AdviceTech Podcast #1 – AstuteWheel – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the X Y advice tech Podcast. I’m Peter diamond Titas. And joining me here today to deep dive into the astute we’ll app is an Army Reserve Lieutenant Kokoda track Walker, our Price Waterhouse alumni, and previously owned his own financial advice business. Thank you so much for joining me on the show Hans Egger.

Hans Egger
Much appreciated.

Peita Diamantidis
Not at all. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Now we will deep dive and we’ll get into all things astute will. But first, I just thought we’d take a moment let’s ease in and let’s get to know you as a user of tech a little bit. So that before we dive into the particular wonderful software you’ve built, so now this is clearly a deep psychological question. What’s your most used emoji? Do you use emojis?

Hans Egger
Yeah, I do. And this is gonna seem a little bit weird, but I’ll put it into context. So we’ve got a dog that’s over 16 years old, all Aberdeen. And so she’s kind of at the end of her year, and she’s struggling with a few things. And my wife is a nurse. And so she’s interested in you know, health. So one of the things that I send to her every afternoon is if I’ve walked our dog cookie, and she’s successfully pood I have an emoji of the dog a cookie because that’s her name and your pillow. So used daily.

Peita Diamantidis
That’s fantastic. And how efficient, right? It’s just three, it’s three witches. None of these rubbish typing with two thumbs. I love it. That’s that’s a fantastic answer. Thank you. All right. And in terms of Look, we all live in our smartphones. Now. That’s where our worlds are. If you had to delete everything on your smartphone, all of the apps, but you could only keep three, which three would you keep?

Hans Egger
Yeah, the ones that are used the most. I sort of wake up early, I work from home, so I don’t have a commute. So I read The Sydney Morning Herald the financial review and the New York Times every morning, I spend about an hour going through those. So I’d have to say those. But then my daughter who left home 18 months ago. She’s big in Instagram. So if there was a fourth one, and I think I would have to get rid of one of those and keep in contact with my daughter.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic of social media is such a good connection, isn’t it? I mean, people talk about all of the superficiality, but the connection we have through social media is amazing, particularly with people that aren’t close to us. Well, thank you for that. Well, we know you’re just a little more than we did before. So let’s dive into a student Well, now basically, I approached these sort of chats, really, basically looking at it as if I’m going to do this for my business. So this is fantastic. You know, I get to be here, use the pod for my own research. So it’s a little selfish, I’ll admit, but Tom will approach it that way. So help me get a sense of where the astute will sort of sits in the advice tech space, you know, sort of what category do you guys fit into

Hans Egger
Yeah, so we’re for financial planners, and we’re specifically to help financial planning practices deliver a better front end to their business. So what I mean by a front end is all those interactions that you have just before a client meeting, during a client meeting. And then just after a client meeting, and our software is designed to improve the efficiencies in that process, you improve the compliance because you’re gathering as you go. And also just to provide a really valuable experience for the client. So that’s awesome.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, and so then the sort of things I’m just picturing, and I hate, I hate really pigeon holing. But just to sort of get everybody’s heads in the right space, then it’s probably things like online fact find, like any of those sort of interacting with the client elements, maybe risk profile questionnaire that like that sort of stuff. So that’s, I guess, quite simple. Then I did actually, when I did some digging, notice, you have gone into the hole goals. And as well, so drawing the goals out from clients, which is something that clearly is coming up, a lot of people are advisors in the last sort of few years, and even estate planning. So there’s, it’s it truly is the what the client might be asking about or need to interact on that you’re sort of focusing on. Is that fair?

Hans Egger
Yeah. So you’re right, we have a number of online questionnaires, because we believe getting information from the client before the meeting is is really important. We don’t see value in asking your client, you know, can you provide us with your middle daughter’s date of birth or whatever, that’s just mundane stuff. The client doesn’t want to spend time in a meeting doing that. So they’ll provide it. And, and in the gold space, you know, a client needs to sit down with their partner and say, Well, what are our goals, they need to do that at home, maybe over a bottle of wine, because my goal might be to go to Europe and have a, you know, backpacking holiday, my wife’s goal might be to go to the US and have a five star holiday. So we don’t want to have that discussion in the meeting with, you know, financial planner, slash discussion

Peita Diamantidis
slash argument. Yeah, exactly.

Hans Egger
We want to sort that out well, and truly before we get to the meeting, and our tools are very visual, and interactive. And so we have, you know, the financial planner has the ability to make it a much better experience. And, you know, some of those areas are the modeling calculators, it’s, it’s, it’s much easier to, to model using graphs, what the effect of a strategy will be. So that’s kind of what we’re trying to do.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. All right. And so if that’s the sort of focus that makes a lot of sense, then it sounds to me then the, the, in terms of the people or the other software that you might get lined up against, you know, when if somebody is going out and doing their research, then it’s not necessarily going to be those sort of core planning tools, is it? So it’s not necessarily that because your focus is so much on that client interaction, then who else sort of do people line you up against, you know, when they sort of doing the BD parade and choose an option?

Hans Egger
Well, if we do sort of attract a lot of people that come from the x plan, the midwinter the advice, because they are more focused on the back end, the SOA production, the CRM, they do that really well. And from that core business, they’ve tried to push into the front end. And so, you know, advisors a kind of looking at that and saying, Oh, well, that’s okay. But I hear that there’s a much better solution for the front end. And that’s, that’s who comes to us.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And so I guess then, and we’ll dive into that a bit later. But I’m guessing then sometimes, you guys sit alongside some of those tools, depending on you know, even the dealer group, somebody’s weird or what they want out of the tool, and sometimes you’re the front end, as you say, and then they might use something else as the back end. Is that quite common? That’s exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so what actually triggered you to build the tool what what, what are now imagine it may have involved some some wine at some point, and you were waxing lyrical with somebody and when we can fix that problem, what what caused that moment,

Hans Egger
it was actually a combination of things. So I came into the financial planning business. In my early 30s. I had a I did a marketing business marketing degree out of uni. I went to Price Waterhouse I was a management consultant. I learned how to look at a business and say, Well, where are the efficiencies? What do we need to do? And I was National Marketing Manager for Australia and Associated Press when the internet first happened. I had to try and market a new sort of breed of internet based tools. And I came into the financial planning industry. And, you know, I asked people well, how do you explain financial planning to to your clients? And there wasn’t really an answer. And I asked how do you know explain these strategies? And there wasn’t really an answer. So I kind of thought, wow, this is really weird. You know, there’s 20,000 financial planners back then, in Australia, doing pretty much the same thing. 20,000 different ways, there’s got to be a best way. And so, you know, I noticed that I might try and explain the strategy on the whiteboard first thing Monday, and it’d be fantastic. And then a ton explained the same thing. Last thing on a Friday, and D is it was just a dog’s breakfast. I’ve got to be able to do this the best way every time. And so I started to build PowerPoint presentations, and an Excel spreadsheets that just helped me explain things. And then my colleagues said, Hey, we want those things to do the same way that it became the online tools that we have. Okay, we’re about to launch the fourth generation of those that are a little bit different.

Peita Diamantidis
Wow. Okay, so that has iterated significantly since you first started. So when When did you first sort of launch a stool?

Hans Egger
We built it in 2011, launched in 2012. So in April this year,

Peita Diamantidis
wow. Okay, so I mean, four iterations in that look, that’s pretty good. That means you’re sort of really continually looking at the tool and, and considering what’s needed and upgrading it. So that’s, you know, that’s good news. I think one thing that I know for myself and a lot of advisors is there’s tools out there that feel like they never went past 1980. So it’s nice to hear that you sort of revisiting those things constantly. And I guess adjusting to the possibilities out there, or the way things can be represented. Is that is that sort of the approach?

Hans Egger
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when we first launched, I think a decent size TV screen probably cost you five grand now it’s 500. So yeah, that’s much better. The internet speed, in most meeting rooms was, you know, an old tower over the years wanted to use and now it’s NBN. And the platform that you can build these software’s on has improved incredibly, so the latest one that we’ve embraced allows us to build things much more quickly. And also, you know, much better, because there’s more flexibility around it. So we’ve embraced the that platform. Okay,

Peita Diamantidis
fantastic. So it’s clearly a tool that advisors would be then immersed in. So if they decided to go ahead. Are you finding though, that there’s other members of the team that are then part of that? So are you finding those admin team members that may be used part of it or prep it? Or yeah, how are you finding in the out in the real world, how advice teams are utilizing the tool?

Hans Egger
Yes, it is a bit of a team effort. The the first part of the process gathering information from the client, that’s an admin task, it’s just sending a link to our client room, or links that have the questionnaires, there’s templated emails that can be used or adjusted. So the adviser typically spend some time on the phone with a new prospect, then tells the admin team sends them an email, here’s the person’s name, email address, phone number, the admin team then sends them to the appropriate client room. And, and follows it up to get the information back. The adviser gets the information goes, well, this is a whole lot of information about the guy or girl I’m seeing tomorrow or a couple, I can now prepare for the meeting. So I understand exactly what they’re looking for. And then in the meeting, they may have a junior advisor or power planner that helps them run the tech, you know, because they are typically the experts at modeling and all the rest of it. And the adviser can sit there and keep the momentum of the meeting going with the client, rather than having pauses, you know, to to enter information. And so the whole meeting can run very smoothly and much more efficiently. Because you know, where you’re going, you know what you’re going to talk about, and you don’t miss anything.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, okay, fantastic. And you’re finding any of the practices when I’m just thinking throughout our client base, and we do have some older clients. To be fair, we have very groovy older clients, so they do happily try all sorts of things out with tech, but there will be some that even you know, entering information into say a form or something like that is a challenge. Does anybody sort of use the tool or are you also a member of the team is going to give you a call. You can do this yourself, but they’re happy to talk you through and just collected over the phone Right, like, are they using the tool anyway? Is that sort of fun all of the way to collect information, no matter whether it’s the client or the team that collected?

Hans Egger
Yeah, there’s two aspects to that, firstly, it’s really easy to build a questionnaire. What’s difficult is to make it intuitive and, you know, really easy to use. So we really have specialized in that aspect of things. But you, you may get an elderly person that just doesn’t feel comfortable doing it. So some of our advisors will have an admin person that says, Okay, we’ll give you a call. And I’ll just ask your questions. And, and I’ll fill in the information as you go. And so you can do it that way. Perfect, perfect.

Peita Diamantidis
And look, I think all takes a bit like that, isn’t it, I think we’ve got to, you know, folded in and make the assumption that the majority will be happy with, whether it’s the clients or even the team, and then just just to make an adjustment for the exceptions, you know, I think there’s never going to be something that everybody is completely happy with, you’ll never find that, you know, so I think we’ve just sort of got to handle the exceptions as they come up, rather than never using at all.

Hans Egger
And the other thing that some people are hesitant about is the security. So they want to know about that. And part of our processes are able to, there’s a pop up that says, if you want to understand the security bit more, just click on this, this hyperlink, and that will get you there. And because it’s not using the email system, it’s being pushed straight to the database, which is protected by a firewall. It’s much more secure.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, fantastic. Anything that avoids email, right? It’s, it’s all about cybersecurity. So is there any you guys will have on boarded a whole lot of, you know, different businesses and types of practices? Is there any particular ones where this works really well, where it just sort of flies, you know, as soon as they start using it, it really works well. And conversely, others where it’s a bit of a struggle for them?

Hans Egger
Yeah, it works really well, for a holistic planner, because the tools kind of guide you through a holistic process. And if you sort of not a holistic planner, then you’re going to be looking at it, or the client is going to be looking at it and saying, Well, why don’t you offer advice in that area? Or that? But that’s okay. You can you can decide, I don’t want to have advice in that area, but you need a, you know, a referral partner solution, then he’s a mortgage broker, if you don’t want to do estate planning, but he’s a solicitor, so you can certainly get around it that way.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And are there any, in sort of insider tips for somebody that’s sort of embarking on this with a student? Will you once again, you’ll have seen a few people go through the, the journey, and it’s always a process any new piece of technology you fold into your practice? Then is there any you know, yeah, insider tips, you’d give them on how to make that smoother, you know, or even things that they might do before they fold it in, they could just make that just much sweeter, and still more streamlined for them as they as they fold it into the practice?

Hans Egger
Yeah, so the first thing is, you really should put yourself in your clients shoes. And so send the link to yourself, fill in the questionnaire, or the questionnaires, there’s quite a few there, and get a feeling for this as what the client is being asked to do. And get comfortable that that’s the case. And a good way to do it is to put you know, if you’re an advisor, put yourself through, put all your information in, and then get that information back at the other end and go, Okay, well, I’ve identified these areas, and, and then treat it and then look at it as if you know, you, you are the client, and you’re the advisor as well, and you’re taking the client through the process. So that’s the first thing I’d say. The second thing is doing the training, we have a series of training videos, so you can always get onto those. We also provide training on a weekly basis that you can attend as many times as you like, on the client engagement tools on the modeling calculators on the insurance needs analysis and the estate planning. So you can you can go do those every week, you know, for the first six months if you want, but also take it on as through stages. You know, the question is really easy. The admin people can do that. Understand the goals tool under skin, it stands a scoping tool, understand how to use the retirement calculator and then move on. So if you start using it, you know, if you try and take it all on, it’s it’s too much, but use the bits that are important to you, get comfortable with them and then move on to the next one.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, great advice. And I like the idea to have we’re really lucky in our practice. We’ve got quite a spread of demographic in the team and Yeah, from black thumb Tech’s through to full on tech geeks like me and so. So we’ll often do the same thing where everybody just gives it a try. And I sort of say to them, would you try and break this please? Like get a, you know, click a few times too many just give it because the more you know, what can happen before your clients do that, then A, you can give them a heads up. But be I think, also you can be more empathetic when you’re talking to them. I think, when we put in these efficiency to any type of tool, really any tool we can Well, why why can’t they work that out? Isn’t it obvious? That’s like, Well, no, actually, it’s not, you know, isn’t necessarily. And so what may be intuitive for me won’t be for somebody else. So the more your team can have experienced that themselves, then they can say, Oh, yep, that’s what I did just go back once one step, you’ll be fine. You know, so I think that’s really important for every member of the team. And particularly as all of us look at those things differently. You know, and they’ll probably have different machines, they don’t want to be on a Mac, and one will be on a tablet and want to be on a, you know, Microsoft machine. So all of that is great to just see what it looks like and how it works for sure. So I think I got a really good sense of then the value it can bring in terms of drawing the client closer, and I guess, almost closer a lot sooner, you know, so there’s some insights you’re going to have? Well before you’re really talking into the complexities and emotional elements, which is fantastic, because I think that helps you position how you might bring a topic up, that’s always difficult in a conversation with a client, you’ve got to talk about some tough things, to then you have some information already on hand is powerful. So you know, that’s exciting, then, you know, what I’m sort of wondering is how, how you guys, if you do integrate with other tools that advisors might be using? I mean, integration is something that sounds simple and ever is. But yeah, what do you guys integrate with? And how do you find that works for practices?

Hans Egger
Yes. So we made a decision a number of years ago that we didn’t want to be integration specialists, we want to focus on our core business. And so we were approached by a group called back then it was why tml, then our dash, so your listeners have probably heard of those. Yeah, so they, they put together an integration hub, where we integrate our client data with them. And then I integrate with X planned fin 365, chop West Omnium and various other software providers. And so we we’ve, we’ve made the decision, they are the ones that can do that for us. For now. Eventually, we’ll, we’ll look at integrating separately, but but for now it’s with them.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, and I’m I’m guessing when somebody else is constantly working on that you probably have more integrations a lot quicker than you would have if you’re trying to do all that yourself. So it’s not such a bad strategy.

Hans Egger
Yeah, and the benefits for an advisor is okay, if you’re using x plan as your back end, then you can integrate data backwards and forwards, so that’s fine. But if you just want to create your own tech stack, you can do that through dash because you can create it with their integration partners, rather than trying to pull seven different software’s together that don’t talk to each other.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And so in terms of what that that integration might, because there’s clearly data integration, and that’s something we’ll focus on as well. I’ve entered it all in over here, then how do we, how do we get an order magically across there? So that’s sort of an obvious one. Is there other levels of integration in terms of triggers? Or, you know, anything that can go from one to the other? Or is it primarily data, that’s the focus,

Hans Egger
it’s primarily data, there, SOA is can pull out our graphs, and now, some of the information from the modeling tools across so retirement and insurance are the ones that that that can pull across. To dash though, you know, it doesn’t pull across to X play and our modeling calculators are different to theirs. So you’re kind of Eric’s tools.

Peita Diamantidis
Fair enough. And so that’s sort of, you know, me focusing like me as a new user, or somebody who’s looking at it new. You’ve got a whole lot of people currently using a student will, is there anything that you sort of feel like most people miss like they’re not using in the in the toilet, they could be that they’ve just sort of either forgotten in the training or sort of missed their initial focus that you feel as a bit underutilized, but has real value?

Hans Egger
Yeah. It’s interesting. We we survey our clients every year, and we ask them those questions. What are you using? What are you not using? What would you like to use? What do you like? What do you not like? And that feedback loop is really important to us because we’re constantly trying to improve the software. The client engagement tools are pretty well used because they’re so easy, and they’re so valuable. And you know, people just go, well, that’s a no brainer, let’s use the scoping tool is probably a little bit less used. And it’s just so powerful. It’s, it’s powerful on the compliance side, because it guides you through gathering the deep and comprehensive information that ASIC is looking for. But it’s also a great process, to then push back to the client and say, Okay, we’ve agreed that these things are in scope. And by the way, here’s all the things that we’re doing in there. There’s a lot, you know, we were doing a lot for you. And the client goes, Wow, that’s amazing. I didn’t think retirement had all that going on. And so they’re much more likely to pay a commercial fee, knowing that there’s so much work going on. Yeah. Okay. So that’s on their client engagement tools. The, the modeling, calculators are so powerful. And to use those in front of a client takes a bit of getting used to you either have a power planner in there doing it for you, or eventually, the financial planner, you know, feels comfortable enough to do it. But to show a client in the meeting, the impact of a decision, like a retiree wants to go on a holiday and buy a new car. Okay, well, let’s plug those in takes like five seconds. What’s the impact on your retirement plan? Well, it’s too big an impact. So maybe instead of $100,000, BMW, we’ll go with a $50,000 Nissen, how’s that? Look? Yep, that’s much better. Instead of a five star holiday to Europe, costing 30, grand, let’s go four star and it cost 20. Grand? Yep, that’s much better. That’s what we’ll do.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay. And so the, when I love the just going to the scope, one that’s bringing rigor to the sort of things that as advisors we go through in our heads, anyway, is fantastic. I think anything that can do that, that can just make sure you never miss anything, you know, it’s a great way to sort of force you to go the bouncy ball stuff, you know, I love that stuff. Just because it just gives it that substance. And if that then demonstrates to the client that substances Well, you know, that’s, that’s fantastic. So the modeling, without having seen it, I’m picturing, you know, lines and graphs and, and, you know, curves and money tapering off? And is that the sort of thing that it has?

Hans Egger
Yeah. And, you know, one of the things when I was an advisor, and I think there’s plenty of advisors out there, like me, when you have to explain something to a client, you tend not to try and do it in words, you go straight to the whiteboard, and you start drawing things, because most clients are visual, they get that. So you’re telling a story, and you’re, you’re putting visuals in place, the tools we created were to try and replicate that and make it the best visual every time. So you know, some of the tools are designed to just be quick, easy tools to use in front of a client to maybe, you know, show the client, if they’ve got $500 a month to do something with what are their options, they can pull the unset mortgage, they can salary sacrifice to super start a savings plan, a good savings plan, an investment plan, or, you know, borrow against their home and then found that that debt in an investment? Yeah, how do you explain all that to a client quickly and easily? Well, you can’t unless you’ve got a tool that just shows bar graphs, it’s a well, given your set of circumstances, your tax rate, etc. This is these your options. And the client looks at it goes well, okay, there’s four or 567 options. I like that one, salary sacrificing looks like it’s the best return for the least amount of risk. So then you can go deeper into that with other tools to say, well, this is how it works. And let’s stress tested under various circumstances. And then you’ve got the cash flow calculator where you plug that in, and you show that instead of running out of money at 75, you’re now going to be okay to 85. Because you’ve done that strategy. So you can show it on different levels.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And so then sort of looking forward from that. I’ve always got, you know, in the back of my mind, we’ve all been to the fund manager, you know, when they have the big events, and we’ll go to like a hotel ballroom somewhere, and we’re all there. And the very clever fund manager comes up, and they’re talking about the markets and maybe an investment they’ve made and look at what it did, and all that sort thing, and they’ve got the graphs up there. And I had this moment of clarity, because I had a friend with me that was at the back of the room who’s not from our industry. Do you happen to be watching the same thing? And afterwards, she’s she said, you know, whispering? Did you understand any of that? I’m like, Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, that, you know, they described the graph that she Yes, but like, and she’s from marketing. And she said, Yeah, but you know, it took them 15 minutes to describe the graph and right, yeah, she’s like, well, what’s the point of the graph? They could have just described it in Word So I have to admit, it’s sort of lodged in my brain a little. And so I’m wondering with tools even like yours, you know, where you’re looking into the future clearly, but, you know, more infographics almost, or things that are visual representations, you know, the ball gets bigger or smaller things that for clients who don’t deal with XY graphs and all the things we do, they can help them, you know, latch on to these concepts, as opposed to us then even having to describe what the graph is, before they can get the messaging. Is that something that’s on your radar?

Hans Egger
Yeah, you know, our, our entire focus has always been, what’s the client experience? How do we simplify and explain things visually, and in an interactive way, so that the client gets it. So if you compare our graphs to x plans, graphs, their chocolate cheese, the x plane graphs, you know, back end graphs that you know, more the compliance stuff, ours are still very compliant, but they’re easy to read. And, you know, with the visual on the screen, we’ve got a tab that gets rid of all the side information makes the graph the whole screen. So you can say, right, let’s now have a look. And you can unplug certain aspects of it. So that you’re just looking at the bare basics and saying, Well, let me explain this to you, you know, this is where you are, this is where you’re going to retire. This is where you’re going to run out of money. And then from that graph, you might have four different options where you can show the income side of it, the expenses side of it, you know, so you can really, you can really present it in a number of ways. And the client can ask questions, and it’s, it’s really easy for them to understand what’s going on.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, fantastic. And look, who’s to say where this will go? I mean, I can, I can see a future where, you know, people could have the, you know, virtual reality Reality goggles. And instead of, you know, the graph, what they’re seeing is the things they’ve put as their goals as imagery into sort of a path into the future. And when one scenario comes up, something starts graying out, because it’s like, well, nope, yeah, Harley, Harley Davidson at age 45, is not going to happen because of that decision you just made so so then it makes it really tangible, doesn’t it? Because it’s like, wow, that thing just disappeared, because it was something I was about to do. You know, so I’m my deep hope is we can all get to that point where it’s so real and experiential, but it helps if we’re already now using what we can to really make it easy for somebody to decide themselves, you know, to really be informed and be able to make the right decisions.

Hans Egger
So yeah, we’re not quite there yet. But our tools really go to making the client’s goals, the very center of the advice that that’s been provided. So, you know, we take it seriously, we really want the clients to put together a list of goals, we make it easy for them to do that. And then our process allows you to track the goals. It allows you to archive a goal. So what’s happened? Have you achieved the goal? Well, that’s captured? Have you decided that you’re not going to do this goal for some reason, maybe the Alaskan cruise in 2020, you had COVID. And you couldn’t do it, so that that’s been not achieved or just sidelined? Or was it in conflict that BMW for $100,000 didn’t really stack up against paying off the credit cards and paying off the mortgage. So they’re all captured. But the idea is the client gets given the list of goals before every review meeting. And they’re able to say, well, that cruise we’re not going to do till 2024. Now, the BMW is now Nissen, and we’ve got those three other goals. And that’s, that becomes the center of the discussion each year, or whenever you get to see your clients so that they understand it’s all about them and achieving their goals. Yeah, fantastic.

Peita Diamantidis
They are in the driver’s seat, which is just amazing. You know, that’s where we need to hold all of our clients seen, so that they feel truly empowered. So anything on the development path or, or into the future is

Hans Egger
the that’s where they see the value as well, to me because I’m achieving goals. Yeah. I don’t understand that. 2% above, you know, the index means anything.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, for sure. So into the future, yeah, what’s

Hans Egger
good, there’s quite a lot coming up. As I said, we’re about to start releasing version four of astute wheel. And there’s quite a lot of improvements that we’re, we’re going to be releasing. So that starts in November, we’re just doing the internal beta testing at the moment. that’ll that’ll then go to our group of about 12 users who will then start beta testing once it’s gone through our system. And then we’re doing a series of user forums around Australia and most of the capital cities in mid November, where we’ll be releasing the new Software, the areas that we’ve really focused on is in the business systems, there’s going to be a lot more flexibility around the use of the internal users, admin power planners and financial planners, you’ll be able to set a lot more assumptions in the backend that will then flow through, you’ll be able to set your own color schemes. If you’ve got a logo that’s red, you can set red as your color scheme, or whatever you like. There’s also, you know, you’ll be able to set up your own risk profiles in the background, and they’ll all flow through to the calculators. There’s also the ability to interrogate a lot more of your information. So if you want to identify all my clients that have no estate planning, or all my clients that have insurance, or you know, you can interrogate, you can identify opportunities where, you know, you might be able to send some emails out to clients saying, Well, have you thought about your estate plan, here’s a process that we offer, and perhaps you should come in, we also have looked at some CRM capabilities. So we’re never going to be an x plane, we don’t want to be, what we’ve done is focused on and through our focus groups. Now, feedback, we’ve identified which of the CRM capabilities are most important for advisors. So we’re focusing on providing those, and probably the biggest thing is a client portal. So the we were the first to introduce client rooms where the client went to a room that was specifically for them. And, and, and I think we’d been a little behind with client portals. But we wanted to see you know, what everyone else was doing. And I think we’ve identified that a client portal really is much more than just where you share information, it’s got to be that and more, it’s got to be interesting. It’s got to be functional. It’s secure, processes secure already. But we’ve really looked at what’s out there. And we want to be the best of breed in terms of the kind of portal that the client likes to use, and the adviser likes to use. So that’s what’s coming.

Peita Diamantidis
You’re going to be easy.

Hans Egger
Last four months,

Peita Diamantidis
is taking advantage of all that time that we’ve all had. Hmm, that’s really exciting. Look, in your I completely agree. I think client portals are that sort of next gen, I’d say that’s the next thing that I think we’re all going to be needing to be thinking about thinking about what will add value to our clients and our businesses. So it’s exciting that you’re sort of folding that in. And considering it, it is one of those things that when people first start talking about it, it’s all we can do all these things. And then you work out that nine out of 10 of those nobody used and so it’s it’s all down to actually what adds value will contribute, which is really important. So I’m actually really impressed that you guys are sort of taking that time because I think that will make a big difference. Is there anything else I’ve missed? Or that we’ve not covered? For people taking a look at astute? Well, I don’t

Hans Egger
think so I think, you know, the kind of people that come to us are really the the advisor that’s thinking how am I going to do things better? How do I add value that my clients can look at me and understand I’m providing value to them? And and that’s where that’s where we really sit. So the advisors that come to us? Those kinds of people?

Peita Diamantidis
Perfect. Well, all right, advice explorers. If you’d like to find out more about astute we’ll then the website link will be in the episode show notes. And we’ve also added added actually a link to hands on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out on LinkedIn, I’m sure we’d be happy to point you in the right direction. If you have any particular questions. Thank you so much for joining us hands and being sort of first off the cab off the rank for the advice tech podcast. Really appreciate your time and for giving us all of those insights and really getting our head around what a student will can do. So thank you very much.

Hans Egger
You’re very welcome, Peita. Thanks for inviting me.

Peita Diamantidis
So interesting rod client facing tool. So are you a current user of a student? Well, listener? Do you maybe agree or disagree with our discussion on the app, please share your insights on the XY community platform as I personally and I’m sure other advisors and people in the industry would really love to hear your take. And please share any tips you know any further ninja tips for current users that you might give to other advisors on using a steel wheel and how to really fold it into your practice. Now as for my sort of thoughts on it, then you know these client engagement and presentation tools that are real He designed to be utilized at more than one point during the advice process, right. So, through laid through before meetings during and after, these then gonna need to be intentionally folded into your processes in the business. And so what I mean by that is, you know, if you’re thinking about introducing a tool like a student will, then I’d get you to sort of get a big ol y port or something similar, map out your current advice process, you know, boxes and arrows style, and then add a new sort of role, like it’s almost a new team member, but call it you know, a student, we’ll treat a student these sort of tools a student will tools, like they’re a team member, and inserted into the, into your process. So you can really see what role it’s going to play, have a think about where you’re going to introduce it, and how, what positioning you might need to do even think about scripts your team can use. Look, scripts can feel a bit stilted initially, but they are a great playtest place to start. And they will mean your team are more likely to introduce these tools, once you make make a decision to actually take them on. Really consider you know, who’s going to be generating the report, who’s going to be following up all those sorts of elements make this a full decision not uh, huh, we’ll just give it a whack and maybe use it for a couple of clients, I’d give it a really good thought think, and fold it through all of those layers of your process. Now, when it comes to integration, look, integration, you know, between advice systems, is notoriously tricky, and, you know, often fails to be honest. And this is even when you know, both sides of the equation are really doing their best to make that integration work. It’s just for Nikki for all sorts of reasons. This doesn’t mean though, you don’t do it. But what I would say is, what we do is in our business is for about the first six months or so maybe not that long, but about six months or so, we actually factor in some manual transfer of data between, say, a current system and a system like a steward wheel, or at least a checking of the integrated data that’s transferred, we sort of put that as a conscious step in the process. Because what’s important to remember is, the manual transfer of data or even just checking what has come across doesn’t need to happen, or be done by the adviser, it can be done by any member of the team as support role can take that. And it’s just a way of getting some confidence in the transfer of data. And then better understanding where it goes and what it does. So this sort of manual step, you know, rather than open API, which is a language used to talk about that transfer of the ability to sort of talk between systems, you know, I sort of call this human API, right. So it’s that manual data entry. But I think doing things the hard way, first can really help you understand how to best then streamline. So that would be just a little tip that I’d give you. The other thing I’d say is this, you know, so many facets to a system like this. And Hans actually mentioned that, you know, there’s a whole lot of layers, you know, should you decide to go ahead with something like this, then really plan the take up or the rollout really carefully. Don’t implement it all at once, please, I have made that mistake before, you know, it would be completely reasonable to take a full 12 months to roll out just a handful of those sort of questionnaires and data collection tools, right, really get that happening, bed down that process, get it streamlined, get the email templates, set up all those things really happening. And then for the second 12 months, you know, work out how to take advantage of some of the other elements that are on offer. So please just don’t feel like you’ve got to dive all in straightaway. In fact, that’s the last thing that I’d suggest. Now, I often get asked what it takes to sort of become a bionic advisor, or at least to sort of be as immersed in tech for advice as I am. And the good news is the answer is really simple. All it takes is curiosity, you know, so to get your curiosity muscles really working each week on the pod, I’m going to bring to your attention, a little app, you know, I may have come across that sort of tweaked my interest. And I believe it’s probably worth at least a looky loo for you as well. So for this week’s curiosity corner, I’d love you to check out an app called Glide. You can find it at glide apps.com. Now, this app actually sort of takes a spreadsheet, right? And glide actually turns it into a real working app or website. Right so it just takes something that’s in boxes and run as columns and rows, and turns it into a dynamic, simple website. Now when we shared this back in February in the XY community, one of the members within pretty short order actually created a PDS link database with QR codes for each PDS, you could sort it by product provider, you know, admins could admin teams could grab what they needed, and you just had to keep the data updated. It was such a wonderful application of the concept, and can be far easier for for your team to use than having a clunky spreadsheet. So basically, anything you would put in a spreadsheet could be created into your own sort of website or app. And this is all without coding, you don’t need to work out how to code. So check it out, you know, just get a bit curious, have a think about how you might apply it, maybe share it in the community have some ideas you’ve had, because honestly, the sky’s the limit here. And you know, as we all get smarter at the way we do things in the advice world, I just can’t wait to see what creativity and innovation does to the what you know, we provide as advisors and ultimately, the breadth of who we can help. 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 how they too, can become bionic advisors, being the best of both human end technology. Then please reach out to me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn forward slash Peita M D, that’s PEITAMD. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember, advice explorers Stay curious.