AdviceTech Podcast #13 – Advice Intelligence – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the XY advice tech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And joining me here today to deep dive into the advice intelligence software is an accomplished equestrian, a fin tech award winner and a software development survivor. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Jacqui Henderson.

Jacqui Henderson
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I’m very honored to be here. And I’m very excited that you’ve got these podcasts because you know, the advice tech world needs a bit of a voice. So thank you

Peita Diamantidis
so much for us all to try and understand and get across this just I know it’s never ending minefield, isn’t it?

Jacqui Henderson
In tech advice tech providers.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s just more and more. It’s crazy stuff is crazy stuff. So I’m keen to dive into all things advice, intelligence, but let’s get to know you a little bit first, via your use of technology. So tell me what is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Jacqui Henderson
I’m a bit cheeky. So there’s probably like the cheeky face the cheeky laughy face. That’s probably the most used one. But I actually because I updated my iPhone. I’ve now got the new little fingers over your eyes like peeking one. I really liked that one. Yeah, it’s a new newbie.

Peita Diamantidis
Kind of I’m gonna have to update my iPhone.

Jacqui Henderson
Oh, you Oh, because I kept getting it. And I was like, What is this emoji? That has a question mark. And I’ve only updated my phone and like, ah, fantastic new emojis.

Peita Diamantidis
Right? You can’t get better or more exciting than that. Exactly. So then if you had to delete all the apps off your iPhone, and just keep three, which ones would you keep?

Jacqui Henderson
Okay, well, probably my banking app. Keep that one my slack. Because that connects me to my whole team. Yeah, so I cannot delete slack. It’s just amazing. I love it. And probably my Outlook as well. Okay. That’s probably it.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, look, we’ve all got a bit of a business focus, don’t we? So it makes sense. Yeah. Business happy things? For sure. I mean, my most used? Yeah, well, I mean, we in our business, now we’ve gone fully virtual, and we couldn’t do without slack. That’s where we live. You know, that’s, that’s really the office, you know, so awesome. All right, let’s dive into advice. Intelligence. So for the listener out there that maybe isn’t as away Let’s go a bit high level and a bit broad. Let’s give us a sense of, you know, what category does AI sit in the advice, tech space, you know, and who are you sort of generally, you know, lined up next to you know, what to do? What sort of area do you guys play in?

Jacqui Henderson
Yes. So, advise intelligence is an advicetech platform that is really in the realm of goals based financial advice, financial planning, that you can do live in front of your clients. And it’s kind of quite unique. So it’s, it’s kind of sits a bit left field to most of your traditional you planning and CRM platform. So we’re just that little bit different. So yeah, we kind of look at digital advice. So a hive If human we’ve technologically, you’re providing advisors with enhanced tools so that they can provide financial plans with their clients and produce instant digital statements of advice. So, yeah, we’ve been building out our our sort of unique tech for the last sort of six years. So it’s been quite the journey. It’s quite complex subject matter, of course,

Peita Diamantidis
and ever changing some subject matter. I’m betting exactly

Jacqui Henderson
superannuation tax law. So yeah, it’s basically a new realm of financial planning. Awesome. So

Peita Diamantidis
I’m betting then having, you know, sort of take a look at the broad elements, then you’ve got the And that’s particularly interesting, actually, well, there’s a few but particularly interesting is you’re sort of interactive discovery tool elements do you want to just talk us through initially, so. So guys, I mean, there’s the normal the CRM, most of the tools that are like this have a core sort of core place where client data leaves, you know, exactly, and there’ll be some modeling, and we can get to that, but the sort of the clients entree into, you know, advice, and you is quite interesting. So you want to run this through how that works, and what that’s about. Yeah, so

Jacqui Henderson
the interactive discovery can be embedded on an advisors website. So it’s got like this little sort of plugin that advisors can put on their website, which is used to engage clients. So it’s to take them through a simplified engagement journey that takes their goals and life aspirations because we like to as a gold platform, we’d like to look at the life aspirations for clients, because we know that that’s the most important thing that they’re looking for, they’re wanting to either retire or buy an investment property, whatever it is, we start with their goals. And then we look at, you know, 11 pieces of your high level financial data, you know, what your liabilities are income expense information, key in that information. And that poor route produces basically their first iteration of their wealth map. So they get a little reward for just entering a bit of data. And we make it inspirational as well. So it’s, it’s more inspiring experience to engage. So they can do that in the comfort of their home on their iPad. And basically, that produces their first iteration of their wealth map. So it will tell them based on their current financial circumstances, whether or not they can or cannot achieve the goals. So also, your 50% achievability, of achieving your retirement goal. So it kind of prompts them to go, oh, wow, I really need to look at this, I really need to look at my retirement goal, I’m only 50% of the way they’re so off the back of that they can then book an appointment with an advisor, and start the advice journey. So that’s basically that interactive discovery, making it an engaging process, because, you know, they don’t want to necessarily fill out a 500 page form as we have with fact. You know, we found that with a lot of our consumer research, that it wasn’t a process that clients wanted to continue to pursue that traditional, you know, experience, it was a bit of a barrier and found that clients were dropping out of the process and not wanting to continue the advice journey and to see an advisor and, and take the next steps. So the, the objective of that is basically to make them want to keep pursuing the advice journey with their advisor.

Peita Diamantidis
So that’s an interesting difference in the way that we sort of went all the way we collect data from clients, because what’s nice is you’ve sort of given them like an interim feedback loop, which is something that doesn’t happen in most, you know, really old school to be fair, but but the traditional way that we’ve all done it, where you might collect a whole lot of information, and then it goes into the black hole in which we keep secret, and we might analyze it. And then at some point in the future, the client, you know, finds out something. So I think, you know, that’s nice, because, aside from that, there is all this great work we do as advisors, but clients are used to instant gratification now on every other part of the world, you know, so they can find stuff out instantly. So to actually give them some initial feedback, and I’m assuming that that also, you know, very quickly identifies gaps. And that’s a great thing, you know, to actually give them a reason to make that appointment. You know, like,

Jacqui Henderson
yeah, because like, human behavior, it’s like some people are driven by that bit of a confrontation, bit of fear. Oh, wow, I really need to do something about this. Yeah. And it kind of drives a bit more motivation and prompting to, you know, see an advisor and have a conversation. Yeah, absolutely.

Peita Diamantidis
So then, what are now I’m gonna go back a little because I am a bit curious. And we do have we’ve interviewed a number of people that have sort of started their own apps for one of a better description of all types, you know, all sorts of things. And I’m just curious what made you embark on this path because it’s been In a fairly long one, I’m imagine somewhat torturous and involved and maybe even, you know, costs and all sorts of things. What made you start this journey?

Jacqui Henderson
Yeah, well, the journey started with having, you know, owned and ran a wealth management firm. So I really innately understood all the pain points that financial advisors were experiencing, running a financial firm, like I just understood those quite intimately. So we, and also the client experience, because we wanted to be like, as in our wealth management, now, value proposition was around the client’s goals and life aspirations. And we wanted to design our advice process around that. So there was no technology that existed. And this is some time ago, like we started the business back in 2004. So the tech, the technology wasn’t there. And over that sort of 10 year period of running it, it just didn’t exist. So that was kind of the motivation behind myself was just understanding the pain points, not having the right technology available to deal with that. And also understanding the way in which consumers were adopting technology. Because, you know, we’ve seen consumers basically do this, like a massive J curve in technology adoption, like we run our lives through smartphone apps. And basically, advice has kind of been quite stagnant in terms of innovation around technology, and the technology that is provided to clients. So I wanted to really bridge that gap between the way in which we’re delivering financial advice, which is through paper, still, traditionally, we’ve given these statements of advice, like, you know, while consumers are running their lives have smartphones. And so we have really wanted to like, it really kind of developed this vision that I had around being able to have this hybrid model of human and technology designed around the life aspirations of clients, but then be able to be data driven. So I wanted to create a data driven financial plan that’s live, has investment data, it has bank account information, all of that feeding into it, that can then track the client over their journey and have transparency between the advisor and the client. So, you know, the advisor can basically say, okay, my client just spent your $130,000 on this car, like that wasn’t in the plan. And so we can read baseline, you know, the plan in a dynamic way, not in a static way off a piece of paper that’s put into a drawer that the client never looks at again. So I really wanted to provide innovation to the industry. Because, you know, a lot of the incumbents weren’t and I tried to work with the incumbents on, you know, back in the day, before I embarked on the journey, it’s like, how can I leverage existing technology providers, and they weren’t really sort of understanding my vision and what we kind of what I wanted to do and what what I wanted to implement within my business. So yeah, that kind of was the starting point of the company and probably a bit of naivety because, you know, six years later, and $50 million spent on the technology, you’re kind of like, Yeah, wow. So yeah, and, and basically, we see this triangulation in the market of, you know, you’ve got regulatory changes, you know, we’ve been in this constant state of change with all these regulatory changes. We’ve got technology advancements happening, we’ve got industry 4.0, where, you know, technologies like machine learning blockchain, redefining industries. And yet, we’re not really adopting this technology to really leverage your the industry and we are innovated and take it on the industry 4.0 journey. So I kind of saw those factors. And then consumer demand, consumer demand is at its all time highest, like I hear advisors saying, I have to turn away clients because they simply can’t service them. So I wanted to really help advisors through technology to, you know, meet demand, provide a better client experience, support them really enhance their value proposition and help them articulate their value to their clients. So that’s kind of Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
And look, the the time series data thing is a real, like, it’s something that unless you’ve been asking lots of questions or multiple texts, you don’t realize it’s this sort of unicorn of something because lots of us can do I can analyze something now, and I can analyze it back then. And then they can be two separate things, but it’s not easy to sort of have this dynamic moving feast that lets you go alright, we talked about this being a goal. Where are you at now? How does that like it’s, it’s actually relatively hard to do so. So It’s hard, it’s intuitive to the client, they’re like, Well, of course, that’s what I want. You know, I want some outcome I need to achieve. Correct? Correct. So it’s exciting to be sort of heading down that path. Now in terms of then, based on all that sort of elements that you’ve got, then I’m betting it’s not just advisors that are using this, this becomes sort of a core tool, you know, the practices that implement this, I’m betting it’s in your other members of the team are all sort of users of AI. Is that right?

Jacqui Henderson
Correct, yes, because we’ve got the CRM at its core, and then what’s called the wealth map, which is your tool that you can model out different scenarios, your product, comparators, all of that with with the client live in front of a client, but you’ve got the sport of your power planner, because we’ve got models where some of our clients have their power planner, driving the technology, or the advisors driving the technology and not utilizing a power planner within the organization. And then you’ve got the support and admin. So sort of any of your licensee, we’ve got all of that hierarchy as well. So a licensee can manage all the different practices underneath their license. So So yeah, and we deal with all the compliance pieces as well, and so that they can do your simplified auditing and compliance management.

Peita Diamantidis
So I’m betting because you’ve sort of approached this from a individual, you know, client advisor relationship and then sort of gone up to licensing, then I imagine, then it becomes that point where, when the the needs can be different, you know, so it’s, it must be hard to juggle that, because, and, of course, every advisor out there has experienced the reverse where something gets implemented, you know, top down, and it’s great for the license Burr, like, Oh, for goodness sake, this is not adding in anyway. So I mentioned that must have been interesting, as you’ve embarked on that sort of expansion up through to, you know, licensees having access and being able to use the tool, that you’ve sort of hit some, you know, decision points where well, do we make that harder for advisors to make it better for licensees or not?

Jacqui Henderson
Yes, correct. I mean, you’ve got compliance departments that also take on their own, you know, taken version around compliance. So it becomes very base, both within your licensee. And so yeah, we’ve we’ve been at both ends. So we’ve got, you know, the licensee in their agenda and the visor their agenda, but Well, I think we’ve done pretty well, especially over the last 18 months to kind of bridge the gap. And, you know, between the licensee and the advisor, and and, yeah, I mean, you’ve got, as an example, we had one of the licensees that were we’ve been working with, they wanted, you know, because we were all digital and digital provides your a full audit report, like when a client read an SOA, what time like when, you know, the multi factor authentication, sign off on the SOA, all of those bits, which, you know, help the compliance aspects. But yet, the compliance departments wanted to have it in Word, what version? It’s like, we’ve just digitized. Yeah. And it’s more compliant. And you can do peer reviews. And you could do all of these things. But then they wanted to go in there thinking to go Word version. But then they’ve realized and come back and gone. Oh, no, we’ve been using in the, like, in the journey of digital, we’re like, Oh, my God, digital is way better.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s hard, isn’t it, it’s because you get the need, like, abundantly clear, the need for compliance, and all of the structure and their assistance, right, and there’s all this insight they can give. But to be frank, they’re given nowhere near enough time to understand and get trained on things like the tech that’s out there. I mean, there almost needs to be a program where compliance, people just get inundated with all the advice to get right so that they can understand and go, Oh, this is, in fact, better and more compliant. Like, you know, but you’ve got to have taken that, you know, have the time to take that time, and the understanding and the background. And so, you know, I understand their challenge. But of course, I’m also deeply empathetic to the advisors who are like, oh, like, can we like this? Steezy a play? He’s, you know,

Jacqui Henderson
I know, because it is, it’s a behavioral change. Like, it’s all around behavior, and that openness and willingness to, you know, do things a bit differently, and, and at the end of the day, you know, you’ll reap the benefits of just going through a little bit more pain to learn something new, right? It’s like with any innovation, it’s you kind of what I call the the chasm of doubt, where you kind of come aware and then you’re quite adverse, and then you like to start getting it and then you’re like, oh, become a power user.

Peita Diamantidis
All of a sudden, exactly. Now, you’ve you’ve been at this a little while and you’re you’re getting both licensees and practices to onboard, I’m betting no use, you probably see a theme of you know who the tool really works well for in either a practice or an advisor type versus who might struggle, like, is there sort of, do you see some difference in that, that, that really, you know, who’s the people that this just, they just get it, you know, and it just really get some sort of accelerating in terms of either their growth or their take up?

Jacqui Henderson
Yeah, so definitely, from a generation perspective, we do see that. So you’re more millennial, and Gen X type advisors. Yep, get it, they use technology, they want technology to be more in line with the way they use technology now, like run it in other disciplines, like, on their phones, etc, or, you know, how they bank or whatever. So, you see advisors really finding it easier to adopt from that perspective, but then you’ve got other advisors who are like, I just need my power planner to do it. So my power planner needs to drive it, I don’t want to know about it, I don’t want to learn this whole new, you know, realm, quite happy, you know, in my little, you know, way of doing things. So, yeah, it’s kind of like, I mean, we’ve been working with, like, especially one particular licensee to ensure that all the advisors because they’re like, No, this is mandated, you need to use this technology this way. And so we’ve kind of had to do a lot more hand holding with those other advisors who are probably a bit older and, and have been doing things for so long, in one particular way. So that that is a bit of a challenge. But we’re, we’ve been working through that with with the licensees, and we have an amazing onboarding team that will help support that journey and train and like, do a lot of a lot of the hand holding. So. So yeah, you definitely see it from a generation perspective. Adoption.

Peita Diamantidis
And I guess, um, you know, it’s also the ease with which I mean, if you look back then technology was something that we, you know, we stepped into to use for a certain part of the process like it’s humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, talking talking humans, humans, tech analysis, then humans, humans, humans, right. So you know, it was one piece, that’s a significant shift to what I’m sort of hearing you describe, which is more like, this is your tech buddy, that’s going to sit with you, as you go through this whole process with a client, this is not a, your turn up, you know, for one little step, it’s along for the ride. And so that is a mindset shift with pretty significant.

Jacqui Henderson
One, because you’re now you know, not using spreadsheets, you’re now got this tech, sitting in the middle of between you and your client, that’s while laying out all these various scenarios and determining what’s going to give the client the best outcome because it can do 1000s more calculations than your own human brain. And it’s a bit more accurate in terms of projections and modeling all of that, and it’s doing all this sophistication, and it’s making you look good, because, you know, you can now do, okay, well, what if we do this? And what if we do that? And, you know, and it will show the client? What will happen, the impact on this goal and this goal, and, and, you know, help those conversations around? Okay, well, we might have to try this one often, you know, set this aside or reduce the amount or reduce the time horizon or whatever it is. It’s this dynamic kind of experience. So,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, okay. Yeah, it’s very new. And so is there any for somebody who’s sort of, you know, curious about the tool and, you know, taking, taking a look there? Is there anything you’d get them to do before, that just gets them really set up to sort of lean into a tool like this, given that, given that it’s, you know, you sort of take money along the way, then, is there anything you’d suggest, Hey, go away and work on this? And that’ll get you really set up?

Jacqui Henderson
Yeah. So the Kim who runs our whole onboarding team, she basically has this incredible training journey and academy that our users go through, and it’s broken down into little chunks, so it’s not overwhelming and all too much. So we kind of break it down into little little chunks. And, and it’s delivered via, you know, you can choose the way you consume the training as well, like it can be on demand. It’s also in built so you know, if the user doesn’t know how to add a new client, they just type in add new client and the tech watch should tell them how to do it. So it’s quite intuitive in that sense. But yeah, and then also doing that one on one or group sessions, so we run training, you’re Across our website, so you can go to a website and just walk into a training session that are run every day. So that’s kind of Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s all the support is there. Yeah. So it’s really just kind of breaking down and doing little chunks and, and it does take time. But it’s worth the time of investing into you’re doing something new, because you know, we’re evolving. And, you know, technology is gonna enhance every industry, no matter what it is, you know, the industry that you’re in, there’s going to be constant advancements of technology, it’s really kind of not being afraid of it, and just really getting in there.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. Are there any features or any elements of the tool that, like you see, you know, current users have really ninja it like you you’re blown away, but what they’ve managed to do, or, or, you know, the impact of Ted, is there anything that any surprises like that? Yeah, well,

Jacqui Henderson
I think the wealth map has been like quiet. I mean, that’s our innovation is the wealth map, because like, advisors are going well, I will, first of all, their advice process is being completely cut, like down. So all that friction that exists within the traditional manual advice process has been cut down so that they can basically become more efficient, reduce their cost to serve, I was actually presenting at a conference and one of our users came up to me and said, Oh, my God, I love you guys. We can now produce advice, like I did a piece of advice and the other day, and it took me an hour. And I was like, Oh, my god, that’s amazing. Yeah, I was like, it’s nice to hear that feedback, too. But yeah, it’s, it’s the wealth map is the thing that, you know, we have really pride ourselves on because it’s the tool that enables advisors to have enriched conversations with their clients, and helps them to really demonstrate the value of financial advice. Yeah, so that, you know, those people can go out and tell other people word of mouth that, you know, went and had this, you know, great experiences on this financial advisor, and, you know, I did all this scenarios, you know, I want to achieve all these things in my life, they helped me actually work out what it is I wanted to do with my life and, and took me on the steps on how I need to get there. Breaking it down, and what, you know, if I did this, or if I did that, the impacts of decisions and how they have on my future. Yeah, so it’s so inspirational. And that’s the part that I really love is that, you know, we want to like design people’s lives. Yeah, like, I want financial advisors to really design people’s lives, I want the, you know, the emotional element and the inspirational element to really come out like transpire and in the conversations that advisors have with their clients, and so yeah, that’s the, you know, the thing that I love, I just love the the wealth map and what it can do, and the future iterations of it, and where it’s going to go from here.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it’s, um, I remember having a conversation, I was lucky enough to try some virtual reality stuff through a little while ago, actually, through the XY group, and which was fun, and they’re saying, Oh, we’re good, you can you see these go. And I, I would love to be in a, you know, as all beta point where somebody could put on these VR glasses, and it be a visual manifestation of that. So they’re looking into their future, and they can see all these wonderful things they’re going to be doing, and they’re grayed out if they’re not possible, you know, so it’s something that and as they work harder and do different things, and implement some stuff, suddenly, they become more vivid and real, and they get closer, you know, so it’s really painting this picture of their future, because it’s so motivating that sort of stuff. You know, it will slowly however it is it is it really gets people going and taking Maybe, and maybe not even hard steps, just, you know, breaking a few habits, breaking a few things, that of the regular stuff we do putting a bit more away, like all those little things, but you know, everybody should do, you’ve got to give them that, that little bit of inspiration to to get them there. So you know, it’s exciting to see where that could lead and and, you know, the way we could take that, that sort of completely Yeah,

Jacqui Henderson
absolutely. Because it also helps the client because the client, it helps them visualize, because that helps that reticular activation system part of the brain and really kind of create that like real vision around what it is you want to achieve, which actually increases the chances and the probability of you actually achieving it. So the more clarity you have around the thing As you want to achieve in life, the more you’re going to attain them. So yeah, that visual experience is really important. And we actually did a prototype and we showed it back at the last FBA comm. Congress. And it was a augmented reality that enabled an advisor to have gold cards, and basically bring those gold cards to life. Wow. And, you know, the retirement was like this, you know, couple on the beach. And then there was like, you know, wanted to buy a new car, and it had like this Land Rover and then went inside the Land Rover, and it was like, yeah, it was really cool. So

Peita Diamantidis
it is an end, I think we can get caught up in advice with the complexity of it all. But the thing is, most of what we do is rooted in data, and in numbers and in calculation. And the minute you’re in that environment, it’s made for tech, like, take, like, just loves that stuff, it’s much harder, when it’s, it’s purely human emotion, or, or even physicality, we’re not, we’re dealing with a lot of numbers, even if it’s about inspiration, it’s about the possibility their money can get them there. So it makes sense that, like you say, we’d be further ahead than we are, you know, because we’re actually an industry that’s perfect for this stuff.

Jacqui Henderson
It’s, it’s like numbers in humans, it’s like the role of the advisor is all about numbers. And it’s all about human emotions, dealing with a human on such a personal, intimate level, you know, you get told, you know, so many secrets, you’re a holder of all these valuable, like, personal information from your clients, and, and then you’ve got to do all this complex modeling and calculations and numbers. And it’s bringing like that together. And that’s what our wealth map does, it brings that all together.

Peita Diamantidis
And look, who knows where it’ll go, I mean, there’s now AI tools, where instead of getting a stock photo for your website, you can use AI, and it’ll effectively paint you a picture that you you know, with certain elements, and maybe that’s where some of this will go where it’s, you know, it’s

Jacqui Henderson
projected five years ahead, like you in five years, this is you got 20 years of what you look like, right? I

Peita Diamantidis
mean, how exciting would that be? And and how much fun would it be to present you know, that advice, you know, it’s, it’s really building like you say, it’s that sort of lifestyle architecture, it’s really building a home and you know, a future for them. So on that now that I’ve really laid out the development path for, you know,

Jacqui Henderson
the whole vision, they’re already my brain,

Peita Diamantidis
give me a list. So D, is there anything coming up on the development pan paths or, you know, releases or anything that’s, that’s coming up that you guys will be sort of, you know, been working on that’s coming, you know, down the track. And,

Jacqui Henderson
yeah, we’ve got some exciting stuff coming out. So we’re enhancing our goals, tool, goals, modeling tools, so that it can automate and predict advice, strategies for advisors. So it helps go, here’s a client and all their information, their financial circumstances. And then these are the recommended, you know, strategies or trade offs around the goals. So that, you know, automating that, that advice process and some of those conversations helping support that because it’s doing some complex modeling that sits behind that. So there’s, there’s that coming out, we’ve got hooking up bank account data. So we’ve done the first iteration of a data driven financial plan that’s tracking to a client goals through the investment data, so we get investment, super pension data into the platform. The next stage of that is, then we’re hooking up the bank account data. So the clients bank accounts, their mortgage, their credit card, so if they’ve got goals of I want to pay down my credit card debt, they can hook up their account that has a credit card liability. And the strategy that is to pay down that debt in a shorter time period, off surplus, cash flow, or whatever it is, whatever the strategy is, that actually sits behind the goal. So you’ve got the goal, the strategy, but also the account balance. And so that’s that data driven financial plan. So that’s the that’s where we’re headed with the technology, which is really exciting. And then we’ve designed the whole data model around machine learning, and, and we’re looking at ways in which we can apply that to the industry as we build, you know, the data set. So So yeah, super exciting.

Peita Diamantidis
It is. And so, in terms of that, say like a bank account or or a credit card, is that sort of focused at the moment, just on the sort of balance update, or are you guys working towards that whole cash flow II? Ins and Outs sort of vendor? Is that not where it’s at?

Jacqui Henderson
Yes, yes. So cash flow. So definitely like that whole cash flow modeling because we do that in the platform called and cash flow modeling. So basically, it’s taken an extension on

Peita Diamantidis
that. And it’s exciting to start to get more of that. I mean, cash flow has always been sort of the, the poor brother for us, right? It’s just sort of get ignored. Like it’s the single biggest contributor to somebody’s future outcome. But nevermind. Likely. It’s um, it’s so important. And, and when we look at elements, even like insurance, you know, the affordability of that insurance, it’s all well and good to want to protect yourself. But if you can’t afford actually afford those premiums, you know, we need to work that out. Okay, how are we going to reconsider this? So I think like,

Jacqui Henderson
you see that instantly, like, literally, we will model out your insurance what you need, and then whether or not you can afford that in your cash flow. So automatically does that in the wealth map? It will go okay, well, you can afford that because it’s going to set you this how, you know, comes into cash flow.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah. Premium. Awesome. And I do think they made the advice

Jacqui Henderson
fees. It’s like, okay, well, can you afford the advice? Well, here’s the advice feed is modeling in your cash flow. Yeah, for sure. And you want to charge

Peita Diamantidis
and people don’t. It’s funny, you know, as an industry, and you’ll go to an industry event, and let’s talk about financial literacy early sort of things. And invariably, the first topic that comes up is something about Super. And I always find that interesting, because that’s not how most human beings operate. When you talk about money. The first thing they don’t think about, is this super,

Jacqui Henderson
no, no, because it’s a long term horizon, like people don’t think long term in their thinking, like, don’t think long term horizons. So super, is this thing that’s way out here. Yeah. And whereas everyone thinks short term, like,

Peita Diamantidis
and to be fair, you know, the government mandating a level of super contributions has, in part ticked off part of what they could be focusing on for Super right, because we’re already forcing ourselves to do. So. Take Yeah, but we’re not doing it, you know, earlier on, leading up to retirement. So I think the need to sort of have a way to get a picture of a client’s cash flow, even if even if you’re not in maybe the business, not all advisors are going to be into the minutiae of cash flow advice, but I think to be able to represent, you know, over time, even just changing balances in savings accounts, like all of that tells its own story, right?

Jacqui Henderson
You know, it does, like the numbers tell stories, they always do. Like, that’s what we designed the wealth map to do to tell a story. Yeah. Yeah. Like you’re a storyteller.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. 100%. And easily get those messages, you know, really quickly by taking a look and oh, wait a minute, that’s heading in the wrong direction, stuff.

Jacqui Henderson
And there’s also the behavior that sits behind that cashflow piece, because that could be the blocker that’s not like getting you to the goal that you’re wanting to achieve. So if you’re like spending habits, and not a contrary to the goal that you’re trying to achieve, it’s like, that’s the thing that needs to be nipped in the bud. And that’s the behavioral piece that the advisor needs to look at and work with. And yeah, it’s really that, and then changing behaviors and mindsets. And yeah, kind of coaching in that sense.

Peita Diamantidis
Correct. And, I mean, it sounds like, you know, as we sort of evolved with all these tools, it’s, it’s, you know, the client needs some coaching and danger, behavior and mindset. And advisors do too, we’re gonna have to adjust, you know, we’re gonna have to change the way we do things and, and potentially not force tools into our structure, we might need to shift and change and reconsider what order things happen in all sorts of stuff. Yeah,

Jacqui Henderson
completely. That’s a really great point, because I presented at the IFA conference recently, and, and a firm came up to me and said, Wow, you actually just demonstrated to me that I need to stop thinking about my advice process first, and look at the innovation that’s been done. And I need to change the My way of doing my advice process. Yeah. And so that’s really, you know, that was a super interesting point that this person made. I was like, exactly, right. Like, that’s what we’ve kind of always spent over six years designing this device versus it’s going to help you it’s like, you guys are gonna come with us. Not just trying to fit us into Miami tional way of doing things, which actually isn’t serving you any purpose, because it’s all it’s full of friction. Yeah. And it’s manual. And it’s like, like, yeah, yeah, I need to look at,

Peita Diamantidis
and I think, look, it’s an, you know, we will say this with things. It’s sort of hard to, well, what are you really saying? I mean, it’d be like, if we will. Now a lot of the listeners is going to be too young for this. But in the old rotary phones, you know, you’d pick up a handle and then you’d do this circular dial thing, right? We had for each number. It’d be like if when they you know, developed the mobile phones and my iPhone now would still have the circular dial thing I’ve got to do for free number like, like nananana No, wait a minute. I need to change my process so that I can cope with the fact that I just press one button and get straight through to call them eight. Right? So, you know, I think perfect analogy, right? So I think we really, you know, we’ve just got to go with the flow a beat. And if it means that you get to know your own process a bit better, so that it’s easier to break. I know that sounds strange, but often it’s easy to pull things apart, once you really understand them, you know, and, and you can sort of break them up and then look at some of these great tools like yours and go, Alright, how would that fit? And what would we do? Then? You know, that’s, that’s certainly the way we’ve always done it would take is, you know, know, our way first only so that then we can throw it out.

Jacqui Henderson
Bring the worlds together.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Exactly. Now, is there anything we’ve missed? Any parts of the tool? Oh, we haven’t. Now there is one thing. We haven’t sort of talked about the fancy modeling bits

Jacqui Henderson
of advice. I don’t know. Oh, yeah. Well, that’s your wealth map, I guess.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. So the sort of lengthens, there’s all sorts of fancy analysis words used, I know for the the work that the system does behind the scenes. But for those that are unaware of that, do you want to sort of give us the sense of why? I mean, when modeling, when people think of modeling advice, often they just think of a spreadsheet, you know, it’s sort of that one snapshot. So talk to us about how this is different. What is it doing differently? Yes. So

Jacqui Henderson
we’re not running off a spreadsheet, we’re running off a very complex engine. So we co developed that over four years with Milliman who the world’s largest actuarial firm. So we basically, it’s got the ESG, the economic simulation generation part of it, it’s got taxation law, it’s got super attenuation law built in, it’s got, you know, Sumption settings, which are very robust, designed by your actuaries, which can also be overridden by a licensee because they can put in their own assumption settings. So it’s a it’s very, but it’s also goals. So it’s modeling all the advice, strategies and goals. And it’s modeling, you know, the probability of that client achieving the goal. And then it’s basically taking all the different advice strategies that the client needs to do that will help them create a higher probability of achieving that goal. So that that’s a very multi dimensional modeling engine that sits behind client facing experience, which is digital, and it’s more inspiring as you’re driven by charts, and it’s quite visual. And you can turn strategies on and off and show the impact of each one of those advice strategies has on the clients goals, the outcome that they’re trying to achieve? So, so yeah, it’s very, very different. It’s not, you know, linear, it’s driven by, you know, stochastic and all that sort of type modeling, methodology methodologies. So, yeah, it’s very multi dimensional. And so it’s very, very unique. You know, no one’s sort of done this in the industry. It’s such a complicated engine, but it got it this really simplified client experience on the on the outside, hence, it took, you know, over six years to develop, and, you know, and then being able to then do multi entities, so trust, super, all that bringing it all together. So. So yeah, that’s kind of the wealth map. But then it’s also got added complexity that happens in the behind the scenes as, as you undoing the advice with the client, turning strategies on and off and doing different scenarios and comparing, you know, this scenario against this scenario and benchmarking it, building your SOA in the background automatically. So it’s got this really sophisticated document generation will document not in the sense of your word, professional sense, but it’s building all the advice in the background automatically. And it’s got a strategy library that, you know, can be configured by a licensee. And we’ve got all custom strategies that can be developed as well. And they basically it’s building the SOA. And then you get to the end of the wealth map journey, and you determine which scenario is going to give the best outcome for the client, you click a button, recommend that scenario, and it produces your instant digital SOA, which you can also then produce into word if you want, which I don’t really recommend because you’ve got all the compliance aspects sitting there, but it’s just building it automatically in the background. So you can literally sit with a client model out some scenarios recommend one producer statement of advice. So it’s streamlining that whole advice process like removing all that friction that happens in the background. So

Peita Diamantidis
and I think for the listeners that maybe don’t fully understand the input or something like so. So an actuary in that, in that sort of sense, aside from being financial mathematicians really to do that is my degree. Not fully qualified. So I want them 11 folks to know that I’m not up here saying I’m actually I’m, I’m didn’t become fully qualified. I just did the degree, but cipher financial mathematics, what the way they train is, what ifs, it’s all what ifs, it’s all about probability. It’s all about, well, what if somebody, you know, lasted till 21? What if they lost it to money? What if they, and so that’s what is the jam behind all of this is it’s handling loads of what ifs, without you having to do save scenario, copy, change, one field save scenario, again, copy change. So I think that’s the difference is this breadth of what ifs? Because, of course, it might seem like there’s millions of possibilities, but actually, they’ll be it’ll narrow down into some some guardrails of what’s possible, you know, even though it is doing all of this work, it probably becomes really clear. Well, this is the situation and you’ve sort of got over here or over there, really, which way are we going to go? So, you know, I love that depth of over analysis behind the scenes, you know, let that let the machine do that stuff. You know, I

Jacqui Henderson
know why would advise one to like, do a spreadsheet, it’s like, oh, my god, we’re taking all of that out of your hands. So you can like see more clients, you can build and develop more relationships. So yeah, yeah. visors to do that, not tinker around on spreadsheets, although, you know, don’t mind a little tinker on a spreadsheet.

Peita Diamantidis
I had a guy that went from years ago, that was from my past life and investment banking. And he he talked about spreadsheet, blankies sometimes, you know, numbers, people need a spreadsheet, blankie they just need to go into the spreadsheet and just feel safe and, and warm and surgery, sometimes it’s just nice to enter a bit of data in and it doesn’t really make sense. Is there anything else that any other elements of the system we’ve missed out on? Or we know?

Jacqui Henderson
I mean, it’s basically I mean, the four components are really that interactive discovery plugin, engagement tool, then the wealth map, which is your, you know, we do three and one. So we do you know, your full modeling, product comparators, and instant digital SOA generation. So it’s that full, seamless experience. So that’s the uniqueness of the wealth map is it handles those three components? And does all your research regarding Fe funding for data. We’ve got data from Omnium Chad West. And yeah, so basically, he’s bringing all that data in and simplifying it. And then we have the wealth app, which is the client portal, so the client actually can see their financial plan. It’s tracking to the baseline, and the recommended scenario that you’ve provided your client and the goals. And so they can log in, they can see their statement of advice, they can see their ongoing service arrangement. If fees, everything’s fully transparent. So that’s the wealth app, which is the collaboration between the wealth map, the adviser use, the CRM and the client. So they’re kind of basically the four main components and of course, the CRM, so

Peita Diamantidis
perfect, perfect. And I’m sure there’ll be more to come my Evernote. Oh, yes,

Jacqui Henderson
yes, we’ve got we’re just getting that open API’s. So that’s, that’s on the horizon. So yeah, be able to integrate with lots of cool different new tools and or some other CRM platforms, because we know that your advisors don’t necessarily want to be using our CRM, you might have you know, Central, like a licensees using Salesforce or Salesforce or something like that. They can integrate. Yeah, exactly. So, so yeah, so open API’s? No, very exciting,

Peita Diamantidis
that is exciting. But that’s, uh, well, I like that as a finish. Because I’m a big fan of open API’s, I think more as possible. The more all these things can talk to each other, the more creative we can all get. And find that magic end outcome rather than, you know, relying just on sort of, you know, really determined people like yourself to, to find us at the right outcome. We can sort of contribute in some small way to all that.

Jacqui Henderson
We want to focus on what we do best, which is your advice, and advice generation, digital data driven financial plan, that’s kind of our focus will be advisors.

Peita Diamantidis
Oh, I love it. I love that. All right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about advice, intelligence, then we’re going to include the website link in the episode shownotes along with Jacqui’s LinkedIn details so that there’ll be a link there and you can always poke and prod around there. I’m sure she’ll point you towards it. Yeah, exactly. So she can make to her. Look, thank you so much for joining us on the show, Jacqui, I’m really sort of looking forward to witnessing the next stage of your software development adventure, because I’m sure there’s going to be some more exciting and mind blowing things in the future. So thank you so much for your time.

Jacqui Henderson
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. And thanks for being the voice of advice stick.

Peita Diamantidis
So, are you a current user of advice, intelligence, I’m sure there will be a whole lot of advisors in the XY advice community that would love to hear your take, how you found it, some of the things that we talk through then how valuable they’ve been even how you’ve approached it, in terms of implementing it in the business. So please share any tips or ideas or suggestions of how you’ve gone about it on the platform. And as for my thoughts, I just want to expand on something that Jackie and I touched on there, you know, when tools are sort of as fulsome as advice, intelligence or AI is, it’s going to be really important to have a strong handle on what your current processes in it’s minutia all the way down to all the details. So that then when you know, should you decide to onboard a new tool, it’s going to be very clear, then when you line them up next to each other, where things need to, you know, change, maybe to incorporate things like the online goals, because discovery tool, that’s probably going to change those first few things you do with a client or that you send them all the emails, they get all that sort of thing, it’s going to change. So that’s only going to become really clear when you’ve you can provide great detail lots of boxes and arrows for your current process. And then you can sort of lay them next to each other and, and brainstorm with the team on what things would adjust maybe what things would change order, you know what things may become unnecessary completely, because it’s part of the tool. So if you don’t have a well documented process right now, then, you know, if you take on a new large system, it’s going to become unfathomable. And it really is going to blow your mind, you’ll probably end up quitting before you even start. So you know, having made that mistake myself, in the past, I really encourage you to get a handle on your current processes in terms of documenting them, at the very least some lots and lots of boxes and arrows. So that then you can really brainstorm how you would implement a tool like this. And if you do, then decide to sort of shift to another major system like this, then, you know, invariably, you’re going to have to, you know, template, your documents up or you in all sorts of written communications with clients are going to have to be loaded up into the new system. So take a moment to really have a good look at all of the language you using the style, the layout, and all of those sort of client related materials, you know, be a bit bold, get a bit creative, and even consider maybe hiring a copywriter to really help with the language, you know, let’s get some clarity for the way we communicate. And if you’re going to have to sort of load up all of these templates and, and words up into the new system or why not, you know, give them a George before you load them up. I know everything needs to be technically correct and compliant. But it also needs to resonate with the client or the end user. So take this opportunity to really sort of lift the comps that are generated by the system and your team. Now, I do want to give you a little warning, when you consider moving from whatever core financial planning system you have, and you’re looking at others, and we’ve all we all do that. And we all should do that on a semi regular basis. You know, we’re going to come across, you know, some some tool that has all these wonderful functions, you know, and add ons and all sorts of extra features. And we need to be really, really wary of scope creep. Right now, generally, if we’re looking at other tools, because there’s a particular function we need filled, you know, there’s something that we’re either missing or it’s too slow, or it’s not working right or you know, there’s going to be a reason you started looking, you know, might be we needed to get more efficient, we need the client experience to be enhanced. You know, this is great, this is what we should be doing, what’s the problem we need to solve and let’s go out and find something that will solve it. However, what happens is when we start looking around at the options out there, then we find all sorts of other things. They do super cool things, exciting things, and then we latch on to those. And suddenly the specific improvement we wanted to make has expanded into this complete business changing life altering transcendent decision. That is scope creep, right. And the danger is that you know, when we get distracted by all of these bells and whistles rather than all of those potential, we don’t actually solve the problem that brought us here. Now it’s okay if you get the bells and whistles and also solve the problem part. It can be easy to miss the original frustration or the original thing you need to fix. So you know to sort To combat this right to make sure scope creep doesn’t creep in, then get the team together, you know, brainstorm, brainstorm, their biggest bugbears the things that are a massive challenge the things that are holding them up, what gets in the way, what gets in the client’s way, right? Create a huge list, and preferably prioritize them. And then aside from that, you can get the team to make a list of nice to haves, you know, these aren’t the things driving them nuts on a day to day basis. These are nice to haves. And then make the scope of whatever you’re looking you’re looking for out in the software tech world. And make that scope list really clear so that you can measure every system you look at against your list against your requirements, right. And then you can even report back to your team on how each one stacks up because then they can keep you honest, so you don’t get distracted by all the wonderful shiny bells and whistles. So you know, absolutely these tools are fantastic, you know, and there’s so many things we can implement, and really rev up financial advice for our clients. But let’s do it smart, let’s make sure that we get the things that we need fixed or fixed first. Now, as you know, there’s only one skill, we will need to become these bionic advisors the perfect combination of human centric advice and technology. And that skill is avid curiosity. So to help you build that habit, today’s curiosity corner app that really caught my eye is heroic headshots, that’s actually really hard to say heroic hitch hooks that you can find that at heroic headshots.com. And basically, this is a tool or website that provides virtual headshots for remote teams. Interesting, right. So basically, they offer a step by step process where they teach you how to take headshots from home, just using your phone. And then when you upload those photos into their system, editors will actually hand edit and review each headshot to get it to sort of studio quality, you know, sort of maybe to you know, maybe take out a few wrinkles, I don’t know So, basically about edited and you can select a background so that all of your team have consistent headshots, right and there and heroic headshots on the team within there will actually manage that if you’ve got multiple team members, you want to do this with them coordinator manage that all for you. Now, more and more of us have team members, whether they’re all over Australia, New South Wales or all over the globe. So it can be a little bit of a struggle to get a photoshoot done so that you’ve got up to date headshots, whether it’s for the website or your emails, or even for LinkedIn. So I really sort of love the idea of a specific tool and service that can step in, you know when doing that headshot day just isn’t possible. So check it out. And if if you actually do take part, I’m seriously considering it myself, then I’d love to hear what you think. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get your advice tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And if you’d like a speaker at your next event to brief your audience on the seven habits of bionic advisors, and all the secrets to tech powered human centric advice, or maybe you’d even like to go on our waitlist for the niche down and scale up masterclass slash workshop slash sort of general get it
done day then please just reach out to me on LinkedIn. That’s at forward slash Peita M D, which is Peita. M D. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your eight bloods next week. And remember, advice explorers Stay curious.