but he had 5 million just sitting in cash, and you already had a tax problem, could find a much better structure for him. And it’s needed. So I agree with your point that sometimes it is needed to follow up with a client and how do you actually get to the point where they follow your advice, without you coming across that you almost selling them if I can say it like that, because the other big thing I normally tell my clients is, remember me pushing you and saying, Come on, let’s do financial planning, let’s work towards the goal. It’s not me trying to again, sell you something, but it’s me trying to motivate you, encourage you, because when you get for example, 265 and you want to retire, you only going to be angry at me and said photo. Why didn’t you over the last 30 years tell me that I’m in big trouble. So I think it’s a big mind shift thing. And yeah, you need to keep that mantra strong positive, that does follow through to clients.

Louis van der Merwe
So very difficult balance. I was reading an article yesterday about where a client of a financial planner passed away in the last three years, he spent almost all his money on medical expenses. And the children said to the financial planner, why didn’t you help our dad, you were the financial planner? You know, why didn’t you do a better job? And I think sometimes we have this, you know, weight and specifically me, I feel like, you know, you’re responsible for clients outcome, but what you’re saying is that, you can actually use that positively to say, okay, you know, we have these milestones to grow our business, we know what we need to achieve. And at the same time where we’re helping our clients. Tell me about the times when it’s really difficult, you know, when I’m sure you might have a story where you decided, okay, I want to change careers. Is there something like that? Because it seems like every gays have had something similar?

Wouter de Witt
Yes, I, in my third year, actually unattended, I think I’ve ever told you the story. But in my third year, I was I’ve been in the business for a while. So I’ve started to understand investments. And I actually got an offer from from my investment company to come and be a investment specialist with them. And at that stage, it was almost double my salary. So what 20 What 2324 year old would not almost jumped in opportunity. But concurrently, I got into a big retrenchment, a company that did a lot of a trench mints. And I started to add a lot of value to those clients, retrenchments and had to to preserve their funds or do retire from the funds. And it actually came at this perfect time, because if that doesn’t happen, I probably would have jumped into another part of our finance, and not stayed as a financial plan. And after that, it actually changed my career completely. So yes, things work hard. Like they need to work out

Louis van der Merwe
the author of radical focus talks about golden eggs. And there’s these golden eggs that come past you. And you know, we want to chase the golden eggs. And it’s, it’s wonderful to hear that you actually said, you know, what, this doesn’t align with my vision of the future, and I’m going to stick at it. We see this big trend of people talking about, you know, cutting out the intermediaries, clients going directly, you know, via through default preservation, you know, infant annuitization Do you see that in practice, their clients think that they don’t need advice? Or, you know, is there something else happening?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, definitely. Um, we do see that often. And me personally, I a few years, actually five or six years We were sitting at a conference and there was a London actually speaking about where the future is and what jobs won’t be there and actually said in that presentation that financial advisors won’t have a job in five years, because of automated and Robo advice, or then there was in 2015, so about six or seven years ago. And at that stage, I got quite a big fright to understand that and yes, we’ve seen that happen. And at that stage, I actually overreacted completely on our way to go bold, the whole direct robo advisor with with my business partner. And that’s actually also worked out well, because that was the start of my FinTech career. And so, yes, we do see people going directly, but maybe in 2015, I didn’t believe what I understand. Now to be true that, yes, there will always be clients that go direct, but most clients need us as financial planners to guide them, and maybe don’t need as much guidance, especially the smart smart clients. And financial savvy clients don’t need as much guidance as before, because of the wealth of knowledge that’s online. But they sometimes need me they just need a almost a soundboard. So my top clients even, they would even make their own portfolio recommendations and change it. But they would need me as a sounding board to say, Do I agree with it? Do I do this. And then in terms of market difficut, faculty, and people invading other countries, then it’s quite important to just give them peace of mind and say, remember this what normally happens, stay true to your goal. So I think it’s yes, financial guidance, but also just a bit of promotional support to clients. So there are people that go direct, but I do think there’s still a massive, massive role for financial planners. In the future. Yeah. What is the people aspect of it?

Louis van der Merwe
voter? I completely agree with you. And you know, as you mentioned, this week, we saw Russia starting to invade Ukraine. How do you react to these headlines just personally? How do you keep yourself grounded? And, you know, telling your client Hey, stay invested? Because we all know, that’s the thing that we should do. But how do you keep yourself reminded? Like, what are the practical things that you do? And let’s maybe take this week as an example? Yeah, I’m sure you felt the same fear saying, Okay, should we be panicking? Or do we just say, stay the course?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah. And you say, like, always, what steps do you take with your clients, but I would even say that same philosophy is with yourself, I almost have arguments with myself all time, especially after the COVID when they make Why didn’t I invest more when the market was no. So it’s, it’s something that you do have to go look at history. And it’s, this is nothing covered was maybe a black swan event, but everything has happened before the covers people is very resilient businesses are resilient. And remember the top of a business these people managing and changing it. So sometimes, they need to understand it’s not only just to equity or portfolio, but there’s actually portfolio managers behind their portfolio, as business owners, like a big bank or big listed top 40 company. There’s management teams, constantly changing that and I do think that’s just don’t panic stick stay the course. And always argue that us as financial planners, we might be smart and implement things but there’s always people much smarter than us much higher up making the few bigger decisions. And I trust them.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s that’s a such a great response. And it’s something we often forget that you know, we invest in businesses news, you’re part of you own part of that small business needs people working at it, never mind the bigger picture on the stock market, and and getting your clients excited and getting them on board. Have you seen big emotional responses in the last couple of years? You know, we’ve had COVID we have wars, we had the global financial crisis. What stands out for you for in terms of client behavior?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, definitely. I think I’ve seen a few few irrational decisions where with clients is move completely to money market or completely out of the market. And, and that never, that never actually works out. Because it’s, it’s that old financial planning graph, greed and fear and greed, you always want to make the most and fear you don’t want to lose any money. And that does dictate almost, it’s emotional. We make we make decisions emotionally, we can think we think logically about things but the emotional decision making is a part of our brain. We can’t make decisions without emotions. So I have seen a few bad things, unfortunately, where clients would move out into the out of the market exactly at that time where it’s way too low, and then move in exactly when it’s high. But I think that’s the role of us. Not trying to do Return the market and just getting clients to stay invested. Because over any period of time, we do always see a recovery. And like we said, with with, with the businesses. So yeah, I think it’s sometimes difficult for us to not be emotional as financial planners and not get wrapped up into it. And I’ve actually seen myself actually be less emotional, when times are bad. And when clients get emotional, because then I know I have to take this leadership position say, No, this is not what we decided, let’s move forward. Let’s stay strong. And so far it’s worked out with with recovery. Each time I’ve only been in the industry for for 10 years, I’ve only seen two or three. So yeah, hopefully, everything goes good going forward.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s so true. The only thing we can guarantee is that at some point, you will lose money. If you think a house will hopefully, turn out well. Tell me about those conversations. You know, when you’re pushing back, and you’re saying, Okay, Mr. Client, Mrs. Client, this is the right thing we know it’s the right thing. What happens if they are too forceful? And, you know, they come back quite aggressively, at what point do you back off? Because I find that that’s, you know, it can be a tricky balance. Yeah, no, I

Wouter de Witt
agree. I think sometimes what I’ve also realized is, by being too pushy, sometimes you also get the wrong result. And so you must, in my opinion, try and be objective, give your opinion, and then pose it to them. I’m just here to give you all the facts, or as much information as possible. In the end, you need to make a decision. And by almost, it’s that old saying of the more you want someone to do something, the more they don’t want to do it. And if you actually tell them, Okay, that’s fine. We’ve listened. And we’ve decided they’ll actually say, Oh, why, why is he going this route and actually would want to go opposite. So I think we as people are wired quite, quite uniquely, he or sometimes I think it’s, it’s good not to be too pushy, because you’ll actually get a better result. But in the end, it is the client’s decision. And then you then have to think out of a compliance point of view, make sure as a financial planner, you’ve documented everything explained to them. Like I said, this is my recommendation. But in the end, you decide to go a different route. And that does happen. And then we also have to protect our businesses, and documenting and properly

Louis van der Merwe
voting, you’ve spoken out quite a bit about, you know, how we become the clients partner in making decisions. Yet, when we look at our training as financial planners, historically, there’s been very little training around, you know, human decision making and these type of conversations that we’ve had to have with clients day to day, what are the tools and resources that you rely on to help you build these skills? Or is it really just, you know, gaining that through experience, reflecting on conversations and just trying to show up better?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, I think it’s a combination of of things. And if I have to take more specific tools that I use is, I always thought to just put myself in a client’s shoes and how I like, for example, my accountant to react with me, are like any actually consumer, how a consumer actually was with other people with other businesses. And so my big thing is, I’m very big on communication. And, and it’s sometimes as small as I have a few communication methods, but I have a monthly newsletter that goes out to clients. And I have a weekly market update going out to clients just on WhatsApp, so I do a broadcast list for about 220 of my clients. And they are just giving them a quick breakdown of what happened in the week, what’s going on in the markets, what’s around this dollar, etc, etc. And I do think that gives them a bit of peace of mind sometimes as well, just to know that don’t worry, our financial planner is there is sending me things and is being there. So I do think it is good to have these tools in place to communicate to clients because if you communicate to clients, then they almost gain more confidence in you. And then as you mentioned, they will almost automatically start following your advice because as clients, they know, okay, he’s leading up, he knows what’s going on. And he’s reassuring me, then I get canned sometimes I think but and they’ll tell me but yeah, I don’t even want to make decision to just do what you think is right. And that’s sometimes a good bet on the shoulder because they know that trust is there. So yeah, I do think communication is key when working with clients.

Louis van der Merwe
I want to I want to unpack a little bit this kind of weekly update around what’s happening in the market. Do you find that puts the focus on very short term movements? Or does it give you an opportunity to reframe what’s going on in the news?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, so the big thing what I do with it is I won’t go into much detail in terms of what your Pacific portfolio is done on and it will just be a general, almost good news market finance related update. And what I found is that it’s just nice for clients sometimes to reference back to that just to say, but look at this week this happened, this happened. So it’s not not to create panic, it’s actually to prevent panic, to know that this is what’s going on. I do put all the facts in but I do try to keep it positive. And telling them good news stories telling what’s going on the markets. This week’s budget did a quick recap on the budget. And just it was a good budget, there was a good positive participation we’ve had in years. And it’s good for clients to know that. Because I do think like we said, it’s, it’s emotional. And if clients are positive, and they thinking things go positive, then it goes better with them as well. Because in the end, like you said, it’s most things are out of our control markets, finances, the equity markets, within invading Ukraine. So I do think it is important that communication aspect and keeping a positive and keeping healthy mindset for your clients.

Louis van der Merwe
I love how the notch on these things that, you know, like you saying it’s the things that we can control. And if we look at the research, you know, client communication is up there in terms of why clients leave, you know, they tend to leave when there’s little communication, or their expectations are misaligned with what’s happening. And they don’t know what’s going on, I want to touch on a subject that might be a little bit more difficult to navigate. And that’s losing a client, tell me about, you know, the time when clients might have moved to another advisor, or you’re up against another advisor and you and you lose out on that business? How does that affect you personally? And what does that do in terms of you’re looking at your business?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, Louis, I think as you grow in this business, I think your skin also hardens a little bit, because initially, I took it very hard that if I didn’t get a new client, or if I lost a client, but over the years, it almost pulls up that people circumstances change, people move away, they build new relationships with you, we don’t maybe touch base as often, and also new people comes into their lives. So to be honest, I don’t take it personally anymore. If I do lose a client, I am very specific, when I move a client when a client moves away from me, and that I do explain to them that sometimes it’s better. But if I do see it’s not better. And there’s there’s not good advice given advocate for industry trying to keep it professional. And I am quite odd up on. If I see, there wasn’t good advice given not as much as the client, but I will follow up with an advisor and, and actually explained to them that listen, if you want to take over this, this investment to take over this, this policy, you’re more than welcome. But please don’t just switch it or turn it to generate commission. And I think that’s a big step for us as advisors due to tech, because my personal feeling of I’ve also taken over clients from other advisors. And I think sometimes we as advisors, take it personally from other advisors, that we are now stealing the client or anything like that sometimes the fit is just better. And so when I do have a conversation with another advisor, and even if sometimes a client moves away from me apply really to keep it not hostile, in the sense of okay, I can see, maybe, maybe the advice is not even better, but I can still see you have a better relationship with a client. So let me help you move over this client to because I feel that us as financial planners, we sometimes take it so personally, and we almost want to watch going on why stealing my client. And that just creates such a bad reputation for our industry. And I do think to keep it professional, rather than help each other. Because for example, what happened with with with one advisor, I actually took a client from mine, and I phoned him. And we actually had such a great talk about the client and about what’s going on. And we actually started working on something else to give me an advisor. So sometimes advisors will be hostile just because you’ve been hostile with him. Now try really to enter into those conversations in an open mind objectively, because I understand that we all need to make a living, we all trying to build the business, and sometimes it is just a better fit.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you very thorough, it almost makes me think of, you know, moving to another GP where your GP is not going to find that other GP and say Hey, why are you stealing my patient? I would almost expect him to phone the GP and say, Hey, here’s the client file. You know, here’s the medical history, here’s things that might be valuable, because we almost have that owners of do no harm. No, we have a fiduciary standard. And interestingly, it seemed like the fiduciary standard originated in South Africa where we You have to place our clients interest. First, I want to jump into the FinTech side, which is a part that, you know, excites me and it excites you. Tell me how that relationship with your business partner that you made that university came about and why it was that you started this robo advisor.

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, I think the robo advisor was was was started out of out of fear of me being 2025. I started when I was 21, not having a job in a few years. And I learned a lot from that project. And I would say the biggest thing that I learned from that project is that clients are willing to do things online, but they do need almost that personal aspect of financial planner. So that is actually transitioned into other FinTech FinTech ideas, and that will the one that we’re currently working on with my business partner MBO funders by is that we built a simulation to that directly integrates into salts that focuses on retirement planning. So in a nutshell, how it works is if you withdraw money from any retirement fund, pension fund, or a preservation fund, etc. As we know, the first 500,000 is tax free when we retire, or the first 25,000 is tax free when we leave employment, and assess financial planners, especially coming from from university. We love doing those manual calculations and calculating what that would be. But we as financial planners don’t know if there was previous withdrawals, if there’s excess contributions, if there’s an ID 88, meaning that the client owes us money. And, and that’s where this new financial FinTech project gravitas tax came about. And we actually integrate it into saws and and all that you do now, as you press a button, put in the client tax number and ID number, and then actually gives you the exact amount of tax that you pay. So that’s been a massive help to my business. And we’ve currently have about 300 advisors on our platform, and we’re expanding every day. And that’s been a lot of a big help for for them as financial planners for us as financial planners. And also the most importantly, the client has been getting so much value out of it. And, and I always like to use my top client as an example. He has excess contribution, because he earns so much he over contributes more than 350,000 a year, and the excess contribution builds up. So when either dies, he actually doesn’t have 500,000 tax, we actually has over 4 million tax free. So yeah, that’s it really adds value. If you can just think of that client, if you can take 4 million discretionary funds, and the rest could be going to a compulsory annuity is taxed module tactical just be so much lower, because you will draw from your discretionary funds and draw from the living at fun. So it can really just add so much value to financial planners.

Louis van der Merwe
Definitely as a user, and subscriber of gravitas, tax, it’s made a massive difference in our business. I want to talk a little bit about, you know, financial advisors selecting technology, there’s this search for the Holy Grail, you know, one piece of software that does everything perfectly well. Why hasn’t that panned out? And why have we seen this adoption of kind of modular approach, where you have hyper niche software providers, like gravity stacks, plugging into other providers, or even maybe standing on its own? What’s your take on why there hasn’t been one truly successful financial planning software solution for advisors?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, it’s actually something that I’ve been reflecting on for for a long time. And I think it comes down to the jack of all trades. And I actually listened to a podcast the other day, the full saying, is actually much further than Jack of all trades. And it comes down to if you do something very well, yes, you can do a few things very well. But focus for us, if we just focus on doing simulations for for parameter stacks. We do it we do it very, very well, doesn’t mean we don’t do our financial planning well. But I think the reason in the financial planning or FinTech space, to be able to do all aspects of financial planning in one, software two, is near to impossible. You need to have a few billion rented develop all this technology, and then you become an incumbent again, and then it becomes difficult. So I’m actually a big advocate for for having a few different software programs. And that does each its own little thing. And it does it well. Because then you can specialize in what we do and improve that service. And also that’s a different view. That’s also the same thing and so manager. That’s why we, we use models of different asset managers, because different people and different asset managers has different views. And the more we expand our views, the more we can actually grow, not only our business but ourselves. So yeah, I’m actually a big advocate for having a few different programs. And then onto my financial planning, financial planning business.

Louis van der Merwe
So it sounds like the key is staying small, staying nimble, but then really honing in like you said, you know, be the master of that piece and not a jack of all trades. For financial planners listening, what are the other tools that comes to mind that you use on a daily basis that you might be able to share with us and you know, for the record, it’s not a blog, but really just sharing pieces of software that other people might be able to

Wouter de Witt
use? Yeah, so the other index, not maybe even financial planning software, this is more just organizational skills is I use Microsoft to do which is basically just a to do list. And I can allocate it to other people’s, for example, I have better planning staff, I have secretaries that as the admin, and I have a junior financial advisors, that can literally add almost two dues to each one of the list, I can make notes on that. So that is chain components completely, or just being organized. And if I can go back to our earlier point of clients, it’s important to communicate to clients but it’s, it’s even more important to, if clients phone phone back, if they email you email back. And that just helps a lot with the organization of that. Because if I need to do something, I’ll put it on the reminder list and it will pop up on my screen. I need to do it today. So it’s and it’s difficult to manage that from for example, in your calendar where I used to do it, it’s just so much easier to allocate tasks. And I think Atlanta Santa’s asking me but just how do you remember this? We spoke about the six seven months ago and I said I made a note on your file or made a note on on to do or to follow up and and I do manage my team like that as well. And small things as well as WhatsApp business. It’s sounds basic things, but WhatsApp business. That’s what whichever business completely. And it’s if you have normal WhatsApp as an advisor, you literally just change it over to WhatsApp business. And you can add a little profile pic and services, small things like that. And inside WhatsApp business, you can create Auto Replies, you can create broadcast lists. And that’s quite, quite beneficial, especially when you’re offering clients just and they’ll send you a message something that pops up and say, I’m just busy with a client. Or like I said the broadcast Let’s send out so people always think you have to use this massive financial planning software you don’t there’s the everyday tools can certainly pull for businesses, we are business. And yeah, so I think those two tools is the tools that aren’t, you know, once my financial playing in terms of organizational skills by for

Louis van der Merwe
voting, why does the task allocation and management not set inside a CRM, you know, I’m curious to hear why it is that you prefer this standalone, you know, niche to that only looks at tasks and allocation and not using your CRM for that.

Wouter de Witt
You know, we looked into this the CRM to a while ago, and in my opinion was just a little bit archaic and almost too complex, there was too many fields that we have to complete. And, and that was how exactly the same thing that we talked to do in computer stacks. Keeping it simple, stupid, you just have six inputs, and you’ll be able to do a simulation. And that’s the same thing with what to do, I just have to enter one thing, take me two seconds. I used to have sticky notes all over my computer and everywhere. And that’s basically out works, it works like a little sticky note so it doesn’t have a secure login, don’t have to go through to center of authentication, then go into the client, then add a note. It’s just boom, open it up. And it’s there. And it’s obviously with Microsoft to do it’s on your phones on your laptop is going to be on a desktop can be app can basically be anything. And and for me personally, I try to be creative and try to look at new ideas and think of nerdy ideas. As I think about something it just boom years that note I put it on and it’s there to explain it better. It’s basically like the same as like a note on your phone. But it’s just as a little reminder, a little thing it worth it as an organizational chart task, reminder. So it’s a very basic basic tool that helps and that’s why I prefer not to do it inside my CRM.

Louis van der Merwe
They say a short pencil is better than a long memory and just writing it down and knowing that you know, you can come back to it when a client speaks about it. And I like this fact that you saying hey, it should be on any device. And hopefully we’ll see a gravitas WhatsApp bot at some point too. where you can just give the the information in then, you know, outcomes. The result? Tell me what does the future of financial planning look like for someone that spends time enjoys technology but also engages with client? What is this industry look like 10 years from now in voted of its opinion? Yeah.

Wouter de Witt
So So Louis, that’s something I do spend a lot of time on thinking, you know, even try to take breaks. So to go away completely from from technology in the office and try to think of what I think the future looks like. And so as I think, as I said earlier, I do think financial advice will always have a human aspect to it. But how that human aspect looks might change in the future, in the future. So my, my thinking behind that is, I think there will only be one person that will handle your finances in the future, and accountant or financial planner that that should be able to do your tax should be able to give advice should be able to open up a product for you do your buy and sell agreement. So I think with with technology, enhancing and getting so much better with systems like QuickBooks zero, look at all the financial planning CRM that’s out there, I think in the future, all of that is going to merge, and you’re just gonna have this one super financial professional, that can basically handle everything for you. So that’s what I’m building towards where our financial planning technology, like you mentioned, on a modular space can integrate into these types of tools, where financial planners can actually do everything for you, they can do text they can do, or even just work with an accountant. And you can do the financial planning space. So I do think financial planners and accountants would need to start working better together. And that is something that that we that we busy building for the future. It’s maybe a bit early to say something about that. But hopefully, we’ll have the gravitas Tech’s will be launching something very, very interesting for the financial planning space to actually pull together us as a profession. And actually to to make our advice more professional to, to not sell products, but to actually work on certain tasks, certain principles, certain things that will actually all the future

Louis van der Merwe
voter, how does this differ from the family office units that we often see people talk about where there’s an element of tax advice, there’s Asset Management. Now there might be real estate or, or property assistance, there’s financial planning? How does this revision differ from what we already seeing in the market in some segments,

Wouter de Witt
and I think the only thing that really differs is the technology front, if you just look at a pre and post COVID environment, the way we do business now and the way we did but the business before then, like this morning, I did a living annuity review in 18 minutes. And the client told me, she’s she’s very busy, even though she’s retired, she’s very busy with her other business. And she prefers seeing me, she knows me for many years. So she prefers seeing me on Zoom. And do and I have my financial planning software opened in front of creditors open in front of us, so I can quickly do the calculations. And I can on the spot tell what, what what she needs to do for the next year. And compared to having two or three face to face meetings, then doing calculations. So I think the how this differs from the front end, family practices is technology. And I think technology is going to keep on growing and getting better, to the point where a lot of the functions that we used to do will get automated. And I’m all for that I’m not for removing the financial aspect for but I’m removing all these meaning little tasks that we as humans do, so that we can actually enhance our practice. And by doing that, taking out tasks that takes lots of time, time obviously equals money. And in the end, you can actually as a business grow a much better, much more profitable business and spending time on the things that make you money or make a business money and in turn, so the plan some funds, some costs, some additional fees, etc. And one of my first managers always said and not plus non income producing activities, and let’s say through, the more technology can can work on those type of things, reducing the numbers with the better we can run our financial planning practice or tax practices. So I think it’s just how it differs is technology will improve It will keep on getting better. And we must just be an advocate or at least a first adopter of this technology. And yes, go through the growing pains. But in that we will improve the technology and in turn, improve our business.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s wonderful how you managed to piece all of this together in the hyper efficient financial advisor that spends time with clients and in front of clients delivering advice. And I’m wondering, does that mean the role of an admin assistant disappears? And if so, how do we retrain and, you know, make our team members more efficient in other areas in the business?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, no, not at all. So I’m still an advocate for for admin assistants. And I would say they are just a different they have the same role as we have, but just on a different level. So yes, they might not. It might also improve their lives a lot of football, oh, that’s actually another software program that we use, it absolutely changed our business quickly sign, I have to give a shout out to rob from quickly sandwiches. If he if he knew how much time he saved, me and my financial planning business, he would like he would like me a much bigger bow than the small fee or pay every month for for quickly, son. But back on the admin assistants, I don’t think the role for them will will change, or it will change in the aspect of it will, technology will improve their lives as well. But I do think they are also sometimes the front line in communicating to clients. And as we mentioned earlier in the podcast, it’s quite important for them to have that, that almost interaction with a human or be able to at least just know they can pick up the phone and there’s someone there. And I actually spoke to a few spear financial planners, that’s that’s almost deciding to get admin assistant, and I’m a big advocate for getting admin assistant. For two reasons, the service betters for your clients. And secondly, it actually motivates you to actually do some work, do some things that you’ve been procrastinating on. And the one financial adviser said, but I can actually do this myself. Yeah, you can. But if you know that, as an assistant doesn’t have work, you are going to go find a work, you’re going to pick up the phone, going to see your clients, you’re going to meet your clients. And so yes, I’m a big advocate for for improving technology, but keeping the human aspect of it. And if I can tell you a great little story of I had when I just thought that I had a lady that’s not with me. She started with me when she was 60 years old. And she retired at 66. So then it was six years down down the line with my practice. And I just found it the other day just to find that I was going with her and all of that. And she said that was going good. She actually went to go drink coffee with one of my clients. And I was like, Oh, how do you mean you retire? This is under understand. And she said no, they just started chatting over the phone and finding out was in when when she was working from his financial as far as admin to financial planner, and they just built a great relationship. And that just almost resonated with me that how important that relationship aspect is for people we, as people need to work with other people. Yes, technology is there and robo advisors and all of that is so important to, you know, on sufficiency, the human aspect is just as important.

Louis van der Merwe
I really like this idea of relationship managers in your business that’s building a stronger relationship with your clients as a practice now, and not just they to complete paperwork, because that’s been automated. Now, shout out to rob Curtis, thank you for building quickly sign up, make sure that you get a copy of this episode. And these tools are out there. So don’t be afraid to use them. And that’s what we’re hearing from people like yourself by just saying that use the tools that’s already been built, these things aren’t that difficult. And it’s also it’s becoming part of your job, you know, you need to know how to use these things. It’s no longer an optional.

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, definitely. And we keep on referring back to rob, but it’s something as small as just digitizing signatures that will actually just change your business and, and just get you away from from those little non income producing activities. And also the I think the best thing with with technology is that I sometimes don’t appreciate how much technology helps until I actually sit with my team and my admin team and they tell me that show over the last two years off the COVID that their work has become so much more almost fun because they don’t have to do these meaningless admin tasks and they actually can focus on giving good service to clients and applying quickly on email. and getting the business out then sending in filling in paperwork where everything could actually be digitized.

Louis van der Merwe
Wouter, it’s wonderful to hear your passion for financial planning and the way you’re innovating. Not just the way you’re delivering advice, but also thinking about the future. I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. If people want to reach out to you and just maybe have a chat, what’s the best way to get hold of you?

Wouter de Witt
Yeah, they can anytime, anytime contact me. They can find me on the internet or Google. All our details will be be there or practice will be there. They can Google climate Aztecs find a website they and like I mentioned, it will really enhance the business out of financial planning place but your reach out to us. We always open because we are passionate about professional and Microbus client always says passion for the profession. That actually we need to be advocates for the for the industry to make it more professional and make it more most fun to be in. So yeah, reach out. We’re always open to every discussion.

Louis van der Merwe
Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Wouter de Witt
Thanks Louie for having me.