AdviceTech Podcast #23 – Padua – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the ensemble advice tech podcast by Peita Diamantidis. And the guests joining me here today. Yes, there are two two deep dive into Padua are a rare team and advice tech, a brother sister duo, which is just wonderful. They have history in both learning and development and technical services, and have really stayed true to their roots where their head office based in the gorgeous clamor in New South Wales. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Anne Marie and Matt Esler. Welcome.

Anne-Marie Esler
Thank you very much, Peita, for having us. It is a pleasure.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic. Look, I’m super excited to dive into all things Padua there’s so much there that I think we can unpack. And I know the listener does too. But let’s just get to know you a little better in your use of technology. Let’s start with you. Anne Marie, what is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Anne-Marie Esler
I do use emoji. You know, I’m very cognizant about what I use now given the team and the generation millennials. Different emojis for different things. Yeah. Probably I would say my most used is have to be the smiley face.

Peita Diamantidis
No, not friendly. We love that. Friendly. How about you Matt? What’s your most used emoji?

Matt Esler
Unfortunately, I’m very boring as well. Our mother uses emojis for almost everything. So we’ll leave the dancing and drinks emojis to her but my mind would have to be the crying face because I think I’m funny. But not everyone realizes I’m joking. So I’ve got to always put, you know, laugh yell out or tear. You know, crying up emoji.

Peita Diamantidis
Yep. I agree. Sometimes emojis are like soundtrack for a movie. It’s a way to tell you how to feel, you know? Exactly. Exactly, exactly.

Anne-Marie Esler
I just said this, but take it to mean this.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly right. at Emory. How about if you I mean, we’re all so weird to our smartphones, aren’t we? We’re like, Oh my goodness. If you had to wipe all those apps off the phone, just keep three which three would you keep?

Anne-Marie Esler
I think I would have to go with WhatsApp. Outlook to check my emails. That’s really sad. I know. And then probably the Facebook app.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice. Okay, so keeping in touch with people broadly, like that’s your Yeah, fair enough. Haven’t you met? What do you think you’d keep?

Matt Esler
I just not my most recent, most popular so my most recent were the SBS on demand app because the world cups on right now. Yes, it’s getting a lot of airplay. I imagine that would usually be switched out for Fox Sports or something like that. Or maybe sports bet because I’m into my horse racing. But probably the other two are audible and Airbnb for a bit of travel.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, nice.

Anne-Marie Esler
We’ve had some interesting them.

Peita Diamantidis
Like yeah, I don’t want to keep in touch with you guys.

Matt Esler
Don’t have to worry about the email because I know Emory has gotten

Peita Diamantidis
the combination has fantastic. Alright, let’s dive into Padua, shall we? So let’s sort of start high level. And just for those who maybe aren’t aware of the tool I’m sure most but you know, where does it sit in the advice tech space, what category it is sort of fall under Who are you Broadcom? You know, lined up against that sort of, let’s give everybody a feel for where it sits. Yeah, it’s

Matt Esler
kind of a really interesting space that we sit in from a tech perspective. So advice is our focus. We’re all about increasing the accessibility and affordability of advice, which is, you know, the QSR consultation paper was, was very close to our hearts, I guess. Yep. So in terms of who we compete with, we don’t really compete with the traditional financial planning software applications that are usually CRM based, right? But tend to also include things like portfolio management, practice management, commission systems, client engagement, components or application. Yep. So Padua specifically focuses on advice from a software perspective. So what we’ve done is sort of break down that advice piece down into component parts again. So at each stage of the advice process, we’ve sort of developed a piece of software that that relates to that. So we’ve got home, which is where we sort of pull data in from existing CRM systems. Yep. And then we’ve got discover, which is where we do the fact find and update data that’s probably not prevalent in the CRM or may not be there and right. And then we’ve got compare, which is our product comparison, technology. And then we’ve got recommend, which is where the advisor makes the new recommendations. Yeah. And then we’ve got review where advisor can go in and do their, their review documents and planning. So we sort of look at it from that perspective. And it’s interesting, we, you know, Emory will talk more about the tech enabled services side. But that part of it is really interesting in the sense that no one else really does that in the industry in terms of having a services division and a software division, right, where the services are full of technical and advice experts who inform our tech Yep. And then our tech is making our advice generation more efficient for our services, then, so they’re becoming more scalable, and more efficient. But it’s actually this virtuous cycle that’s going on where, you know, I think they used to talk about eating our dog food, but we’ve upgraded that now to drinking our own champagne. Our software makes our services more scalable, and our services enhance the functionality and capability of the software. So yeah, can we we’ve we’ve really enjoyed that mix. And, you know, Emery described this before, as sort of saying, when it comes to the services side, that’s really in various domain, and my domain is more on the software side. But we’re sort of the trying to bridge that more and more where it’s, we’re crossing over into into each other’s and sort of more running it together, we used to run it more separately, but now we’re running it more as CO CEOs together.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice. And so Emery does that mean that the list of of system requests is big, bigger from your team that may be externally, you know, like your your team are the ones that are like, ah, we need this updated, because it’s not quite what we need, or this will improve processes is that generally, is that almost the hope for you guys, that that’s where a lot of the upgrades come from,

Anne-Marie Esler
that’s exactly the case, Peter, because our team are using the software day in day out, you know, every minute of every day even. And so they’re continually providing feedback to the technology team. And they’re continually coming up with new ideas and solutions and, and things that can maybe improve the process and and the experience for the end user, which can either be our adviser clients, or as we said, our internal users.

Peita Diamantidis
And that’s, that’s sort of that that magic, where a provider or a tool knows you better than you know yourself, like, that’s magic, when you can get to that point where you guys come up with a solution, you’re like, I didn’t even realize I needed it, you know, that’s actually fantastic. Because it gets a bit tiring when we’re the ones always asking for stuff, you know, as advisors like, he’s just like a really. So you guys clearly, you know, you’ll be on the edge of that you’ll be on the on the cusp of Well, the next great thing would be, which is exciting, right? And it’s

Matt Esler
a head start. That’s why the advisors give us a lot of input as well. So, and we set up sort of focus groups and beta testing with the advisors and things like that. But you know, where the Advisor may be apprehensive about giving you constructive feedback, let’s call it our own staff are not at all shy about coming forward on that front, Peter.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, I can imagine and look, you, you do set that tone that’s about how you run a business too, isn’t it where you can encourage people just look, let us have it because that’s where you get the gems and it’s often from places you might not expect it might be more junior people using the tool who just point out I don’t get why this is hard. Like no, it probably shouldn’t be hard, you know, so it’s, it’s fantastic. That feedback loop is really powerful. What made you guys go down this path with pecha like what what on God’s earth possessed, you know,

Matt Esler
dilution and insanity are the two the two words

Peita Diamantidis
that come from grandpa. How did this start? How did you how did you embark on this? What was the driving force?

Anne-Marie Esler
I Case nothing false was that we saw a need, you know, in the industry. And it’s these are the things that have been talked a lot. Yep, recently. And so that is the time taken to produce advice. You know, it can take two to six hours review two to six hours to reduce a review document, eight to 12 for a simple SOA and 14 to 30 hours for a more complex SOA, which is way too long. So that was the first issue we wanted to solve. The second one was the cost taken to produce advice. Costs are increasing for the advisors to produce the advice and room the clients paying for the advice. So we wanted to address that issue as well. The quality of the advice, which is you know, all about the quality of the advice review at the moment and the need in the industry to increase that and to produce good advice. And lastly, engagement and trust, so that client advisor relationship and how we can really improve that relationship so that the client is getting the best experience out of seeing a financial advisor, and receiving quality of advice in a timely manner that’s cost effective as

Peita Diamantidis
well. Yeah. And look, I think it’s an interesting, there’s a book called The Checklist Manifesto, which is by a guy who actually, years ago reviewed the way surgeons operated and this was before they were as structured as they are now and managed to massively reduce the deaths due to surgery. And it was because of this structure that they produced about constantly checking what they’re doing. And I think, in advice, there is a lot of personalization that goes on. But also there’s only actually so many permutations of strategies, like there is is actually not a never ending list, there is a given list. And

Matt Esler
we have to change that Peter will talk about that more later. But Amory and I also come from a technical background. So in our in our infancy, we were providing strategic advice to advisors on the best technical strategies to provide their clients. What we’ve seen over the last few years, and we’ve been, interestingly, we’ve we’ve got the data on this, because we produce 1000s of advice documents each month, we’re seeing the number of strategies actually narrowed down. And actually the number of platforms and products that advisors are advising on is expanding quite dramatically. And yeah, and this comes down to how hard it is to provide high quality strategic advice at the moment. Yeah, it’s also I think, is the platform or product side is, I think, lead to this idea of trying to move away from vertically integration, yes, vertically aligned, products. And so we’ve seen a huge proliferation of the number of platforms been better by us on but equally, the number of strategies is decreasing quite quite dramatically. And it’s actually a scary thoughts. So part of what we’re aiming to do is really enable advisors to be able to provide high quality and risk very strategic advice easily to clients, and really expand the strategic alignment. Because, you know, alpha and beta are uncertain. Yep. But delta, which is what we describe as the tax and superannuation and Social Security benefits that advisors can provide clients is no uncertain. And I think coming back to the sort of the question around, you know, what we’re trying to do, one of the, one of the big things that we always have talked about, and more recently, when we bought on strategic investors, the the thing around accessibility, and the number of Australians actually paying for advice, it’s around 10%. So about 2.6 million Australians pay for advice. Yeah, but there’s actually 10 million or over 40% that want it. So we’ve obviously seen a huge decline in the supply of advice. So we’ll throw his reps have have gone from nearly 28,000 in 2018, to around 16,000. Now, so there’s been a 40% decline in the number of API’s in the industry. So if you think about it, from a supply and demand perspective, there’s never been a greater time to be a financial adviser, really, to Padua is solving the time cost quality engagement sort of problem that Emery talks about that’s plagued the industry for a long time. But if you think about what the future holds, and the fact that, you know, I’ve, Padua is sort of looking at solving those key issues for advisors to enable life to be even prettier. You know, I think it’s going to be a pretty pretty bright future for for financial advisors, given that supply demand equation. And given that some of these big problems that have been problems for years and years years are now being solved.

Peita Diamantidis
I agree. And I think I’m taking on, you know, taking further your point about the strategies and the advices have narrowed that down. My point being that even if there was 400, we had to consider, right, even if there was a possible List of 400 from a tech perspective, that’s not hard to prompt us on as we go through a process right. So even if it feels a lot to us as individuals from a tech sense, we can be walked through something that narrows it down, and then we fine tune it, you know, whereas that’s not actually where Tech has been before. Like it was very much as pushing the strategy into the tech if you want, I mean, it was absolutely wet whereas to me And maybe this is my entry brain. But there’s a lot, that just through almost filtering, you can knock them out and, you know, too old, too young to, you know, whatever the, whatever the elements are, and you can narrow it down. But what it does mean, which I love is, it’s going to remind you that you’ve missed that one. Have you thought about that last one, because it might just be worth looking at, you know, like that ability to just catch those extra elements that we’re human beings, we can’t necessarily always be perfect in that sense. But a system can help us be.

Matt Esler
Absolutely. And I think it’s a great point. And you mentioned your actuarial background. And now I know why I love you. So I guess the, the thing for us is, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been saying this to our investors and lay people who probably don’t understand financial advice. So Well, imagine going to see your accountant, and then being able to tell you every REIT rebate offset concession deduction available to you, now, they can’t do it. And that’s the reason why they can’t do it. Is that the human? Yeah. So what we’ve been building is this capability that takes the digital information collected in the client fact fine. And then we’ve applied that to the legislation and regulations so that we will understand or help the adviser understand client eligibility, right. So you can take the, you know, it’s going to be over 600 strategies, by the time we release his podcasts, I’ll say, there’s sort of 600 strategies, and then it gets truncated down by eligibility, it gets truncated down further by what the clients objectives are, right? And then truncated even further, again, by the scope of the advice that you broke, but devised, providing Yeah, but being able to actually identify all of the strategies that the clients eligible for is an amazing first step. And, you know, if you think about that, from an accounting point of view, I will be so happy if my accountant could do that. But obviously, they can’t do that. They are always very, you know, vague and blase, when it comes to whether or not I’m gonna get the maximum deduction, available, or maximum refund. Yeah. And so, you know, being able to apply that to a financial advisor is hugely important, and particularly for your ensemble advisors, who tend to be that younger generation coming through, because they’re much more social media savvy and whatnot. And for the PI, the p y advisors, particularly imagine entering an industry and having the same technical capacity as a 20 year or 30 year veteran, and that’s basically what we’re going to be providing. And that comes back to the technical roots. And, and, you know, Emery, went from technical into power planning, and I went technically into software, basically bringing those back together. So we’ve got this platform that enables advisors to generate advice really, really quickly and efficiently, but have a really high quality and strategic nature.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. And the thing is, it’s the, it’s always the most complicated part, or the the technically complicated, but honestly, it’s not the hardest, the hottest is a human behavior. So to have a tool that enables you to do the technical part well, so you can next you know, really focus on the fact they’re going to do something stupid, you know, down the track, or, or react to markets, or whatever it might be, I think that’s empowering advisors the right way, you know, and we’re going to need that balance, aren’t we, when we’ve, we’ve lifted education standards, we’ve done all these things, which are all awesome. But the flip side of that is, you can produce a whole lot of very technically focused advisors who don’t necessarily have the people skills. So to almost take that pressure off and go, okay, the Tech Tech is going to be covered, you need to be smart, you need to work through a bit, we’ve got you covered. Now, you’re going to have to get your EQ sorted, I like that as a balance, you know, to bring sort of more well balanced advisors out, you know, out of the process. And you’re right, for a py, advisor, young advisor to have something that it’s sort of taking them down the bouncy ball isn’t that they just learned these great behaviors and these ways to look at things. And that’s powerful engineers have been doing that for years, they have these really structured ways they learn how to build, design, all that sort of stuff. But we’ve not really had that we’re not really trained that way and advice, you know, where there’s this sort of given ways that you approach a given thing to make sure you don’t miss anything, you make sure your bridge doesn’t fall down.

Matt Esler
Yeah, and I think that’s part of the reason, and Emery will talk more about this, but that combination of the tech and the human, so we’ve got a Padua and the advisor actually being able to lean on a human at the same time, the tech is helping them with the technical heavy lifting and all that structural stuff that you mentioned. Yeah. The humans can actually help with, okay, let’s understanding more of the soft skill side of things, you know, understanding the client objectives and then applying what what strategies might be best to suit those objectives, which Yeah, you know, if you look at it purely on what technical strategies are clients eligible for, you then need that subjective sort of discussion around? What are the trade offs because, you know, there might be a particular strategy that gives the highest outcome but you Is that most relevant? Emmerich, you want to talk to that a little bit?

Anne-Marie Esler
Well, I was actually going to jump in and say, as Peter mentioned, most of the technology that’s available at the moment requires the adviser to put all of the inputs in him to know what they kind of want to recommend in terms of the strategy. Yeah, there is the difference with our technology is that it will provide you with all of the solutions that are that the client is eligible for. And then as Matt said, the advisor and the client can then have that discussion around what are the trade offs, and you’re actually eligible, Mr. And Mrs. client for these 10 or 12 strategies, let’s now explore each of them and think about which one you would prefer to go with. And it’s that behavioral and personal touch and that client engagement side, that the advisor can then spend more time as we said, focusing on because the technology has done all the heavy lifting, and narrowed and done that big filter taken all of those incredible number of options or strategies that are available and filtered them all down, depending on the exact criteria that the client has, and their eligibility for each of those strategies. And then the client and the advisor can just discuss, yeah, well, you know, you could do this, and that’s the outcome. Or you could do this other option, and then they have a different outcome. And it’s then up to you to decide which you prefer. Yeah, I think that’s, you know, that’s a really important part of what this technology can can provide.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s a unique thing for the way we need to deal with clients. I mean, we, you know, you’re talking before about accountants and, and there’s a number of times I’ve had a client, you know, ask about something that maybe their accountants flagged and I’ll ask the question, gee, what if they suggested it’ll save? And, you know, it’ll be $200 a year? And what’s it going to cost you to do that it will be $1,000 in fees, like, you know, it’s that sort of logic applied to go, yes, this thing exists. And it’s mathematically optimized. But is it appropriate and realistic? You know? And that’s where the human comes in? And also, are they going to do it? Are they going to want to revisit something every year are they going to, you know, all of that is the layers of view human behavior over the top, but to have the other covered, where it’s sort of just look, here is the collage of all the different things we can consider. Let’s just pull them in, let’s take a look and get you know, the right outcome for you, as an individual or even as a family, you know, whatever works for them, which is exciting. So in terms of then the users, is it really just advisors with maybe paraplanners? Or do you get support team in the tool? What, who are your normal users for the app?

Anne-Marie Esler
Yeah, so definitely, advisors, and all of their teams are supported by this client service officers are all interacting with our technology and using the technology. So definitely, they’re our primary users. Yeah. Okay.

Matt Esler
And I should mention as well, so we sort of ran two tech enabled services. So on the paraplanning side, that’s definitely the case. On the transition side, it’s actually platforms that are, we’re mostly engaging with hackers. We’re actually helping them and assisting with with transitions on to certain platforms. And and I guess more recently, if you think of, you know, what are the uses have sort of come out more recently, when when we built this sort of system, we realized that not only does it do you know, 600 also strategies, it covers interfund, beautifully, right, and so having intra fund, and we call it interfund, colossal entropy loss, because, you know, whilst the super funds can advise on intro strategies, which of which there’s sort of five broad categories. They also are now engaging advisors to provide the additional is the plus side I guess, beta. And we’ve built the infrastructure so that the platforms or the super funds can actually work with advice groups as well. Right. So a lot of the more progressive industry funds, we’re now working with advisors are working with Padua. And you’re seeing so that it’s a bit of a mix. So, you know, the the business as usual stuff are the core of our business. The paraplanning services, certainly, it’s the advisers and paraplanners, and sports stuff. And interestingly, on that side, we actually work a lot with hybrid sort of arrangements, rave, internal paraplanning. And Padua is a is a hybrid outsource. Yep. So we actually give them our tech infrastructure that makes up paraplanning really efficient. And we give that to their internal team as well, so that they’re as efficient as we are, and all the reporting can be done through the one system or whatnot. And then on the transition side of the platforms and super funds. And then on the interest side, of course, it’s it’s super, but then which advisory group, they’ve engaged to provide that additional level of advice to their members that may not be covered with intro.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And so that’s really interesting. And so I’m guessing that there’s a lot of so clearly the advisors you must deal with dealer groups, though, too, because I’m I’m betting that sometimes you guys come across for a whole dealer group. And so that must have its own challenges because of course, dealers, dealer groups have their own agendas and things they need to check off versus the individual user. So how do you manage that? Like how do You, because You clearly are sitting right in the advisors chair, right? I mean, it’s firmly in there in the paraplanners. Chair. So how do you manage that sort of dynamic and a bit of tension, I guess, between, you know, those parties when you get them to come on and as part of a bigger group,

Anne-Marie Esler
so we definitely have a better experience overall, when we are working very closely with the dealer group, that’s where we can have some really great relationships, because the dealer group can, you know, approve patches use of our technology and now, sort of paraplanning or transition management services across the whole dealer group, right. And once that approval has been granted, and sometimes that’s a tough process to have to go through, because there’s a lot of compliance checks and, and other checks that the dealer grip would do. But once we’ve completed all of those, it makes the relationship so much easier. And we can then go to all of the advisors under that dealer group and work with them each individually knowing that they have the support of their dealer group, and knowing that they can move ahead with us. Yeah, it means then that we have regular meetings with those dealer groups. So we may commit with the compliance team, we can meet with the technology team, we’re continually updating our templates to reflect the requirements of that dealer group so that we are kept up to date as well. But it is definitely more involved. But it gives us access to more advisors under that dealer group. So it works well. It’s really positive. Yeah, awesome.

Matt Esler
It’s an interesting dynamic, I think it is. You know, as you mentioned, as well, there’s some, there’s some conflicting sort of things going on in the sense that, you know, Padua, by its very essence is helping advisors generate high quality advice. And the licensee requirements are, you know, compliance and professional standards related. And we are adhering to those compliance requirements of the dealer, and not every practice and advise and tends to agree with that. But then it’s the practice that’s paying Padua rather than the dealer. So it’s all it’s a really interesting dynamic. And as Emery mentioned, we like to go through this process of authorizing dealers, right. So we we won’t necessarily lead a deal it just come on with Padua. Yeah, they’ve actually got to satisfy some of our requirements as well, yep. Which is a bit of a change for them. But, you know, they’ve got to ensure that the API and their CRM connectivity is good. They’ve got to ensure that they’ve got their research and their professional standards updated properly, because these are the parameters within which we will need to work and, and so, you know, there’s some really great authorized dealers that we work with. Yeah. And then there’s some others that are coming up to speed. In that process. Yeah. But certainly, it’s gathering a lot more momentum than previously, we were previously focused on certain groups that we knew had those standards and have those criteria. But we would say that it’s getting better and better across across the sort of smaller and mid size. licensees. Well, and

Peita Diamantidis
I think, particularly if what you’re introducing is something that gives things gives the advice process more rigor, you know, that’s something that will actually lift the game anyway, just by default of using the tool, you know, so, so I liked that idea of you guys delivering even though you’re, you’re serving a need, which is the advice process, it’s also elevating the sort of quality and, you know, the compliance elements anyway, merely because of the approach you’re taking. That sort of gives that almost feedback, that feedback loop almost. And that’s a great learning ground, you know, for for somebody to go on why the hell is that does that keep on coming up and the things I should be considering? Or I need to learn some more? Like, I think we’re in the industry, often, we’re very afraid of admitting what we don’t know. But by very definition of what Fazio requires, we’ve got to know what we don’t know, you know, we’ve really got to notice those well, so I can see how the tool could help with that. It’s like, wait, I mean, I need to get some more education on this, you know, clearly, I need to understand that strategy better, which is powerful. And it will lift the quality definitely, in terms of the practices that it works well, with what sort of cover what you see and what you think it really like when you guys go in how it really embeds. But I am a bit curious, are any of the practices that use the tool? But not me your services? Do they sometimes they use you as like an overflow service? Is anybody doing that? Where they’re sort of like, No, we’ve got an in house person we use but when you know, Bedlam hits and lets clients at once they therefore, because they’re already in the tool, it makes it easier for them to use you guys. Is that something that people do?

Anne-Marie Esler
Definitely. Okay. And what we’ve seen in some instances is that we actually have given our software to the internal power planning team. And the internal power planning team received the request from all their advisors through our software, and then they allocate to either their internal power planning team or to Padua Kelly, her planning manager will have a look at their request, and then decide which way it will go whether internal, or if they’re too busy, or if it’s too complex or whatever it is, they might decide to send it to the patcher team, and then we will then allocate it to our internal power planners. Then it goes back to you know, we go through our whole process, which is we haven’t covered yet. That was a number of different steps and then it comes back to their internal Paget like power planning manager to distribute back to their advisor.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, nice. Okay, so it’s, um, so that’s interesting. So it’s not just sort of surge resource allocation, it could also be skills based, like it could be, hey, this, this one came up, you know, what we’re going to send it to you guys just from, you know, the complexity of it or something like that, that we feel that you could add some value that’s interesting. So it’s a, that’s a really powerful way to ensure you sort of got all bases covered for the practice, is to do that sort of funneling through a center point. And that person can allocate accordingly, which is probably, it’s probably not something that’s innate to a lot of advice practices is looking at their processes that way, you know, like that resource allocation way, often, we’re a bit linear, aren’t we? It’s like, starts there, and then it goes there. And then it’s like, Wait a minute.

Matt Esler
Exactly. I was gonna say it gives that optionality. Yeah. So advisors can then sort of focus on what what do I do best? And which part of the process? Am I going to add the most value? Yeah, or which part of the process? Do we want to insource versus outsource? Yeah, it really does give a lot of flexibility to the to the practice or the licensee.

Anne-Marie Esler
And it’s funny to Peter use, then I said to that we, you know, the graduate, that internal team might outsource for Padua, for the complex, we’ve actually got advisor practices that do the opposite as well, the internal power plan is want to keep all of the complex strategy stuff to the chassis stuff. Yeah, that’s right. Stuff that they want to do. And they say, we want to send you all the really quick, simple thing, and you do the high volume work. And we’ll keep the big ones for ourselves. So it’s interesting that it can go either way.

Matt Esler
Yeah, it’s quite balanced, actually, on that front, because it’s right, you know, I’m a paraplanner, for a reason I want to I want to do the, I don’t want to just submit plans to you guys to do I want to actually get involved and Goodbye, goodbye, hands steady.

Peita Diamantidis
Right. And that’s it. It’s a I love the idea of, of getting a I guess it’s really a principle rather than the advisor, but a principle to really think about the strengths and weaknesses of their team, but also, what do they want to work on? Like, really? What are we what do you love, let’s double down on that. And let’s outsource the other, you know, and so, like, that’s already happening, I think with admin, people are getting more comfortable with that sort of support. But I love this idea where, hey, if you just want the easy stuff to just get done, and you don’t have to think about it, and you love the you know, the complex layered many, you know, strategy stuff, then great hold on to that, or if the reverse is the case, you know, that’s powerful, and it’s going to build more, to be honest, more niched practices, because they’ll work out exactly who they want to deal with and why. And then you guys can fill a gap, you know, depending on on what they need, you know, in the in those differences. So I really liked that as an idea. So is there anything before somebody comes on? Well, actually, before we start that Emory, I feel like we need to understand a bit better how you, your team engages with a practice so that we can sort of see the big picture. So talk us through what that experience is like, what are the steps that they take?

Anne-Marie Esler
Alright, so the steps that they would take is that the first step is we connect to many CRM, yep. And so they would be pulling their data from their CRM into our online factfinder. And that starts the process. And they can either then update that themselves, if it’s not updated, they can send it to the client to update various sections of it if it’s not updated. Or alternatively, it will just produce an exceptions report to see where the gaps are. That’s something that our technology can do that not a lot of other fact finds can do is show you where you’re missing information. And so once that’s been completed, then they’ll move through that data will pull through into the advice request form or recommend, yep, software tools. So the advisor then will have all the existing situation already pre loaded. And then they’ll put in their recommendations for the, for the client. Yep. And obviously, that’s guided by the technical and the legislative and the compliance parameters. Yep. And the client eligibility. And then once that request is received by the Padwa team, each of our advisor groups have a team of quality assurance managers and paraplanners that work with it. So the quality assurance manages, review that advice request form, and all the information that’s been provided. And that could include additional uploaded documents, but mainly the advice request form that has come through from that recommend that they’ve completed online. They’ll review that and they’ll send them a strategy confirmation to say, this is what you’ve recommending. This is the second recommendation. This is the third one. These are the platforms that you’re recommending. And they may make suggestions, you know, would you like to increase the contributions because the client is eligible, or would you like to, you know, are you going to use that platform or that platform? And you know, there might be a bit of discussion around the strategies and the platform? Yep. They’ll send that confirmation back through our software again to the advisor. The advisor will tick tick, proceed, proceed. Yes, that’s right. Yes, there. That’s right. And please do this. So please do this or I’m meeting with the client in five days time, please have it back by then. And then the SOA advice document is is allocated to a power planner, the power plan will work on that document, they might ask additional questions, if required, through our Sif software again, so it’s all in the one spot, date and time tracked every communication every step along the way. And then they do a review of what they’ve done. It goes to a peer, they’ve completed a review checklist, then it goes back to the Quality Assurance Manager. This is our three step review process. Yep, Quality Assurance Manager will review that advice document against all of the information that’s been provided. And then it’s completed back to the adviser know, the full power planning process. It’s slightly different on the transition management side. But that’s, that’s our sort of tech enabled power planning service process. And I’m

Peita Diamantidis
imagining your internal check process is an end Well, aside from making sure the quality is good, is an effort to minimize the amount that the advisor loops back again. So it’s like a catch to get this thing as slick as it possibly can be. So that the advisor is like, Great, I’m just going to use that like it’s, it’s not that because I know that people struggle, sometimes with para planning, outsourcing, and they feel like they go backwards and forwards. So I’m betting that part of what you’re trying to do there is really get it to the point that the advisor is going to be ecstatic with the outcome.

Anne-Marie Esler
Ideally, we would love to send back you know, 100% completed document. And as you say, that’s the whole idea of collecting all of the information upfront, get making sure we have a complete look at what the client situation is now. And then all of the recommendations and they’re 100%, confirmed by the adviser, all the questions are asked upfront, so we have everything that we need, we produce the document and as much as possible, the adviser should just be able to read through it. When tick tick, it looks okay. And send it off to the client. Yeah, yeah, they’ll have their client meeting and go through it with them.

Matt Esler
It’s interesting advisors and compliance managers have never seen eye to eye. And I think when you have a system that advisors love, and equally compliance managers rave about you’ve you’ve reached the Holy Grail. Yeah. And so it was interesting, I actually presented to a to a new compliance manager of a fairly large dealer recently. And at the end of this, she said, this is like 10 pin bowling with the guardrails up, advisors can’t make a mistake from a compliance point of view when they’re using this technology. And I thought, well, that’s awesome, because we know how much the advisors love it. But if you can get advisors and compliance managers agreeing something that’s that’s, that’s a special moment. And,

Peita Diamantidis
and it’s the thing is, it shouldn’t be surprising. It’s possible, right? I think that’s, that’s the shift, we all need to have. I think about advice, production, as opposed to giving advice, advice, production, it just didn’t need to be as hard as it always was. We just the teachers wasn’t keeping up, you know. So we always built up the advice production is the hardest part, when in reality, with some great tools with some structure, like, clearly, that’s what you also have is the structured way of approaching it, and what a difference that makes, then the real hard part is getting the client to do it. Right, exactly. And then just stick to the plan. That’s actually what’s hard. But we got so caught up in this difficult, complex, layered, messy thing that we were doing. And so I love the fact that we can almost be liberated from that a bit, you know, that it’s right, this is sorted. I mean, the, you know, I’m thinking about that process. Emery, you’re describing there with briefing, you know, outsource powerplants is I get asked about those sort of things all the time. And, and one of the things I always say to the advisors is yes, but are you expecting them to be psychic? Like how good is your brief, because the outcome is only as good as your brief is, you know, so I’m betting that because of the way you both get the data and what you ask them, as part of that sort of submission is trying to make the brief as high quality as it can be. So that there are very little questions for your team

Matt Esler
and taking risk of the financial advisor and the licensee. And you know, when we pull the data in from the CRM, it actually tells the advisor and the licensee and the client, what information was pulled in from the from the CRM, yep. And then what update what data was updated by the client, what data was updated by the adviser, so that risk is alleviated. And then what data was actually pushed back into the CRM. So to close the loop, we actually push all of that back to the CRM and the serum is the source of truth. And I think if you look at traditional financial planning software, you know, advice is complex, okay? And an advice practice is complex and all the things that financial planning software tries to achieve, you know, I mentioned it before it CRM practice management, portfolio management, commission system, client portal or client engagement. Yeah, you know, the list goes on, you know, even trying to get out FDS is and things like that, you know, so the software is trying to do too much of you. We we deliberately and specifically focused on advice Yeah. We let everyone else worry about CRM and portfolio management and practice management, all those sorts of things. Yeah, but there’s no one really just focused on specializing on advice generation, and how to make advice, high quality advice, be able to produce in a timely manner, at a low cost, which is, you know, those two things are tied together. But then also taking the client on the journey, you know, being able to produce advice quickly and effectively with its high quality means that you can actually do more scenarios, which means that you can engage the client on those trade offs that Emery mentioned before where it’s, do you want to do this? Or would you like us to do this? So we could do it this way? Or we could do it that way? At the moment. And previously, up to this point, advisors haven’t been able to do that, because it takes so long for advisors and their paraplanners to produce a financial plan, using traditional methods that there was no way they could do options. There was no way they could talk about multiple scenarios. Yeah, because just doing the one scenario was taking days. Yeah. So, you know, I think that trade off discussion and having those really good conversations. And if you think about, you know, how clients have been engaged? Traditionally, it’s a classic and advisor go why, why is my advice not trusted? Well, it’s pretty obvious. When you look at the client experience through the advice process, client comes in to see you in the fact phone meeting, you scribble down on a piece of paper as frantically as possible. Because you need to think had that SEC fight and whatever additional notes, you’ve got to the paraplanner the parabola and jumps on the Starship Enterprise financial planning, software, application chip, really blank canvas, you know, modeling capabilities. Yeah, where you’re starting from scratch, you’re building out these massive plans for this client days and weeks are going by the client doesn’t know what’s going on. They haven’t heard anything ever. They’re waiting and waiting and waiting. And often, you know, we’ve we’ve actually taken over paraplanning, from internal paraplanning teams, where the the delay in time from the fact find meaning to the advice been handed back to the client was up to 100. And over 100 days, Wow, can you imagine that? Yeah, I would have forgotten if I was the advisor, I would have forgot what the client look like. So

Peita Diamantidis
but it’s not just the advisor, right. And as well, the client loses momentum. I’ve been doing a session, it was only a couple of years ago for advisors. And we were talking about this, you know, shortening, shortening the time and the momentum clients have and when they’re interested in something, they’re all excited, and they’ll get things back to you. And then they lose momentum. They’re like, ah, but you know, it’s important, surely, they should be focused on like, alright, well, who’s bought a couch recently? You know, there’s a number of people. Yep. So you go to the store, and you find the one you love, and you pick the color, and then they tell you what’s going to take eight weeks to deliver, how do you feel? You know, and if they’re anything like me, it’s like, I don’t want that catch? No, I want the one that’s going to arrive tomorrow, like, that’s right, because we in the moment, we’ve got momentum, and I think it does, it actually makes the whole process more expensive, just because the follow ups have to be more often and then the, you know, then it’s hard to get the form back. And then it’s hard like it, it stretches everything out, you know, and your conversion drops significantly.

Matt Esler
From being able to convert, you know, being able to get that plan back within a week is really important to us. So we are constantly chipping away at the time it takes to get that plan back to the adviser. Notwithstanding the fact that at the same time, we’re increasing the quality of advice and bringing the cost down as well. Yeah. So usually, when you tick a time box, or at a cost box at a quality box, you normally have to give up one of the others, in any business in any industry anywhere. And I guess what we’re trying to do is ensure all three of those at the same time. And if you think about, you know, the other thing that’s really important to us is that it’s an Australian owned, Australian operated, everything’s onshore. Everything’s high quality. And advisors sometimes forget, you know, you might pay less to go offshore. But you actually you forgetting how much you are valued and how much your time is valuable. Because the amount of back and forth that needs to happen with those sort of operations is incredible data and being able to lift it to a standard where the clients are going to accept it’s also incredible. Yeah. And no matter what anyone says to me about how good it is in the Philippines, or in Vietnam, or whatever, whichever other country, nothing’s as good. As unbelievably technical experts here in Australia who know the law, they know the regulations than other legislation, they can actually have meaningful conversations and be better at providing strategic advice than the actual adviser needing to do that. Because if you think about going back to what the advisors value proposition is, their value proposition should be about understanding the client, understanding their needs and objectives. It shouldn’t be about being a technical expert. Right? But if they are, that’s great. You’ll have more meaningful conversations with the guys that Padua who are technical experts and do have that strategic experience.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and there is a difference in your the word power planning gets thrown around a lot in the industry and people mean very different things by that, you know, and in fact, I think a lot of them And what they’re actually saying is word document production. Like it’s not actual paraplanning. You know, because if you do the equivalent law, paralegals, they do a lot of reads like, they go out and do the research. They’re the ones that actually go out, like you’re saying the strategy, like digging out all this information and pulling it together and thinking through the strategies, and then come back to the lawyer with a high, this is what I discovered, but they’re that technically focused, you know, and paraplanning. Really, that’s what it’s meant to be. It’s meant to be somebody deeply technical, you know, who kind of really dig through that? And, yes, maybe they produce the document, but the fact that they do, it should just be something that a tech service can do, you know, the actual document itself shouldn’t be the focus of the paraplanner. You know, that’s, that’s actually more down pa world, you know, where somebody can produce a document, you know, so I think we’ve got to think about the language we use when we’re talking about these services, because I do think some people think it’s just, Oh, aren’t they merging something in Word, no. A good paraplanner or paraplanning service,

Matt Esler
you’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box, let every guy

Anne-Marie Esler
as it’s gonna say, one of the services that we offer, all of our advisors is the strategy meeting. So the advisor can pick up the phone to their Quality Assurance Manager and have a discussion around the types of strategies they’re thinking about suggesting, and, and the Quality Assurance Manager can work through some of those options, and discuss and bounce ideas, and, you know, look at the client situation and sort of make suggestions and recommendations that the advisor can, can then think about,

Peita Diamantidis
so nice and that dynamic. Right, and, and, and we all, we all learn more from those interactions, I think that’s the other thing that, you know, as advisors, we probably don’t get as much opportunity as, as we need, or should want to do those conversations where you’re almost debating something like it’s a, you know, and that’s where you actually learn, we don’t learn from reading a book about something, you know, it’s those deeply rich, and actually, it can also help you discover another, well, what we could do is look at it from this angle. And, you know, the two heads better than one sort of approach. So that’s really powerful, actually, and I think could be really appealing to some advices, particularly for them maybe on their own or a small team. You know, that’s, that’s really valuable. And I think

Matt Esler
that’s the other important thing, you know, putting a team around the advisor as well, you know, if you’ve got an in house paraplanner, you’ve got two heads, yeah, with a team that the, you know, we put two quality assurance managers, and a team of senior and intermediate paraplanners, around the advisor. And so they’ve got different experiences in different sorts of advice types, you know, there’s aged care specialists, Estate Planning Specialist, this insurance specialist, there’s SMSF specialist. And so you’re really getting that broad range of, of expertise, challenging the advice that you’re providing, and I think that’s really critical.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it is, it is actually and, and it’s interesting that you could almost upskill via outsourcing. So your own your own advice can be elevated by using these technical experts, which we all know, I mean, a lot of that used to get provided by the product providers, you know, we’d have these numbers, we could ring, but you know, that’s been? Well, in my experience, it’s become a little more hidden mess, you’ve got to know who the who are the ones you call for and what their expertise is. So to have somewhere where it’s that partnership, you know, it’s like a technical partnership that you feel like, hey, if I don’t know, if I’m not sure, there’s going to be somebody within your group that will be able to, you know, help me understand better, that’s really exciting. Let’s talk about client engagement. Now, I’m getting sort of a firmer picture that you know, in terms of where you guys are decided to play or whether the tool plays is far more in the from the advisors perspective of advice. And what they’re producing or providing, you mentioned, fact find and sort of collecting information from a client is that sort of the extent to which you You guys are the tool interacts with the client is that sort of what you’re limited, limited at.

Matt Esler
So there’s a few different areas. So obviously, the the Discover, which is the fact find the digital factfinder, that is a tool that can actually be branded in the practice colors and logo and all that sort of stuff. So the adviser has a better connection with the client. So the client feels like they’re inside the practice of the advisor. But then when you get into the compare, which is the product side of things, the advisor can instantly show the client, their existing platform investment position, against the approved product lists that the advisor is allowed to advise on now and actually be able to give them an idea of what else looks good out there. And not only that, they can also the old Keeping Up with the Joneses moment where, you know, a client might say, oh, you know, so and so down the road is with this particular platform, you can actually show the client, what that looks like, even though it might not be on your approved product list. You can still show the client exactly what that looks like. And you can do that from a platform perspective. You can do that from an investment perspective. And obviously, there’s a lot of talk at the moment around different types of investments and different strategies. You know, it might be model portfolios versus SMH versus traditional managed funds, funds or it could be the client’s risk didn’t, you know told me about sustainability? What does that look like? Yeah, and actually being able to present that and actually show the client. This is how sustainable your current investments are versus where you’re going, I think that’s going to become more and more prevalent. So we can really bring that to the to the for for the advisor and the client visually, I can I think that’s something that’s been missing. And I think, you know, compliance managers particularly been quite, you know, frightened about this, because of the way the law has been structured in relation to, you know, what’s advice? What is general? You know, those sorts of discussions, but then in the final part, where are you actually getting into the recommendation, I think this is where it’s gonna get really interesting. You know, Emery talks about the time it takes to reduce an hour away two to six hours, and then the basic SOA eight to you know, sort of 12 and a half, and then, you know, the complex, you know, 14 to 30, we’re actually looking to reduce all of these plans down to half an hour to an hour. And, and this is the, an incredible change that I think the industry has been waiting for. And it’s one that we’re, you know, very, very close to releasing. So we’re looking to release this in the first half of next year. Yep. And I think that tool that allows the adviser to go from digital factfinder, to knowing what what strategies are eligible, being able to advise on that, and being able to produce a complex plan with all the modeling and everything within an hour, I think that’s something that’s never ever been thought as feasible. It’s something that we’ve been trying to crack for a long time, you know, I had midwinter from 2006 to 2012. And, and then Emory, and I set up Padua from 2013. So it feels like I’ve been trying to crack this nut for a very long time. Yeah. But I truly believe that that, you know, setting up the services business, and the software business was the only way we’re ever going to crack that nut. Yeah. And now that we’ve done that, we’re reaping the benefits that we would say that for a very long time. You know, when you start a tech enabled services business, and you take this starting at zero, your services are up here, your take is gradually getting up. Yeah. And so, you know, we reinvested every dollar that we earn back into tech. And I think, you know, we’re only starting to sort of see the benefits and tweak that now, for a long time. You know, you went about going back to your earlier point, how did you guys do this work, my brother and sister, we must be mad to do this in the first place. But then to actually build a tech enabled services business where you’ve got this huge tech expense, that’s trying to make the services more efficient, but it’s not efficient. Until that happens, it’s actually inefficient until you actually get to that point where it starts to cross over, yeah, has been equally an insane thing for us to do. We’re happy that we’ve done it, but there’s been various times where Andy Murray and I have both one of the jobs.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, it is, it is an interesting environment, because you’re not just trying to solve the problem in front of you, there’s a lot of these other things you’ve got to fit within and the legislation, Elizabeth things are examples. Whereas, you know, if you’re Canva, and you just need to make a small business person’s life easier by having templates, then you just deeply focus on that, you know, there’s, there’s, I’m betting very little other, you know, sort of challenges that they hit a wall on, whereas unfortunately, just when you think you’ve got something cookin, there’s another piece of legislation that’s just gonna, you know, throw a sort of a curveball at you. So it is, that is a challenge, I think. And I’m excited that there are more and more tools doing what you guys have done, which is, let’s go deep in this area, let’s just be really good at this. Because it means you can like all of your energy is focused on that element. Whereas I feel like, you know, when we were trying to do everything, we just got really average at all. And even below average, probably, you know, in some senses, so, whereas you guys can just go deep, you know, like, we can make this so good. And you can solve that specific problem, which is exciting. So I’m betting what that means is that you integrate with all sorts of things. Is that a fair assumption? What’s how do you how do you approach integration?

Matt Esler
I like to say that not only are we open API, we’re open to API. There’s a lot of we’re open to API, but not really open API in the industry. And we we obviously connect with some of the larger CRM based financial advice, software applications, but like you said, we’re we’re really starting to focus now on the niche specialist players. And I think, the Ensembl advisors, you know, I see this all the time on your platform. They’re talking about tech stack and what they’re using for the different applications. I think that’s brilliant, because this is actually where we need to be in the industry has taken a long time to get there. We’ve we’ve had these generalist monolithic systems that have tried to do everything. And some things have done really well. Some things not so well. But being able to then plug in specific applications for a particular need or requirement for your businesses is so important. Yeah, and I think you’re gonna see more and more and more of that I can, I can say with hand on heart that Padua and never going to do anything other than advice generation, that’s all we’re going to do, we’re never going to be a surgery, we’re never going to do portfolio management, we’re never going to do practice manager, Emery would kill me if I even tried. So we’re getting very specific and very focused, we’re going to be the best at advice. And financial advisors need to produce advice. And it’s funny that we’re probably, I think the only one that I have that I know of anyway, and apologies if there’s other applications, because we would actually support other other entrants to the market. But I don’t think that there’s any other specialist advice generation provider in the industry, right? You know, some tools are doing factfinder. And some tools are doing, you know, objectives or goals based sort of stuff. Yep. But there’s not really anyone that’s actually focused on advice generation. Yeah, and trying to solve for that, and sold for that alone. So yeah, we’re quite unique in the marketplace.

Peita Diamantidis
And I think that, you know, picking the tool, that’s the sweet spot for that particular thing you need, the power of that is, we can all then have our niche clients that we want, we can build a customer experience that is unique to them, and serves them beautifully. And we pick the tools that work, and we can’t kid ourselves that those are going to be the same tools for everybody, because they’re all going to be uniquely different. And some are going to demand a client portal is only when they way they want to deal with this, whereas others are going oh, no, no, I always want to come to the office or like, you know, that’s what the user experience is going to sort of lay out. And then they pick the tools that suit that experience, you know, that really enhance it that fit the timeframe they want to deliver on and fit the team, and the skills required. And you know, all that sort of thing. So I, I agree with you, I think this is the way to go. I understand the appeal of a, you know, One Ring to rule them all sort of system for everything. But in no other part of our world. Do we try and do that, you know, as evidenced by our phones, so you’ve got to do is look at your phone and look at how many apps are on there. There isn’t one app. It’s one phone, there could just be one app, but there isn’t, you know, so, you know, I think I mean, there’s a lot of value to integrating with all sorts of things. Is there anything you think so for the current users of patch worthy that You think I can’t believe they’re not using this this feature? Or this element of the tool? Or even the service more like is it just I can’t believe that it’s it’s gold? You know, you guys need to be doing more? Is there anything you’d give people a heads up on about that?

Anne-Marie Esler
On the people side? I would say, strategy meeting and calling the quality assurance managers and having a conversation with them. Yep. Right. That’s what I would be suggesting to our users.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. I like it. I like it. How about you met? What about in the tech?

Matt Esler
Yeah, on the tech side, I think Emery mentioned it before. But the exceptions reporting some some clients go on, I’ve already got a digital fact. Fine. And we go yeah, that’s great. Let’s pull that in. Because actually, what we’re interested in is producing advice. Yeah. And so you might have a digital platform that works really well for you. And we support that we’re big supporters of tech stack, as you know. And so being able to pull that in, but then saying, Okay, this is what’s missing, right? From your factfinder or from your CRM, that we need an actual or you need really to produce the advice most effectively, all your paraplanner needs to produce your boss most effectively. Yeah, that’s, that’s really a poor one they get. I think so advisors get caught up and are no, I’ve got a fact. Fine. I don’t need to use that. Yep. And we always say no, no, check it out. Because the exceptions are afford alone is worth its weight in gold.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice and constant, consciously acknowledging again, oh, I’ve got this list. Hey, why is that missing? What do we need to find out? That’s, and once again, like the strategy list consciously going, yep, no, yep, no, with the list of things that apply to your client, that’s where our smarts should be applied, not in producing the exceptions list, you know, scanning the fact find to find the gaps, it’s just just look at the exceptions. Let’s just see what’s missing.

Matt Esler
Don’t be afraid to put the guardrails up when you go bowling strike.

Peita Diamantidis
You are absolutely completely agree with you and absolutely less likely to do a golf ball. There’s nothing worse is there somewhere? What’s on the development path? So what’s what’s down the track? What are you working towards? And what’s on the Well, we’d really love to a bit further down the track.

Matt Esler
Here, we’ve talked a little bit about the imminent release of what we call recommend 2.0, where you’re sort of taking digital factfinder. And then really, it’s it’s like a virtual tech manager in terms of allowing the adviser to have those conversations to the client about what strategies they’re eligible for. Right. But really, interestingly, in the next iteration of this is really for us, you know, what once you know what strategy is the clients eligible for actually then mapping the strategic benefit of that strategy for the client and the advisor. And so running basically optimization algorithms over the top of each strategy. Yep. And and actually put Writing then saying this is the maximum benefit for this one, this is the maximum benefit for the next one, and then actually ranking them. So not only does the advisor know what strategies the clients eligible for, they know the strategic outcome of each. Yeah. And then you know, that old alternative strategy recommendations and showing the client what they could have recommended, but didn’t, that becomes instantaneous and automated. So that’s the next iteration for us in terms of recommend 2.0. And then let’s call it 2.1. Yep, there’s a bunch of other tools that we’re looking to release as well. There’s an insurance needs analysis, personal insurance needs analysis, or p&l. We call internally, that that we’ve been wanting to release for a while we’ve sort of been getting a lot of feedback from advisors on that, and, and really wanting to bring that to the fore. And I think, again, allowing the client and the adviser to the digital fact find together and then knowing immediately based on your own house rules based on your insurance rules that your methodology. Yeah, exactly. So you can apply your own methodology automatically brings up what what the needs are for the client, both in terms of personal and business insurance, across life, TPD, and trauma income protection. I think that’s the probably the one that Emory wanted me to mention, because it’s been, it’s been in the development pipeline of clogging these up for a little while,

Anne-Marie Esler
we’ve been talking about paying it for a very long time. So I can’t wait, I’m very excited. And the recommend 2.0 is going to be amazing for our clients, the advisors, but also for our internal services team. We can’t wait for that either. And we’re very, very looking forward to that thing relates next year.

Peita Diamantidis
Very exciting. And the I love that there’s an acronym or acronym already Pina because we don’t need any more of those. So the thing about insurance is, if we thought people had a short attention span for wealth, strategies, insurance is even worse. And I don’t mean upfront, I mean, ongoing, and there’s very little right now that helps an advisor do that check in, let’s just revisit this, like, let’s just take a look, what’s your backup plan, let’s take a look. Maybe you can reduce a cover maybe can change your terms, you know, there’s very little that’s doing that, because it’s so manual, you know, with your methodology, it’s so manual, whereas if you can do that, in a faster fashion, it’s far more engaging for the client, and they’re going to be reminded of the value of the insurance, you know, they’re gonna get it and they’re gonna get quickly.

Matt Esler
And actually, it was it was the ensemble platform that pushed the painter up the priority list again, Peter, because there was there was some I mentioned, you know, what needs analysis tools are people using and whatnot, and there was a huge amount of response from the advisors. But when we looked at a bunch of the the tools that people were presenting, we were like, actually, no one has got anything like what we’ve created. There’s nothing that’s visual, nothing engaging, there was a lot of spreadsheets and things like that, and little bits of information that people using various other tools, which anything is better than nothing, of course. Yeah. So we’re not we’re not by any means disparaging those sorts of outputs, but being able to have it all in one spot that’s visual that’s engaging, that allows you to put your own methodology into it. I think that’s what the industry is screaming out for.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. Because once again, it is ultimately formulaic, we come up with a methodology, and it just involves formulas. It’s like humans should not be doing this. Like it’s perfect for tech. Like, that’s exactly what tech should be doing. You know, so I have to admit, it’s always frustrated me the extent to which calculations, even modeling for me how much it’s done in a somewhat manual fashion, because it’s numbers, like this is computers. This is what they’re made for, is analysis and numbers. And so, you know, it’s exciting that we’re sort of moving more of that and taking advantage of the technology to do more of that, for sure. So what about a wish list? What about something that you’ve, you know, in a few years, I’d love to be able to say we’ve done this? Is there anything on the radar for that?

Matt Esler
I think definitely, just for us that accessibility affordability thing is, is what we want to tackle here. Obviously, we have wider plans in terms of taking Padua offshore. But for now, in the short term, it’s really just about dramatically reducing the time and cost it it takes to produce high quality advice. Yeah. And I think if we can do that within the next year or two, Emery and I will be very happy and feel like we’ve we’ve we’ve vindicated the 10 years that it’s taken us to get to this point. Yeah. And obviously the time and energy and effort to get to our various stages of technical and paraplanning the house before that. So I guess that that will be it for me. And then for us, it’s about you know, what, what does the rest of the world think of little old Padua from from the small coastal town of karma.

Peita Diamantidis
I love it. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of what what what we’ve discovered in our practice is, you find that tool that solves a problem you have and you you implement it and invariably it clarifies something You were making hard around those things, right? So it’s not just the tool, solving this immediate problem, it could be the way you’re collecting information, the fact finding process, or it could be, you know, like, invariably, it just pushes the bottleneck somewhere else. But that’s good, because you just keep on working on each bottleneck. And I think, I think this accessible advice thing is only going to be solved in a solving each problem approach, I just don’t think there’s going to be this big sweeping this thing solves at all, because we would have done it already, we would have done it already. If there was one thing that could solve it. Whereas I think it is like you’re saying, like, let’s solve this make the advice production as slick as it can be, you know, and then what about the other elements? What do advisors need to behave and do differently, maybe there’s more of a program, that clients can go through that they can do it as part of a group, I don’t know. But if we can get some of these other parts that are clunky, streamlined, then it allows us as advisors to get a bit more creative on the other side, you know, we can start to think about how we can connect with more people, and give them you know, more value and more advice. So, yeah, I’m with you. I think I think the solutions there, I don’t believe it’s not. But I think, you know, nailing this will get us a long way to making life that much easier and cheaper. Is there anything we’ve missed? If we missed any elements, or any parts of what you guys offer? I feel like we’ve

Matt Esler
covered almost everything. The only the only thing that I didn’t mention that that is really, really big for us is data. Right? And, you know, almost from our outset, from our, from our very, very early days, we ensured that the tech was capable enough to be be actually given back to our clients in the form of data. Yep. So that they could actually understand what’s going right, and what’s going wrong with a business. And actually, you know, from an advice perspective, and so, you know, one of the things that we’re doing in the new year is releasing our first real advice data report for advisors. So it’s going to be covering what products advisors are investing in what strategies advisors recommending, and what they’re not recommending is probably there’s a bigger number that they’re not recommending at the moment. Yeah, what advice fees, advisors are charging, you might have seen recently in the press, some of the media publications now quoting Patriot data in terms of advice fees, both upfront or initial, as they call it now. And ongoing. Yep. Not only that, being able to sort of give that information back to the industry and back to our advisor clients is really important to me and I. But equally, making sure that advisors and compliance managers are aware of, of the key risk indicators that are going on inside their business, with the changes that have happened with licensees being responsible for the advice that have been provided, you know, you’re only as strong as your weakest link from a licensee perspective. And, and so it’s really important that you use technology to really bring those alerts and notifications to compliance before it gets to the client. So you know, so when an advisor is making a recommendation through pagewood, technology, you know, let’s say they’re outside of us location ranges, or let’s say that the fees are outside of allowable compliance or professional standards, we can actually alert the adviser alert the compliance manager, and that can be fixed before it actually hits the client, which I think that pre vet sort of stuff is really important to ensure that you’re not auditing a client, after you’ve given them the advice, you’re actually ordering the advice before it gets to the client.

Peita Diamantidis
And once again, that becomes a learning and training exercise, rather than a slap on the wrist, you know, and the way we absorb those lessons are quite different. So it’s just far more empowering for the adviser to you know, and the data thing is interesting to me, because so we had the XY PD daily, all day PD day, and and there was a session on investment bonds. And it’s one of those things that a lot of people aren’t across. And I think, you know, the way you guys are seeing strategies that are or aren’t taken up, I think is a great way even for a compliance manager to plan their training. It’s like, well, hold on, we’re seeing this being dismissed or ignored a fair bit. It could be because people are uncomfortable with it as either a product type or, or a strategy. Let’s run some sessions specifically on that. So I love that, you know, as an exception reporting, but also to product providers. I mean, one of the ones that I harp on a little bit about, I’ll admit is, is you know, in superannuation choice is the thing, right, we can all choose, unfortunately, because of pre 2015 allocated pensions, then a lot of not pensioners that didn’t set up the account that long ago, often can’t afford to move because their products grandfathered. You know, I’d love to know how many gets stuck in their product, it’d be a great figure to give to the platform’s to go, you guys just pitched government to change the grandfathering to be attached to the individual and not the product. You’d see all of these inflows. You know, it’s that sort of information that can be really powerful because At the moment, all we’ve got is logic, we don’t actually have volume to demonstrate the challenge. This many pensioners are paying this amount in product, old product, you know, that sort of stuff. So I love that idea of that sort of overarching conviction, collection of data that would be impossible, right? Right now, because it’s all in advisors heads, whereas you guys progressing into the system,

Matt Esler
it’s incredible how much we rely on subjective market research and polls, and we jump at shadows, from a financial services perspective, it all comes at all but God, we kind of forget, hang on, how big is the sample size? Yep. Is that actually the right audience answering these questions, where they offered a Rolex watch, to answer those questions or not in the way that they might have wanted to, or whatever the case might be, as has been the case in the industry in the past. And so I think, for us, it’s all about real objective data, not market research, not what an advisor or what their client or what a platform provider would have done under a certain set of circumstances. But actually what happened. And when you look at market research, and the subjective stuff that is released in the industry, versus the actual data, and the time it takes to produce it, and advices classic one, you know, we know exactly how long it takes, because we produce advice documents every day, for a multitude of different advisors across simple and complex as Emery has gone through. It’s incredible. We used to think, why are we taking it, you know, taking heed of these reports, which are clearly incorrect. Yeah, for years and years and years. And, you know, the Great, the great disparity was when the FSC KPMG report came out, and it was three times greater than the others that were that have been released for decades and decades. And so I think, you know, that that sort of stuff, getting back to actually, you know, using data as the information that we act on, not on surveys, or polls, which may or may not be accurate.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely, because our memory of an experience is completely different to the reality of it. It doesn’t matter how self analytical, you are absolutely possible to keep all those data points in your head and connected and, you know, corral them together. So it makes sense to get that externally. And I’m betting there’s some advisors that having worked with you guys, get some insights that surprised them. You know that for

Matt Esler
a number of times, Emrys offered employment to advisors have said it takes them half an hour to produce a plan. We all use your your return, right? It’s gonna be 10 times better than anyone else.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Unicorn unicorn quick. I love it. I love it. Perfect. Well, that’s really fascinating. I’m so glad we caught up to go through this system, because I will just love what you guys are doing. All right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about Pedja, then the website link is in the episode shownotes, along with both our lovely guests LinkedIn details, so feel free to sort of poke them and I’m sure they’ll send you to the right person to speak to in the team. Thank you so much for joining us, Matt and Emery. It’s been really interesting. And I love that you continuing the good fight, you know, to really streamline the production of advice. I’m excited about somebody focusing on that. So those of us who are sort of EQ focus can then get on with the other stuff. So please keep, and I look forward to seeing what adventures you get up to in the future. Thank you.

Matt Esler
Thanks, Peita. Appreciate your time.

Anne-Marie Esler
Thanks, Peter.

Peita Diamantidis
So are you a current user of Padua, whether it’s for the tech solution, or it could be for the paraplanning services? I love the idea that the Ensembl community and its feedback has fed directly into patches development path. How cool is that? But I think we can do more of that, can’t we? So please share any insights, you have things you’d love it to do on the Ensembl community platform, and any tips you might give on to advisors that are considering considering it as one as the solutions in their sort of, you know, advice tech tech stack? In terms of my thoughts, I think petrol could be really interesting solution to consider if you’re actually getting very close to or maybe you’ve even past full capacity from an advice perspective, right. So if you’re really slammed in that advice, production space, and you’re considering your options, because while the ticket itself, you know, could add some value, it could unlock some capacity for you by reducing the time it takes to produce advice. So that could be a win in, you know, step one. But I also liked the idea that you could then have capacity sort of on tap via the power planning services that they provide that you might just access when necessary. You know, because you’re already then using the page, your tech tool, then utilizing the paraplanners won’t be a huge leap, right. And it could be quite an easy decision you could make on the fly if you just get an influx of activity. This could mean you know getting over time getting really good at delegation where you can then debate do I assign this into mainly to a power plant, I’d do it myself or assign it externally to the Padua, power planning team. So I really love that. For those people in that situation, I think it could be a great solution. And, honestly, I really resonated with me the idea of a tool that, you know, they’re continually expanding upon that sort of lists, you know, basically outlines all the possible advice strategies that might apply to that specific client, their age, their situation, their goals, and then prompts us to consider each of those strategies as part of the advice production process, you know, this type of rigor is not just a wonderful tool for new advisors, I think it’s fantastic for experienced advisors, right? And will encourage us all to lift our game and potentially identify areas where maybe we feel we need to re educate or, or get a better understanding, because those are going to constantly happen, you know, advice is an evolving beast. So I really like the idea of those guardrails that can sort of keep us on track. Now, as you know, there’s only one skill we need to become bionic advisors. And that’s avid curiosity. So to help you build that habit, I’ve got quite an interesting app for today’s curiosity corner. And that app is hyper history. Now you can find it at hyper hy pe history.com. Now, it’s a really basic looking website, right? This is nothing fancy going on here. But it’s got some really interesting information available on it. So as advisors, a lot of what we do is to provide context to our clients, right? We we remind them perhaps where they were in the past, where they are now and even you know, where they want to head, right. And one of the things that can help anchor those insights is what was going on in the world or around them at that point in time. And this is what hyper history does, right? You can pick a point in time in history, and it lists by year, and then even by day, potentially global events going on politics, entertainment, even scientific discoveries that occurred, then, you know, what an interesting way to anchor that sort of, you know, normal market returns over time graph, you know, we’ve all seen them in an ever increasing line. But what about adding what was going on at specific points in time, you know, the space station, the International Space Station going up in 2000, or the Kobe earthquake in 1995. There’s so many topical news items that people who’ve lived through those times will truly remember clear as day, right? And it’ll really anchor that time in their life for them. So I’d encourage you to check the website out just to sort of provide that context to your clients, when you look back in time for them for their portfolio, or perhaps even just for markets in general. Welp, 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 I’d love to hear what session or webinar you would love me to run in the future. What more would you like to learn about what can I have? You know, how can I add value in the sort of advice tech business transformation space, specifically to you? What would you value? I’d love to hear all about it. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn at Peita MD, which is P eita. M D. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to tuning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explorers Stay curious.