FPA Congress Insights #4 – Transcript

Fraser Jack
And we’re back in with another podcast from the Financial Planning Association Conference. Danni, welcome back.

Danni Visser
Thanks, Fraser. And we have Brett with us this morning. So welcome. Right, right. Thank you. Brett was one of the first people life insurance specialists that I spent a bit of time we were at Hamilton Island at Macquarie life conference, actually. So it’s really nice to see Brett again, Brett, there’s been a bit of time in between. Since we’ve spoken and some of our audience may not know your background. Do you mind just filling us in? How you came to be an insurance specialist and what you’re up to now?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so my dad started our family’s life insurance advice business 35 years ago. He gifted me an income protection policy when I was 18. I wasn’t in the business at the time. I thought it was a shitty president. Can you say should?

Fraser Jack
I ended up I don’t know any 18 year olds that wouldn’t think income protection policy is at present.

Brett Wright
That’s right. That’s right. And he did explain it and said, Look, you did risky sports. If you hurt yourself and can’t work, you know, or never work again. I’m not paying for your first you laugh. So here’s this thing. Just give it a whirl ended up climbing on it two years later, and I broke my hand it had an accident benefit.

Fraser Jack
Is it back in the day? When did he get income protection policies for risky sports? Yeah.

Brett Wright
Yeah, so I broke my hand, couldn’t do the job I was doing at the time for six weeks that policy paid from day one accident often on it. And I thought this is a pretty cool thing. Obviously, growing up hearing that stories about claims and how he’s dealt people and things I thought, I think it was time to join the family business. So started as the chief photocopying officer did had been for a couple of years, got into advising, and then just work my way up from there. To we’re here now,

Fraser Jack
fantastic. Now, it’s pretty easy to dive straight into the ugly assumption that you know, a 35 year old risk insurance business is quite traditional. Not so the case.

Brett Wright
Yeah, so when I first started, it was paper files, it was an I’ve got, I got annoyed with having to walk to the filing room all the time, every time you have to do a bit of admin. And so pretty quick, smart, we transfer transformed it into a digital office and, you know, put technology in when I say technology, so all the servers and everything to go fully digital, essentially, there’s still elements of the paper fact finds that we still did with clients in their lounge rooms and things like that. But you know, we had an electronic file. And then yeah, I’ve always been interested in software, did software design at school? And yeah, around 2012 2013, I thought I’d like to build a little software product. And it was when the sack changed to have self managed super funds need to consider life insurances as part of the investment strategy. So we built a little tool that plugged into BGL, and class, which is the dominant SMSF administrative platforms and our platform did life insurance consideration for self managed super funds at audit time. And, yeah, so that that went okay. It didn’t grow in scale like we, we’d hoped it would. And we pivoted that and expanded it out into life insurance can other considerations that mortgage brokers to do general insurance brokers could do, accountants could do, and that went really well. And that’s where we were really, really hit the accelerator on the technology path.

Danni Visser
So you’ve always been looking ahead. Yeah, a bit of ahead of the time and change and you’ve actually had to get your hands into changing things and reinventing things and all the processes and people change that goes along with that. So if you’re on a panel session today at the FPA around the future, and what 2030 looks like, yeah, so you’ve had, obviously, the vision, but then also, you’ve had to get in and actually make the change process happen. What’s the next year, you’re sort of on a pretty exciting new vision for what that whole panel was about?

Brett Wright
Yeah. So we, the software that we rolled out to the accountants, the mortgage brokers, the GI brokers, let’s call them referral sources, made it really easy for them to have a life insurance conversation. And then when their clients wanted help, that it would hand over to the advisor and track and manage everything and then keep the referral partner up to date in later years on, you know, they still have cover and things like that. But it solved a little piece of the big problem, right? The getting clients is one problem, but we have this end to end advice issue would cost to serve a complexity and inefficiency across multiple systems. And even though KPM was going really well the businesses using it to provide the advice was still getting the same issues I was in my business so they couldn’t they couldn’t serve the demand or the average customer because the cost to serve and the compliance risks have become too high. So we’ve sort of always want to sort of wanted to see what zero have done in the accounting space and always wanted to you know, start thinking up a solution essentially, that could be end to end that does everything in one platform. So that means in advisory my advice business, I don’t have to use 10 or 15 different systems to get the job done. I can use one. You know, consumers can have a really good customer experience digitally, you know, on their laptop on their phone, and things like that. And access advice really excessively. So that’s where life is sort of started. Yeah.

Fraser Jack
The zero for risk insurance is this. We’re calling it That’s right. We’re labeling it now.

Brett Wright
So what it was zero was for accounting life, it is for life insurance. So good analogy. Yeah.

Fraser Jack
And, and I just want to know, where’s the business at as of today, before we get too much into that session? Where we go into where is it the business at today? Yeah. So

Brett Wright
I think a really important part is you don’t just walk into the industry and have a solution and say, hey, everybody come user that takes and the industry issues at the moment are so deeply ingrained across multiple stakeholders that it takes the industry to working together to solve the issues that we’re facing. So yeah, we’ve got a we’ve got a working group six or nine life insurers, we’ve got a critical mass of advice providers, industry associations, licensees, and so we’re attacking the problems from that compliance piece, that technology piece the advice process piece and, and innovating in that that digital innovation and moving forward together. So

Fraser Jack
yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. And I’m just going to quickly throw it out there, if somebody wants to find out a bit about that has the best way for them to reach out to you.

Brett Wright
www dot last bid. Dot Comdata. You

Fraser Jack
perfect, lovely place. Now, onto the session.

Danni Visser
Let’s get into what did you share about the session? What do you see? 2030 looking like, particularly from an insurance lens? Yeah, so

Brett Wright
yeah, so I think, particularly in insurance, so insurance is different to investments and super and retirement planning, and, you know, the sexier stuff sort of thing, you know, clients is don’t wake up and say, Hey, I’m going to go buy some life insurance today. I know that sounds old school, but it’s the truth.

Danni Visser
You know, pair of shoes, life insurance policies, I’m going to pair of shoes every time. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Fraser Jack
A little of Christmas gin, life insurance.

Danni Visser
Christmas gin.

Brett Wright
Yeah, exactly. Right. And, and I think it was really interesting. One of the stats, equality advisor view quoted was, in the last four years, that the amount of life insurance originated by with the help of advisor so clients taking out a policy with the help of advisor has gone from 70% to 84%. So, you know, more and more people aren’t trying to DIY their turn into advice to get help with their life insurance. So, yes, I think that’s a that’s a trend that we can see evolving. And as we move towards 2030, I still, you know, advisors won’t be replaced. So they see technology doing knowing what we’re delivering in life, but we’re cutting costs are served by 90%. I see technology doing the below the line stuff in a really streamlined fashion. And the advisors helping clients with the value add stuff. So understanding what’s available, adequately scoping, picking out a great insurer that provides value and great customer service, and we have good partnerships with and then being there for that renewal. And I claim time.

Fraser Jack
The thing that strikes me, as you say that is I think it’d be enough humans, are we going to have enough advisors?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so it’s a good. So in the session, the 2030 session, yeah, there’s a some data industry data that shows that 75% of the new business at the moment has been written by 1700 advisors. So we need 17,000 25,000 30,000 advisors providing risk advice. And we’re not just going to do that overnight. Right. So we need to increase the capacity and the capability. So who’s already here to serve more people. So that’s the premise behind needing to cut the cost to serve by so much so we can 10x the capability of the advice providers in the market to serve more people. And so if you look at that, 1700 that rise 75%, then the remaining 25% of new businesses written by about 5000 advisors, so there’s dabbling. So we have a really schmick easy, cost effective, automatically compliant advice process, getting the 5000 dabblers back into more full time risk advice, and then the other 7000 advisors on the far that, you know, they might be qualified to do risk advice, but they’re scoping it out or just don’t want to do it. Maybe they’re scared of it because of the complexities. Yeah, yeah, getting them back into the game as well and wanting to help more people because when you think about financial planning, life insurance is actually a pathway into financial planning. It’s something that you start insurance is something that you start with when you’re young when you’re having kids, you’re buying houses, you’re starting businesses and then as your needs evolve, and you go you get a bit more interested in your retirement and your might get some investment planning and some super planning and, and things like that. So Yeah, that’s that creating pathways into into risk advice and consumers getting access to risk advice again as well.

Fraser Jack
Yeah. And getting, you know, you mentioned that before about making it sexy, because, you know, I guess if you’ve got university students coming through, they’re thinking of advisor thinking investments, they’re thinking, grow thinking, all these sort of things.

Brett Wright
Yeah, exactly. Right. It’s, um, it’s very hard to find a professional you candidate that wants to focus on risk advice, essentially. So

Fraser Jack
you’re gonna have to have a whole lot more kids to bring them into the family business, if you want to tell them what’s

Brett Wright
your advice for us to now so they’re

Danni Visser
gonna start buying some birthday presents?

Brett Wright
That’s right. Yeah.

Fraser Jack
Trauma policy practice,

Brett Wright
what approach is trauma that will turn into an adult policy when the right time? Yeah,

Danni Visser
yeah. So you’re obviously dealing with the front end and helping you know, the idea is to make sure that more people can get protected. A big issue for a lot of people who are writing insurances and sustainability. So once the grudge has been adopted, and I’ve done a whole heap of work of getting that purchase sold, then actually making sure someone can hang on to it because the premiums have escalated so dramatically. Do you have any views on that? Or do you see that as a future? Yeah? How can we solve that as an industry because it is an industry problem as well?

Brett Wright
It is yeah. So fast. So lifeblood stands for life best interest duty is not beat as in a marketplace for insurance, business life best interest duty. And you know, a few people have said all that goes to good advice in a call yourself Alaska. No, we’re not gonna stay as lofted. And the best interest duty will stay anyway, by the, by the proposals in the QA er, but we’re again, sorry,

Danni Visser
around this standard. That’s a real trust, right? Yeah, for a lot of advisors. And I think one of the reasons I don’t actually want to sell it because it’s really hard to understand what what is this future promise the pricing gonna look like? Yeah, so

Brett Wright
I think technology has a has a role to play in sustainability. And I think, you know, best interest duty isn’t just about the best price highly featured products and there’s a whole lot of other nuances that go into best interest duty around the customer experience, the ease of doing business, the value that different the different insurers provide for different niches of the market. And I think if we’re going to fix the sustainability issue, we need to get more younger lives into the pool because we’ve seen you know, the under 35 just not getting insured anymore, and they’re the younger ones that we need coming into the pool. But then also as well, that whole advice process at best interest duty process not just focusing on price and product but focused on other value add metrics that is sustainable as well because you know there’s no point putting in place cover if you’re getting 2030 40% increases every

Fraser Jack
now I’ve imagined when your father started the business then it was very much around that tight agency scenario where for those people that are listening to this I don’t know what that is. That means that life insurance agent if you like work for a company and their best interests was to make sure the pool was profitable yeah as in that kept the premiums down we moved to speaking of best interest duty individual and we just had Bernie on Mr. Best Interest duty individual best interest duty was which was actually worked against the pool product because it best interest for investment is is different to best interest for a pool product do you think that there could be a future where we go back to that conversation of you mentioned the pool but focusing on the profitability of the pool and then I actually think that you know with reserve levels and interest rates rising that we’re going to see that profit ease because yeah, there’s many that talk to us about the concept of the pool and vestiges that everybody in the pool

Brett Wright
Yeah, so yeah, life insurance is a poor product that’s full of any you know, looking after the unfortunate for the benefit of the community the communities in our economy and and the same goes for risk advice as well so you know, there’s a fee for services the commission argument and realities commission is called access to great advice and high quality advice and access to high quality products as well. So I think it’s really important that there is that difference there between investment and super advice where your clients have the ability and the interest to pay a fee to grow their nest egg and manage this pot of money that they have. But then life insurance is different where you’ve got people that need the cover the most often can’t afford the advice to get into the pool and and pick the right make the right selection the ball so yeah, I think we get the we do need the pools to be to be healthier. And we really do need to drive technology to access that next generation consumer because at the moment, the customer experience doesn’t cater to the under 30 fives don’t cater anybody really like it’s the new business has been going down, down down. So yeah,

Fraser Jack
yep. Thank you so much for coming in and chatting with us today on the podcast about the session so many things we’ve unpacked it obviously, the future is so many opportunities around the Ah, I think with with laughing just because of the supply and demand issue and been able to bring that to many, many people,

Danni Visser
and I love the fact that there are so like, as we’ve been talking to many people over these couple of days, there’s so many advisors who have been practicing advisors who brought forward solutions to solve their problems in their businesses, which is fantastic, because there’s no one who knows a problem, like someone who’s had to face that problem in a business. So it’s really I think that’s really exciting that technology is not just being made by tech companies, it’s actually being made by advisors to solve their own business problems. So get in touch with Brett, if you’ve got any questions. Yeah,

Fraser Jack
love the initiative. Thank you so much for coming along.

Brett Wright
Thanks for having us, guys. Cheers.

Fraser Jack
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to our mega mega mega mini series that we started off being a short podcast series. But of course with with quite a few podcast ideas.

Danni Visser
I tend to write

Fraser Jack
ideas from the Financial Planning Association Congress, Danni, I joined by Cameron, welcome.

Danni Visser
Thanks for having me. And Cameron is fresh off the stage. So Cameron, thank you for joining us, we haven’t given you much of a break. My pleasure

Fraser Jack
that let’s talk a little bit about you don’t introduce yourself, let the listeners know who you are and what you’re doing.

Cameron Peck
Yeah, sure. So. So we set up a risk specialist practice about 10 years ago. So all we do for clients is risk only work. So we don’t do any wealth at all. Which, which ties in nicely with those practices who don’t want to do insurance. So we set the practice up to fulfill the needs really of high net worth individuals and SMEs. So we do quite a lot of buy sell cover as well. And, yeah, we’ve got going on for planners at the moment in the group. And mainly looking after accountants, clients, financial planners, clients, and our existing client or fantastic are about to you based, based in Melbourne. So we’ve got an office in in CBD, Melbourne and one in by Morris.

Fraser Jack
Oh, fantastic. Yeah. And there’s any, as you said, there’s a lot of key person types. I love the keepers in the space, I think it’s a great space to be in. Now, you’ve obviously seen a lot of change over that time, 10 years in risky business, because the is a lifetime. The products have changed legislations change, the fee tables have changed, do you do fees, or premiums have changed? A lot. The pools have changed. Nothing’s the same.

Cameron Peck
Now look, I think most of the change has happened in the last three, four years in insurance buy. So when you have when you’re having all these changes happening all the one time, so the LRF changes, product changes, how businesses are structured to fulfill client needs, they’ve also had to change too. So scale has typically gone up, we’ve seen a lot of businesses really scaling up to try and focus on this and, and still drive profitability in the right areas. So it’s been a hell of a lot of change. But I think those that have

Danni Visser
often regulated Hey, yeah, look, innovation. Yeah, look,

Cameron Peck
it is hopefully some of the rate changes with the quality of advice review, might actually throw that pendulum back the other way for us. So. But, yeah, look, it’s been challenging for many. And I think a lot of the practitioners that we’re talking to today, who are multidisciplinary, the challenges are probably even greater, because it’s perhaps an area of the business that they haven’t themselves addressed as to, firstly, as a profitable. Secondly, are we still good at it? And is there a lot of risk exposure with regards to all these product changes that we might not be keeping up with? And actually, do we enjoy doing it too, because if you can spend that bandwidth on the wealth side of the practice, that’s where the opportunities might be?

Fraser Jack
Fantasy, there’s so many things to consider there. Tell us a little bit about the session today. Tell us about the what it was about. And what happened.

Cameron Peck
Yeah, look, we we went through really talking about that fork in the road for a lot of practices that that, for all those reasons I was talking about a moment ago, either even need to consider the whether or not they’re upskilling and up sourcing upsizing their businesses to be the right scale as well. So that they can truly specialize in this space. Or the alternative is quite the opposite, which is outsourcing and outsourcing to a risk specialist. And focusing on first focusing their bandwidth, so you can have before on the wealth, part of their business that might be more profitable to them. So there’s a fair bit of discussion around that a lot of a lot of discussion around the current climate or the changes that are happening. All the pressures that are around at the moment. Some of the some of the small wins that we’re having to there are a couple of people are excited about some of that some of the things we’re talking about, which I guess I haven’t so much heard in a more public way but is that profitability for income protection is has turned the corner. So it’s looking it’s looking like

Danni Visser
whispers there are whispers around what is this The last stabilities profitability is

Cameron Peck
returning, which which has been driving a lot of the price rises and a lot of the heartburn for clients and advisors. lapse rates are down. So whether whether any of its artificial because of the product changes and a lack of change going on between the other new products, but nevertheless, they’re all good positive things.

Danni Visser
It’s interesting that you say around, it’s interesting what you say around the specialization. And I’ll one of the case examples that I’ve been privy to and shout out to Phil Thompson, he’s also an insurance specialist. He said, Look, he was a holistic adviser doing all the things because he thought that was a more sophisticated business model. But when he took the step to that specialization, and this can be whatever it is for a business, his profitability of his particular business has skyrocketed TEDx, because not only does he know his thing, he can also build processes around that particular thing. So the process is you can continue to refine because you’re not always thrown in so many directions, that there’s not really a clear process. And for his referral sources, he was a bit nervous around making that change from, you know, broader offering to a more narrow offering. But for him, he’s found a spot that few that is referral sources, either their clients or the people that refer him business, have been able to then articulate what he actually does, because it’s not everything. And how do you like that a client or eresources can’t really sort of provide that breadth of what a financial planner does, like, what’s the actual benefit of having that person in your life? So yeah, I think what you’re saying around profitability and efficiency is absolutely an experience that I’ve heard,

Cameron Peck
I actually met with Phil, when he was early days in his practice, and he was holistic. And we talked to him about the specialization piece in insurance. So he wasn’t too sure, I think at that stage, so I’ll take credit to him going down that specialization path.

Fraser Jack
And I’ve got no hope, no idea who Phil Thompson is. So if you’re listening, feel free to get in touch. You’re absolutely right, though, about the focus in on businesses and being able to then I think you hit the nail on the head them with referral sources, because it’s really important that they can articulate what you do.

Cameron Peck
Yeah, 100%. So having a clear position, the difference is definitely a key. So and then it gives them the confidence in, you know, referring what we want is their best, the best opportunities. So if they’ve got the confidence will soon see their best opportunities, and they’ll have really happy clients.

Danni Visser
So in the SME space, what is changing like this, your session was all about building an insurance proposition, what are the things that you see are either the biggest mistake that people do within that that profit that methodology piece, or what’s the things that have changed for your need to be, you know, brought to the surface in the business insurance space?

Cameron Peck
Okay, so in the SME space, particularly we buy sell and key person, it’s, it’s often misunderstood. Both at an accountant level, sometimes at a former planner level, who may have may be good at putting policies in place, but not necessarily strong on the strategy side. So we’re seeing some of the worst cases we’ve seen whereby cells have been structured through super, where we’ve seen all sorts of inadvertent CGT complications, where there’s all sorts of different purposes, and nothing is documented. So there’s some of the messier ones. At the end of the day, it’s about just having a really seamless exists in terms of that financial exit, and that it’s a sum that’s expected, it doesn’t have to be funded off a personal balance sheet or the business’s balance sheet. And the business can go forward as business as usual, as best as it can without any passive investors being of the exited partners, spouse or beneficiaries. Having a say, at the boardroom table. So it’s about that, that business as usual for the surviving partners.

Fraser Jack
Now, the one of the things I’m always interested in, is the resources available then obviously, where the risk specialists How hard is it to find new people coming through to fill all the all the spaces if it especially if you’re increasing business or trying to grow your business? How hard is it to find

Cameron Peck
increasingly complicated? So I think it’s a real challenge that the industry has, and it’s still something that I’m grappling with, with where we’re talking with a planner at the moment and we were fortunate to be have to have had someone put forward to us but I think also as a specialist practice, you’re naturally going to have the right sort of planners gravitating to your firm to and that maybe that’s just a side benefit of initialization.

Fraser Jack
I think it’s a really interesting point, isn’t it? Because you’re sort of, I say to people, when they’re marketing, if they say what they do, and they focus in on the one thing, then they will attract people that are in that space. They’re great.

Danni Visser
People don’t bite and so you should do that.

Fraser Jack
Although we’re good at it. Thank you so much for coming in and chatting to us about the session today at the stage is really appreciate it coming straight down and onto the onto the podcast. It’s been, it’s been great to be on. Thanks for having me.

Danni Visser
Good morning. Still everyone. We are day two at the SPCA Congress. I’m Danny, I’m representing X Y and the X Y team and the FBI are making sure that the people who couldn’t attend the sessions today still get those ideas and nuggets of gold so they can embed and improve their practices. Now I am joined by a trio. So this is going to be a fantastic chat. I’ve got three aged care specialists who did a session yesterday at the FPA on aged care and really shared with other advisors. What makes that a really rich conversation and you know their tips and tricks because I can imagine you’ve all been around in the FPA world and also as advisors for quite some time. Yeah, see nodding heads I’ll get I’ll get the trio to introduce themselves starting with you, Kerry, and who you are, how did you come to the FPA and then we’ll move on to the other things.

Kerry Darton
So I’m carried on. I’ve am the founder of clarity, financial advice, and I specialize in aged care. So I just help people understand the financial implications when they’re moving into care. So I work with other financial advisors within the FPA. That doing investment and product advice, and I just helped them as a specialist to address the aged care component for their clients.

Danni Visser
Fantastic. Hi, Jason. Welcome.

Jason Burley
Good morning. I’m Jason Burley from early age care advice. I’m also strategic aged care only. And I don’t provide any ongoing advice. So it’s all beeper service effectively. And I because there is no ongoing clients and no ongoing income. I’m always on the lookout for new business. And I do that by a range of marketing opportunities around the region.

Danni Visser
And Assyat how did I pronounce your name correctly? Assyat? Yes, yes, there we are.

Assyat David
So I’m Assyat from aged care steps. We support Kerry and Jason and other advisors to deliver aged care services for their clients. So we provide accreditation training on aged care, which is the foundation for the FTAs, specialist Aged Care Specialist designation. We provide software tools, and other support technical and practice development support to help them build and implement the aged care services.

Danni Visser
Fantastic. So give it where we’re doing little 10 minute chat. So it would be fantastic. For the people listening to share, I guess the things that will might help them in those aged care discussions like what was your panel on and then we’ll dive into the what can they take away and improve what they do.

Assyat David
So what we were talking about in the panel was will covering off a range of the different issues that advisors often think about when it comes to aged care, everything from dressing some of the misconceptions they may have about what business models they can choose, and identifying that they don’t necessarily have to be an aged care specialist. But we do think they need to have the aged care conversation with clients. We touched on how you would price for strategic advice like aged care. We also touched on issues such as how do you start the aged care conversation with clients through a range of different means, and went through a case studies to illustrate the value of advice and the good thing was a carry and Jason could then provide the practical insights around those issues.

Danni Visser
So can anyone provide any tips? You know, you talk about opening that conversation? When you’re working with someone who’s not a specialist in this area? What are the tangible things that you help them do?

Kerry Darton
So there’s three things that I think to start the conversation is most important. And one of the things I suggest to advisors is turning the family tree conversation upside down. So they talk to their clients about themselves and their wife and their children, and what their goals and objectives are. They very rarely talk about their parents. So turn that tree upside down, and occasionally ask them about what their parents health is like, do they think they’re going to help have to help their parents in their later years and how that’s going to impact their cash flow? Because if they have to take time out to do that, or whether their parents have the means to pay for their own care. The second thing is that when they’re doing the investment plan to have the conversation about do you think that you’re going to have to start work or your wife’s gonna have to start work. So that’s going to impact how much you’ve got to invest over a period of time. And then it can also highlight whether there’s going to be potential inheritances and investment opportunities in the future. And the third thing is that we all talk about estate planning and the importance of having a POA some enduring powers of attorney in place. So asking the client, do you have any POA in place, but then taking the next step and going IUE POA for anyone else. So, the other thing is that I don’t use the word necessarily aged care. I talk about the later years in retirement, people don’t want to talk about aged care. But if you start talking about what does that look like, in the last 25% of your retirement, it’s a much easier conversation to have with clients.

Danni Visser
And I can imagine it’s a huge release, particularly if someone is looking after a parent who is is deteriorating from a health perspective. I mean, that responsibility and that workload can fall on someone who is not in those years of you know, their later life, but they’re having to deal with all of those realities. And I guess that’s the scenario we certainly see a lot about in xy and those conversations, we have an ethical committee. And it’s really interesting that a lot of the ethical conversations, are those scenarios where someone does need to go into some level of care. And what do you do? And how do you navigate that? And what are the outcomes? So I guess it’s never really a straightforward conversation, which is why you specialize in that.

Kerry Darton
Yeah, it’s not a straightforward conversation. And if you ask anyone they want to stay in their home, the reality is that they can always stay in their home. So have the conversations about what that looks like, and how you’re going to plan for that going forward.

Jason Burley
Most of the people that go into aged care, don’t want to go and garage care. And yet aged care homes are thought, at the end of the day, there’s a necessity, yeah, and is kind of you can ignore it. But time the clock’s ticking. So further, what Carrie was saying about how to get how to get aged care and the conversations, what Kerry was talking about is really with the client base. And another way of where I’ve been looking at it is to try and get myself known well, in the region, I’m in a regional area. And so I want people to know that when I aged care is a need comes up that unknown, unknown to the person themselves or to somebody else that they’re talking to. Yeah, and I do that by, you know, effectively, monthly editorial that aged care steps provide I’ll put that into a local free magazine go out to see the solicitors and accountants other financial planners, making in aged care homes, some of those will refer some of them won’t. And in a number of different regions matter of thinking outside the square and so that way, you can actually get more aged care clients as well, then out of your existing cornhole.

Danni Visser
Yeah. And I guess the other thing is making people the value for I guess the community, then is that their understanding when they when this big event happens, that’s very life altering, you know, where do I go for help? So I guess, to have that in the, even if you don’t specialize in the conversation, or don’t want to, and you want to outsource that, like having that support team to be able to just offer as a solution? Because, yeah, I guess the clients might not know. So the thing that I’m interested in, and I don’t know if this is this is perhaps not what you covered in your session. But Elder abuse is a really interesting conversation that’s starting to emerge more and more. And it’s been something that I’ve been asking planners who specialize in, you know, perhaps, later year planning, have they come across it? What do they do? And if they suspect it, it’s a very awkward sort of conversation to host. Is this a topic that has come into your realms or something that you’ve had to deal with? And do you have any tips for those advisors out there that might suspect something isn’t quite right? And then what do I do next? What do I say?

Kerry Darton
So I have lots of conversations with enduring powers of attorney about making sure that they’re acting in their parent’s best interest, because sometimes I’ll be sitting across the table from someone and they’re saying, mum wants me to have this car, it’s like she doesn’t have capacity, you have a power of attorney, that doesn’t mean you can spend her money on a car. So having those conversations and referring them back to you need to get a legal opinion on what you’re trying to do. I think I see it probably could address this from a an aged care steps perspective.

Assyat David
So interestingly, we often talk about when aged care decisions are being made. We talk about the fact that a lot of the emotions drive the decisions and we talk refer them as the three G’s of aged care, which is that they that the person might be going through a lot of grief, a lot of guilt, but also greed is the other one. And this is where elder abuse comes into it. And sometimes the abuse may not be fun and financial abuse may be something that they’re not even aware that they’re actually doing well. They don’t recognize it as that. For example, they might say, Oh, look, I think that mom should give me or my children $10,000 Because that’s going to help Per Centrelink, Age Pension entitlements. But when you look at it, it’s not really giving away $10,000 In order to earn $500, is that really in the best interest of the client. And so it’s certainly an area that advisors need to be always on the lookout for and addressing. Sometimes the, the concern becomes that if you’re talking to the child, and you address the fact that there is elder abuse, the risk you take there is it the child of the person may say, You know what, I’m gonna go to another advisor. Yeah. And so therefore limits what you can do, but it is still something that that could be reported.

Unknown Speaker
And that whole $10,000, it’s like, is it really worth losing the access to that money, for a very small benefit.

Jason Burley
So case by case and really, like I’m, I’m so mindful of my clients, which are the people going into care. So that’s something to keep in mind that you might like, I don’t meet the majority of my actual clients, I have I made their partners or I make their children. Typically, I’m yet to have any elder abuse in or have not picked up any of it whatsoever. But also, I think the reason for that is, when I’m having my initial chat with the clients, it’s pretty clear that where my focus on and as most people aren’t going to pay my fee, to, in the hope that I’m going to help them rip off their parents, or whatever. So really, if you’re into aged care, and as specialists, I don’t come across it. And but I’m always going to love it, because it’s a very easy trap for people to fall into. And sometimes like that 10 grand, it might be fine, they might have 300 grand, okay, if you want to give it as long as it’s coming from the parents and not being driven by the,

Danni Visser
I guess advisors would perhaps if they’re having a broader conversation, and they’re hearing what a client who is aging is, you know, they might suspect within the broader family network, things are happening. And that’s, that’s so I guess, bringing in someone to your point earlier around you while you might not want to broach that subject in fear of losing the client, bringing in an independent person to make perhaps explore that scenario and have those deeper conversations might be a really helpful way to go.

Jason Burley
But also, would you want to have a client that’s ripping off their parents?

Danni Visser
No, I’m talking about. So they may be that they may be dealing with the parent understanding that there’s something going on in the broader universe, but then he’s infecting

Jason Burley
him in terms of bringing that up with the chance that these people might go to another advisor will save you. Good luck.

Assyat David
Yeah. And also see that you wouldn’t bring it up because you risk losing the client. So I’m just saying that what what often happens is when you do bring it up as an advisor, the client reaction may be oops, I better get out of here. And so that’s that’s what I’m doing. As opposed to Yeah,

Kerry Darton
I, I do have conversations about divesting. I don’t agree with divesting to get greater benefit from the government because it gives you less options and less choices. So it’s educating people that yet sounds great that Mum can give you the money. But it’s then limiting mums access to the care that she needs, and it’s her money. So like Jason, most of my clients, you would not go through what you have to go through to get someone into care and sit in front of me and talk about aged care if you didn’t really care about the person you’re with. So we’re probably lucky that our clients aren’t elder abuse clients. Yeah.

Danni Visser
Notice, I just wondered whether you’d seen that because it’s a question that we get from the from the client, the adviser who’s dealing with perhaps the person who’s receiving those, perhaps poor advice choices. So yeah, it’s a different relationship,

Jason Burley
I think that we would have a lot of given that’s all we do as aged care. But for those reasons, we actually,

Kerry Darton
potentially, and I’m sorry, I’ve spoken I’ve listened to The Guardian, Queensland Guardian speak and some of the stories about elder abuse are horrific, and you would need to report it if it came across your desk. But I’ve been fortunate enough that the people that I deal with care for their parents and they’re looking for the best care they can get.

Assyat David
And sometimes one of the best things you can do to address that is to pre plan ahead for aged care. So don’t wait for an incident when the when the person going into care doesn’t have capacity. If you can try and as an advisor sit down with your clients and their families and pre plan and put put some ideas and strategies in place, then that really reduces the overall risk of of elder abuse as well.

Danni Visser
Fantastic. Well, thank you all for joining me. It’s the first time we’ve had three people in the podcast seats as guests so thank you so much as Yeah, I did I get that right this time. Fantastic. Jason, and Carrie, thank you so much. Thank you

Clayton Daniel
Clayton here from XY with Danni and a special guests who’s flown all the way over from the UK literally just to get on this podcast.

Nick Eatock
The only reason I’m here.

Clayton Daniel
It’s Nick Eatock, The founder, CEO of Intel. Hello, thanks for joining.

Nick Eatock
Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Clayton Daniel
When I was in the UK in June, I actually the only time I left London was to go to your offices in Wimbledon. And because you got a fascinating story and the fact that we kind of get a chance to go behind the scenes a little I’m pretty excited about.

Nick Eatock
So great. I’m not realizing that actually now you’d set the date you came to us in Wimbledon? Yes, you just like everyone else who only comes us to Wimbledon to visit us in June July fortnight. In that summer. Everybody, they all do it.

Danni Visser
Australian Open isn’t

Clayton Daniel
so hilarious. So what on earth got you into financial planning? Advice, tech?

Nick Eatock
Oh, long story to that. So we built an original technology solution. This is way back in the late 90s. Cool to operate across something called the Internet might be new to you, certainly new to everyone back then. And we build a CRM workflow and document management capability and thought, wow, this is going to be fantastic. Yes, about a week and a half later, I read through some some journal. Journals were actually like, paper, I used to read like that, about this little company in the state called Salesforce who were also doing that. Right. So Larry Ellison had invested like 35 million bucks in them or something. So I thought, right, okay, we’re not going to do this generic CRM workflow stuff anymore. Find some vertical market industries. Awesome. And the second one we found was financial advice business. And it was really an as well, firstly, the first one was the legal businesses. And that was a real nightmare, to be honest, because they were so backward about technology. Yeah, I went into a training session, we were tiny business at a time, just three people. I think. It’s that stage of a business when you wear all the hats. We all know that. It’s kind of cool as well.

Danni Visser
The phone call? Yeah, I’ll

Nick Eatock
hand you over in a few seconds. Yeah, I’m here now.

Danni Visser
It’s also been Cathy.

Nick Eatock
So I sat in this room to train our first legal client. And it was a big sort of boardroom type desk. And there were six people all around. And there were monitors in front of them. The monitors were quite big in those days, this was before all the sort of the flat screen stuff. And it all operated on windows at the time. And I said, Right, okay, first thing to do, we’re going to start the application. So if you’re just using your mouse, click on the icon in the top left hand corner of the screen. Alright, pretty simple right there. All six of the people I was training at that point in time, pick their mouse up, on hovered and pushed it onto the top left of the screen. I thought, Oh, my God, this is going to take a long time,

Clayton Daniel
are in the late 90s.

Nick Eatock
That’s how backward it was. Yeah, I’m not going to say the firm name. Because if they ever listened to this, I’m screwed. But yeah, so financial advice was the SEC. financial advice business was the second firm we rise spoke to. And the technology in the UK at the time was just dreadful, and really dreadful. So we saw a huge opportunity. Yeah. And then I started finding out over the next few years, actually, what, you know, a financial advisor was because I didn’t know right, that yeah, and started understanding the value proposition, the difference they made. And ever since then, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been a huge fan of financial advice as a profession, and what it does and what it means to people, yeah. And if we can empower those advisors to be better, more efficient, deliver advice to more people. That’s pretty good.

Clayton Daniel
That is a great, yeah, that mission is essentially why we exist as a company as well, yeah, to drive the positive evolution of financial advice, because of the impact that the profession has on the everyday person. So where does at what stage so late 90s, early 2000s, you’re picking a niche, you’re going off to the financial planning market, at what stage? And this will let me know how far ahead we’re skipping. But you’ve also emanate a bunch of companies into where you are now. So when did when did that become a strategy? Rather than just say, because it’s build or buy, right? It’s always built up by? So at what stage does buy make more sense than build?

Nick Eatock
By I think by always makes sense. If what you’re buying actually is complimentary, the technology is well aligned. So it’s not. So there’s two bits here, there’s the functional thing. Actually, there’s three bits, there’s the functional bit. So what does the actual capability of the software do? And does it complement what you’re doing very, very well. The second bit is has the technology even been built? Because how it’s built actually determines very much whether you can actually integrate it seamlessly. And we’re all about joined user experiences, whether it’s for the end client for the advisor, paraplanner, who or whoever it might be, so you need that real technical alignment. Yes, and you will be amazed at how many tenants As you solutions that are out there that aren’t well, technological well constructed, yes. Because it’s easy to build software. Now, it’s not easy to build great software. Yeah. So that’s, and then the third bit, which is probably actually the most important of all is culturally, you know, what’s the team? What are the people like? Are they going to? Are you all going to work more effectively? Together? Yes. And sometimes that involves acquiring where sometimes some people don’t fit the mold, and that’s okay. You know, that’s if, if they can be part of the journey, that’s great. But those kinds of people sometimes don’t find a way in that I’ll move on to something different, and that’s fine, too.

Danni Visser
So Nick, you say something interesting there. There’s a difference between technology and great technology. It’s not that hard to build technology. But great to there is a big technology race. In the Australian market, what have you identified as a really important value adds for the advice businesses like what have you, what have you analyzed is the important thing that your business has to nail to create advocates?

Nick Eatock
I think it’s a similar, it’s not just about the Australia here, either. I think it’s the same challenge that is happening in lots of other countries around the world is definitely happening in the US, has happened and continues to happen to a certain extent in the UK. And that’s where technology grows and grows and grows and gets to a stage where it actually becomes less useful than it was originally, it kind of loses its 100%. And that’s and that’s challenging for software businesses, because they’ve got to work out. How do you innovate and change? Have you think about it from a software business perspective, a lot of the time, a lot of the challenges they have is all their technical engineers are telling them, we need to rewrite stuff on this latest cool technology, because that’s, that’s what we want to do. And that’s why we’re in this marketplace, you’ve got to complement that with realizing that actually the software itself, what it does what is therefore, actually innovates and evolves to because it all has to evolve. And this marketplace is changing at the same time. So how do you do both of those things? And I think you do it in two ways. I think you do you firstly, you have an open open API structure. So total open architecture is about how things should work in the marketplace. Because ultimately, our customers are financial advisors, and they’re their clients. So the end investor, whoever they may be, the the advisors want technology that works and does sometimes some quite niche things. And sometimes that means there’ll be taking their that they’ll be utilizing software from third parties, but then needs to integrate with the whole and you can’t just say look, okay, we’re gonna build a bad version of that. But it’s at least it’s our version. Let’s take the box. Yeah, you can’t do that. So you need to enable that that to happen. And we found you, aren’t you your original question was about how we brought businesses together. And when it was, yeah, one of the businesses we brought together started life as a store partner of ours. So they built an API integration to us, we put them on our marketplace, this has been running for sort of six years or so in the UK. And that business was doing really, really well. And guess what, we saw that it was doing really well. Perfect access to the data. Yeah. So we started talking to the team, they’re great bunch of people. Yeah. So Right. Why don’t we do something together on this, and that’s what started the conversation around around corporate. So that’s one part of the strategy, which is that open bid. The second bit is you also have to, I think, more increasingly, now you have to understand that user journeys have to be really well joined up. And it’s, it’s for all of the actors in that place. It’s not just the adviser. It’s not just the client, it’s not just the power planner, it’s all three of them working, working in perfect harmony. And that sometimes means you do need to build new stuff yourselves. Now if your architecture is solid, and for me, I’m an unashamed multi tenant SAS fan. God, that sounds horribly geeky, now I’ve just said it, to break that down. So SAS software as a service, so Salesforce is, is probably the best example of a multi tenant SAS. And ultimately, actually, all it really means is that you’ve got a single version of the code. So if you look at us today, now, we have a single version of the code in Australia, the US and the UK, we make 18 to 30 changes a day. Whoa, every time one of those changes goes in, it happens 20 milliseconds later, in the next two regions. So that means we’ve got a single version of the code. Okay, there’s regionalization. On top of that, that makes it Yep. Sound Ozzy or sound UK or whatever, and talks. Has the right kind of parameters set up there. Yes. But ultimately, it’s still a single version. So that means whenever we make a change, we’re only changing to one version. The death of software businesses is lots and lots of different versions of your software everywhere, because it becomes incredibly difficult to support. Yes, that’s what the cloud introduced, they use the single version. Back in the old days, people used to get CD ROMs or before that tapes even and had to update things but they wouldn’t update and they’d get it wrong. And then you’d have

Clayton Daniel
Support Pro, but it was a huge revenue model for tech companies to customize their the technology for each client. And then when SAS came along, the business model shifted, and so it was no longer Hey, pay us an extra few million dollars, we’ll make it just right for you that it killed that business model and for companies that were dependent upon that business model, it’s been a huge impact. Yeah,

Nick Eatock
a huge impact. Yeah. And I mean, we see that a lot. We talked to a lot of institutional firms who built their own software, or paid a third party to build the software for them. Yeah, they spent 10s of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, or whatever it is. And guess what, three years later, they realize that just rolled it out, because it probably has taken three years, and it’s out of date, the moment they launch it, it’s out of date, and it doesn’t do what they need to totally, then they might start again and start with another one. But with SAS, you know, that continually evolves. That’s actually the deal. That’s the contract you signed with your SAS vendor, that they’re going to innovate and keep updating the software. Yeah, if they’re not if they don’t do that they’re not really SAS. Yeah,

Clayton Daniel
fair play. I, the reason I was asking originally around the m&a Because obviously, you guys have come into Australia, after some substantial success in into the UK. My first thought was when you mentioned that it’s, you know, customized for each country or each territory. My first thought is in the UK. When you open up the screen, does it say, Oh, we lost the ashes again? No, no, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. So. So

Nick Eatock
how did the football game go?

Clayton Daniel
Sorry, anyway? Yeah, something’s happening. I’ll hire that person over there. So. So my question is regarding the US, right? So is us. Obviously the, you know, for us as well, like, the reason why we’ve changed from XY visor to ensemble is because we move over to the US and US big market. Is it? Are you the strategy? Is UK, Australia, US? Or is it Australia, US at the same time? How, what’s the rollout? What’s the rollout strategy,

Nick Eatock
so all three at the same time, because we’ve got loads of we’ve got lots to do in the UK as well, you know, so we have a decent market share some 45 46% in the UK, but there’s still a ways to go. We’re bringing new innovative products to that marketplace, too. Yep. Which also will come into Australia. And the US, too, is ultimately bringing all of those, all of those markets up at the same point in time, because they’re all whether you look at them from a technology perspective, they’re all at slightly different stages. If you’re looking at them from a marketplace, and the profession, the advice profession, yeah, you know, I think, you know, the US advise profession is changing, and they’ve got a way to go. That’s really, really interesting. The technology in some respects is pretty good out there. And two of the businesses, sorry, three of the businesses actually that are part of the group now part of the single group are US software businesses, originally Wow. And so a lot of our digitalized account, opening money movement type stuff, which is stuff that we’ve got in the States is also now going to come into into into Australia, in the UK, or you can just see how all this stuff starts complementing each other. We want to continue to do that continue to innovate on what we’ve got already. Yeah,

Clayton Daniel
it’s very interesting point that you make it is professionalism is increasing in financial advice around the world, or as simultaneously, as is the expectation of what software delivers. One of the best lines I’ve ever heard, I will I’ll attribute it to the author is Matt Han from net wealth, who said, People expect the same technology experience that they just encountered? And more often than not, it’s Google or Facebook. And so when someone’s coming from that environment, they need to keep that standard, right. And so what I what I like about your strategy in the way that you’re talking about how it’s rolling out globally, is that the standard exists, and it’s our job in our profession to meet that standard. And that standard is unanimously desired globally. So that’s cool. I’m, I’m happy that we’re not just the little backwater. You know, that you’re being nice and saying, Oh, look, we’ll we’ll give the Aziz a, you know, a couple of little bits of software before we move over to the US, it’s very nice of you to even good, because the industry is a lot smaller here compared to the UK or the US. So

Nick Eatock
95% of the stuff we build, yeah, is the same in all three territory. That’s wild. 95% 5% of it is that configuration layer across the top. That makes it a little bit different for each market. Sure, because we have an open API structure. And she integrations with things that are proprietary to a particular territory. I just done by the third party with our API. So we don’t actually we don’t actually have to do the coding work behind that either. So that you know that And to be fair, that’s the kind of the Salesforce strategy as well, you know, they, they’ve grown up through a lot of chaos capacity and capability that they haven’t had a thing to do with. Yes, they’ve just provided a framework to do it. Yes. You know, back to your point of the kind of the advice journey, when I look at it, that there’s a, we did some research on this, you’ve got the kind of, if you think of that new client advice, journey, you’ve got onboarding, yes, you’ve got the advice itself. And then you’ve got the implementation of that assurance, whatever it is, when you do the consumer research, the bit in the middle, the clients really like they liked the advice bit highly personalized, is telling them something about them. It’s Yes, it’s, it’s an interactive approach. Yes. And they’re coming up with it, or your advisor is coming up with a plan that you think will will help you in your future life. Yes, your immediate, immediate lifetime, or your retirement or whatever it might be. They love that bit. They hate the onboarding, because they have to go through something called fat finding. Yeah. Which actually isn’t fat finding very often it’s guest finding, because you’re asking pertinent questions of a client that they don’t really know the answer to. So they’re gonna make some of it. Yeah, technology takes the strain from that, and actually makes it become really interesting. Yes. And then the implementation bit, and this is to your point is just terrible. It is an actual terrible experience. These are, you know, we’re all used these days to buying something from Amazon, where we just click a button. And that’s it. 100% Sure some stuff happens in the background. But as far as we’re concerned, transactions concluded I press the button. And I know because of Amazon Prime, it’s going to arrive tomorrow or same day in some places. Yeah. So that’s incredible. Yes. financial advice, isn’t it that that implementation bit across various platforms and other other third parties is really rubbish is really rubbish. And that’s the stuff that we want to improve.

Danni Visser
So when we go from like, obviously, that’s the meeting of the standard. Yeah, looking for when when does it come to a point? What would you like to see where you’re exceeding the standard? Like, what does the next kind of five years we go look, instead of just catching up and providing that experience that’s been set? Do you think that advice we’ll ever be technology enabled advice we’ll ever be in a position to go, we’re actually setting the standard. Wow, like, what does that look like? And is that five? It would be? Isn’t it possible?

Clayton Daniel
It’s a caution? Come on, Nick,

Nick Eatock
of course as possible. Technology can do pretty much anything, so long as you’ve got the time and the money, unfortunately, to actually build that stuff. And that’s one part again, back to it’s not Australia’s definitely not a backwater for us is because it’s this single strategy. And she doesn’t matter where people are, say, you know, whether they’re in the US whether they’re in Australia, or they’re in the UK, they’re still using exactly that same technology platform. So all we’re doing is we’re just getting more people onto that and the more users are on there, that actually helps us fund, you know, the stuff we’re doing with next level experience. Exactly. And that next level experience I think, is going to be you know, for me now, this is all this entire marketplace in everywhere around the world, by the way, is about clients experiencing that experiences, those wow moments. As a client, you want to have wow moments with your advice, you know, because it’s incredibly important to you. So why shouldn’t it be? Why am I saying we we owe it to clients to make these? Well,

Danni Visser
it’s almost the outcome. That’s Wow. But if you can bring that that front journey to that same level, though, what they experienced in four years time of working with an advisor, that’s a huge opportunity that advisors would love. From what we hear.

Clayton Daniel
Awesome. Hey, Nick, thank you so much for jumping into the podcast and sharing with us. It’s been great. I loved it. I love it.