SUMMARY KEYWORDS

clients, advice, advisors, powerpoint presentation, business, compliance, talking, statement, video, fantastic, risk profile, experience, investment, conversation, understand, provide, financial, strategy, view, process

SPEAKERS

James Wortley, Fraser Jack

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome to the x y advisor podcast. A global community of financial advisors sharing and learning with one another to drive the positive evolution of financial advice. To get involved, go to x y advisor.com. Or simply download the XY advisor.

 

 

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Fraser Jack 

Thank you for joining us on another episode of The X Y advisor podcast. We are talking all things scale in our scale up series. And today I’m joined by James wardley. Welcome, James.

 

James Wortley 

Thanks, Riley. Good to be here.

 

Fraser Jack 

fantastic to have you on now. Today, I wanted to get you on to the conversation and bring you into the conversation around scale because I believe that you’re doing some amazing things in your business. And, you know, especially the adoption of technology and the overall client experience. So thank you for coming on. We will we will go into that in a second. But before we do that, I thought we would just I just might give an opportunity just to say sort of who you are and where your businesses and we’ve come from.

 

James Wortley 

Yeah, so we’re enlightened Financial Solutions up in MCI in Queensland. So populations around about 100,000 people. So good regional center, great place to live gateway to the Whitsundays. So from a business perspective, well, we’re a self losses business, we got a license back in 2017, where we’re growing pretty quickly where we’re growing around about 20 25% each year, from a client perspective, 350 full clients is about two and a half million dollars ongoing revenue. So average fees, probably around about $7,000 or so. But if I just got back was a Westpac financial advisor back in 98. gone through the banking system had the opportunity in 2007, to bind my clients through magnitude. So one of those early adopters for that opportunity started nine to financial vice businesses on first of April 2007. What a great day. And then what happened after that? Not a lot. It’s a bit of market turmoil after that, but yeah, I got through that. And now grown very well. We’ve done a couple of acquisitions over that period of time. But we now have five financial advisors in 13. Staff all together,

 

Fraser Jack 

and I say, and in all the staff are in that regional or rural area of North Queensland.

 

James Wortley 

Yeah, they are, they are fantastic. Ben,

 

Fraser Jack 

thank you for that great introduction. So. So you’ve, you’re an advisor, you’ve evolved as time goes on, you’ve got a lot of clients that are existing, but you’re also in a phase of growing, which is incredible. We’re going to talk about some of the stuff that you’ve done in your practice over the last few years. And before we get into that, tell me about the the process that sort of started this evolution of you embracing technology and going right, how are we going to how are we going to engage our clients in a way use technology and, and really grow the business from where it was here. So

 

James Wortley 

again, from the technology perspective, I love technology, I love love hand, apply with it, and seeing what you can actually do with it, and wasting a hell of a lot of time on it as well. So, but, but come back to where we were, and I’m sure everyone’s gone through that process and continue to go through that. But in 2017 was a game changer for us. So we became self license. So as soon as we got that license, so again, we were previously security before then, once we got their license, it was like everything is just like this brand new toy. What are we gonna do? We’re gonna change the world. How do we change it? We got all these things to do. And then we’ve worked out okay, you now need to do a statement advice for every single client that you have. So, so that so the journey that we started on was, okay, well, let’s start to relook at everything that we do. But let’s look at it from our perspective as a financial advisor. Let’s look at from a client perspective. And that’s the one thing I think we Get a little bit lost, especially with all the regulation behind report and everything that we’ve gone through either probably last year, seven to eight years. So from, from our perspective of is 12 months of consolidation, but we’re working on that client experience. So the one thing if I just got back the prayer, well, the way we previously did it was, we see a client, so might be a brand new client, we do the first interview, we then do a second interview with Zack Ross to be able to provide advice, we need to establish advice, we’ll need to charge you 3000 $10,000, whatever that standard advice for years. Again, client goes, yes. Okay, happy to get the advice, we then send instructions to paraplanner, it might come back six weeks later, might come back three months later, from then you’re presenting the advice, you’re going through 100 page document, you’ve got all these projections and everything else. And you present your client then, which I find a little bit hilarious. Now in one side is when we asked the client do they want to proceed? So we’ve done all this work. And we’re actually getting an opportunity to be able to say no, again, and and then we start to do the implementation process. So we didn’t come back and said, I came from a client perspective, what are they doing, they’re coming in for the first interview, they’re coming in for the second interview, they’re waiting for this six to seven week period, to browse to provide advice. And there’s so many advisors that tell me that I didn’t go through the statement of advice, they’ll go through the summary, and just say, look, this is what this is all about. And I have the statement advice on the side and say, Look, this is our compliance document. So and then we’re given the opportunity, yes or no. And then we do the implementation. And where does that statement advice go? That 100 page document is it goes in the filing cabinet, or have been and never to be seen. Again, the projections are at a date. So since you’re actually presenting that is probably quite out of date is Gov government legislation changes, economic conditions change, life changes so quickly as well. So we’ve just gone on, in this case, the clients actually just invested all this money to get this statement of advice, and it’s out the window.

 

Fraser Jack 

So you can have questions around this, because I’ve got some theories around the value associated with the statement of advice. And, and stick with me on this because I think the real value is in the implementation, the process of them saying yes, and you implementing and then after, after that fact, they’ve then been provided with some value, I know, we put this value on the statement of advice, because it costs a lot of money to produce. So we instantly as you know, the advisors think that there is a value associated to this, this, this document, but from a client point of view is the value actually in the document. It’s not

 

James Wortley 

that the value is in their first two interviews, we’re actually you’re building trust with clients, and you can actually give them an understanding with how we’re going to help them and just earning their trust. So generally, when we get to that statement of I’ll say, look, we’re going to present a statement advice for you and you’re happy to go ahead, the clients have got the trust. So they’re going to go generally 80 90% of clients will go ahead with whatever you’re actually going to talk to them about, because you’ve gone through some of that detail with how we’re actually going to help them. But But along with you the value, everything that we do with value comes back to its client being in front of the client and actually talking about one of their values, what’s important to them? And what do they want to get out of life? What how do we help them live their best financial life? That’s, that’s, that’s what value is to me. And we do we do get a little bit lost in in the compliance side of it as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

So tell me after this pain, and I pretty much think that everyone’s feeling the pain. What did you decide to do about it?

 

James Wortley 

Yeah, so for us client experience. So for our initial meetings that we have, we talked about client values, really important we go we go through a lot of detail to be able to understand what’s really important to clients. After we have that conversation we’ve got, we’ve got some of their information, we use a steering wheel. So we’ve got all that information up front, so we know their financial position. So we can whip through that pretty quickly understand where they are. So we’re then we’re talking about the values and then how do we turn that into goals? And then how can we help them? So we’ve changed around, we don’t do up front advice fees anymore. We engage our clients given the opportunity say, Okay, if you want to be a client of ours, then we will charge you this per month, and the contract is for the next 12 months. The benefit that we looked at is okay, if a client wants us to proceed and wants to be engaged with us, here’s what we’re working from day one, we’re not waiting six weeks, eight weeks, three months down the track. If they need wills, and they haven’t got a will. Well, that’s the first thing that we’ll do, we’ll prioritize all their advice and go take them to a solicitor get that done. If they haven’t got insurance, and it’s one of their number one with they don’t have any income protection. Okay, let’s get that sorted straightaway. It’s one of those critical things that we need to be able to do. So, today the conversation so from from taking that client on. We’re working from them from day one, not three months later. Yeah. So

 

Fraser Jack 

this is a really interesting model in itself. So, so straight into a monthly contract, say for a 12 month period, but we’re looking at monthly, then you can triage what’s sort of needs to be done first. So you’re obviously looking at their values and understanding the best financial life is going to look like. But then the plan could come out over a six month period really willing to fix all the things that are broken first, and then we’ll work on the other things with that. Yeah.

 

James Wortley 

So from so once a client actually says, Yes, we’re happy to go, we’ll actually do an onboarding video. So part of that video. So again, that we’re sort of moving into this video and client experience with the technology that we’re that we’re utilizing. So, as part of that onboarding video, part of the onboarding video is also explained to clients, all our staff who they are what they do. So again, good experience, so that when someone’s ringing their phone, they know, okay, yep, this is where I’m at. And yeah, this is what their role is. But also we’re going to prioritize what their advice, look, these are all the issues that we talked about 1234567 we’re actually going to deal with this. In our next meeting, we’ll actually talk about Okay, prioritizing that advice. So they’ve got the onboarding video, we do a fundamental risk profiling questionnaire, which we didn’t cover that off a little bit later. So we’ve got that information, the client then comes back reprioritize, the advice, and part of that then is we do the video advice. So that’s, that’s probably the real big change up with with where we’re going from a technology point of view. But more importantly, it’s the client experience. Yep. Now, now, we’re

 

Fraser Jack 

going to get into this video advice in a second just with an onboarding video. Is that an individual onboarding video that you’ve done for each client? Or is that done, and then you send out

 

James Wortley 

so so the way that we do these videos, we’ve got a PowerPoint presentation we go through. So we’ve got all the photos of all that staff. So we’re talking about what they do. We’re also going through what their fears and what that entails based on the service that we’re actually going to provide to them over the 12 months. So it’s not a statement advice, it’s just onboarding video, giving them an understanding of what they can expect over the next 12 months.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Fantastic. Okay. And that’s almost, you know, you’ve sent them the FSG, for example, but this is the actual personalized version of that

 

James Wortley 

there. And these videos, probably three to five minutes, no longer than five minutes. So we did look at the efficiency point of view where we can actually do a video and just send that out to our clients. But again, it’s client experience, we want to make sure that we got a customized personalized experience for the client. And that’s, that’s critical for everything that we do.

 

Fraser Jack 

Okay, so that’s a fire coming in on your mouth. You’re the advisor, I come in, we have a values meeting, and then you do me onboarding videos, this

 

James Wortley 

onboarding, video comes out. So that goes out and a Dropbox link. Yep. So the video is done. Just to from the technology point of view, we use OBS. So we looked at all the technology around OBS was the best technology because it download, we didn’t actually have anything in the cloud, it downloaded directly to our laptops. So we wanted to be a little bit in control of everything that we actually do so so that worked really well, with OBS we had that we can then just go and review the video. We’ve got Joel screen. So we got two dual screens in the laptop. So we’re moving from screen to screen and also face to face as well. You know it? Is that really good client experience.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. Now for anybody listening. OBS is a Open Broadcaster Software. It’s open sourced, and it allows you to download to machine so it’s saving the files on your personal machine not into the cloud.

 

James Wortley 

Yeah. And works well in mind do this. We’ve been doing this for two and a half years, and we continue to stuff up. But one of the things that we do that I say to all my advisors is you just keep pushing through. If it’s not a big step up, just keep going. Because that makes it personal. Yeah, it’s, it’s that people make mistakes. And there’s worrying you’re not really too sure. But it’s still if we if we keep into our script, and we got a PowerPoint presentation, and we’re getting a message across, then that’s the number one. But we also want to make sure that we we got a lot of energy in our videos as well with a client so they can see that, that we’re really focused in, it’s just all about them. It’s their best interest and, and we just we just love giving advice to our clients. Fantastic. And I’m sure the clients love getting a video a personalized video. Yeah, yep,

 

Fraser Jack 

absolutely. All right. So that’s the that’s the first part of the onboarding. Let’s talk about the advice piece because there is, you know, as we get into this idea of creating a video statement of advice, let’s talk about how that works from a practical point of view. And then we’ll get into sort of how the clients feel about

 

James Wortley 

its history there. Also, we spent a lot of money with a lawyer and actually going through that process, because Okay, how do we do video voice? Are you able to do video advice based on the legislation. So we went through that that probably took about six months to be able to go through that. And it was about just doing these videos, getting them to have a look at it, understanding where there was a lot of feedback that came through. So we’ve just continued to keep on fine tuning over and over again to where we are today. And that’s just one of those things that just we keep on changing and evolving. And I suppose sharing best practice for the advisors to say, Okay, how can we make this process better? And then also come back to a client feedback point of view is what type of feedback are we actually getting? So we’re asking those clients where it is, is it good for them as well?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. So from the from the legislation point of view, there was nothing in the legislation that said you couldn’t do a video segment of advice. And then, of course, the next thing they’ll always go Well, it depends on what you’re saying how you say it. And if you cover everything. So you’ve been through that process to work out all of the points that you need to hit enter into a PowerPoint presentation so that you’re essentially presenting as you go through the presentation that leads the advisors to make sure they hit all the points that are necessary.

 

James Wortley 

Absolutely. So again, it’s just what’s your recommendation, one of the reasons for your recommendation is their alternatives. were covering off all the fees and charges. So all that all the all the all the usual information, that PowerPoint presentation, depending on how complex it is. And this is, and this is probably a critical part of why video Bice works really well. It is scoped every advisors scope. So we’re not doing holistic advice. It’s critical because we, your videos would be 30 minutes to an hour, and that’s lost on clients. So five to 10 minute video. So it might mean we’re doing for a new client, it might be five or six different presentations that we’re doing average 12 month period. So, again, short, so again, legislation says it needs to be she needs to be concise so clients can easily understand what’s the experience like for the client, and just making sure that we are from a compliance point of view, hitting all those points of why are we doing the advice and the disclosure that we need to be able to do as well? And is it in the clients best interest and why is in their best interest for that advice as well, so, so again, prioritizing all that advice in order where we’re actually discussing that with a client. So from our point of view, we’ll say, Okay, look, this is a couple of things that we think is important to you. But then they might say, look, now look, this is great, but I want to be able to get this part of the advice first, not a problem, we discussed that, and then start to go with that particular advice. So we’re doing a PowerPoint presentation. Again, our power planner can turn that PowerPoint presentation, because it is scoped device. And we’ve been doing this for two and a half years, we can turn them around in probably in 30 minutes. That’s how quickly the PowerPoint presentation can be done. We’ve got additional information that forms part of that as well. But the PowerPoint presentation goes to the advisor, the advisor then records the video. So what the client will actually see, which is probably important for the viewers is they’ll see the videos number one, so there’s so when we do the dropbox link, that’s your statement of advice. So it includes the video includes our scope, the scope device, it includes our goal summary, will then go into their financial position, which is a summary of all their their financial position. So it’s again, know your client, making sure that we can understand them, talk about their goals, what the advice we’re actually giving them. And then any additional information such as insurance and thoughts, like what other additional information so this is the education that comes in that superannuation, depending on what the strategy is, there’s some additional information. So when the client actually gets that particular document, they’ve got the choice that no one was always saying go through the video. Once they go through the video, then they’ve got all that additional information they can they can go through as well, which sort of forms that is the statement of advice.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Okay, fantastic. So from a practical point of view, you’ve done it you’ve had two meetings, you’ve worked out what the you know, the the triage let’s I call it triage, like what do you want to focus on first, if it’s, let’s say before focusing on fixing up everything to do with your risk, and then we’re going to look at your investment preferences, and superannuation, all those things over the next few months. Let’s say we’re just looking at risk you then you’re paraplanner, you’re still use a pair of planner or somebody that creates that PowerPoint presentation looks at the strategy looks at the selection of the product, whatever product you’re going to use, puts that into the PowerPoint presentation, you as the advisor record a quick five to 15 minutes, depending on the the complexity. That video then gets sent to your client in

 

James Wortley 

LinkedIn. So every video is ordered by another financial adviser in the business. Yep, really critical. Because that’s about the training and the understanding what other advisors are actually doing and making sure that we’re, we’re delivering the same experience for every client, we have an emphasis.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Okay, so you’ll you’ll be creating videos and watching videos throughout the process of the other, the advisors in your office that gets sent to the client, and then the client gets to watch that. Look at the forms. And then what come and talk to you again, what’s the next step?

 

James Wortley 

So what we’re finding is, especially for new clients is that once they go through the process once they can understand it, so they’ll actually they’ll watch the video, just set it. So those clients that don’t have email, they can actually get technology, but they’ll come in to the office, and then we’ll play the video for them. So really important, we play the video, then the advisor will actually then come in after the videos played and have a conversation. Then we’ll go through again the presentation, what are the queries that you’ve actually got? But what we’re actually finding now is, as we’re starting to go through the data different levels of boss usually the first two are okay clients will actually come in the third, fourth. And fifth is the clients understand that they watch the video. They’re Okay, they come back, we’re having a quick conversation, do you understand that making sure that we got that informed consent from from both clients. And then we’re executing. And we did that through DocuSign, as well. So, so we’re now starting to get a lot more efficient process because clients are used to what we’re actually doing. But number one, we still come back to that client experience, because a lot of clients haven’t got the time to come into the office, especially with what we’re doing. We’re not, we’re not seeing them once a year or twice a year, for the first 12 months, we’re seeing them probably four or five times. But we’re also given the opportunity where we’re actually valuing their time. So again, beginning about what our experiences, let’s look at the clients experience. Everyone’s busy, everyone’s got, they got families, they got work. So we need to make sure that this is a more efficient process for them. And that’s, that’s the feedback that we’re actually getting from some of our clients, especially for those business owners, where they really busy, they can watch the video, they can watch it in five to 10 minutes, and go Yep, not a problem. And then then we can actually start to execute the advice. Yeah. And this process, obviously, you know, online meetings is very much not a problem, you can have a quick meeting to go through any question and zoom works even better. So especially for our NAB, we’re working on some things with with our sec, but informed consent is when your renewal recording a video with the presence I said they’ve already seen the video, but you’re just doing a quick zoom meeting, saying okay, left? Do you understand that? Can you please explain what we’re actually doing? For you may explain it. We’ve got it on video. So you can’t get any better informed consent than that.

 

Fraser Jack 

I 100% agree with you. You know that recording of that video of the Yes, I understand. Yes, I want to go ahead. Yes, I want to get this in place. Can we do this? Can we start now is absolutely incredible. Now talk to me about the clients that have been through because we’re talking about client experience, you will have had some clients who were were born and bred the old school way where we’ve taught them that we taught them this is how we provide advice in this in this hefty document. And then you’ve been through a transition process where you’ve said to those clients, we don’t do that anymore, we do something new. So talk to me about clients. And I’ve been through both the, the old way and the new way and what their reaction has been.

 

James Wortley 

Yeah, it’s, it’s been unbelievable. Same for those clients that don’t have computers. But we had one client, but the first one that we actually had the feedback was, guess what we finally understand your advice, which to me, like that’s just a scam, why not we’ve previously done the statement advices and got these documents. They’re complex, there’s so much information in it, and calm that clients can’t comprehend that, again, not taking anything away from teachers or engineers, but they love to have that information, read that through. But, but that might only make up 5% of our population, the other 85% don’t and most people understand through pictures as well. So so that’s critical with what we’re actually doing. So the feedback that we’re actually getting age time and doesn’t matter, they if they’re 20 are in their 70s or even 80s. The feedbacks been great because it’s just really concise. They understand that they understand why we’re doing it, and what the benefits are for them. And we’ve got it, we’ve got the opportunity for them to still then present the advice and go through any questions that they have. So when we’re doing the client presentation, it’s completely changed. It’s not an hour and a half meaning we’re actually going through every page of the document or like other advisors a summary and don’t even go through the statement of advice. We just gone through those key points, because we can bring up the PowerPoint presentation, have you got any questions, go through up make sure that they understand to get that informed consent. But then the difference that we’re actually doing because we were we’re all about enlightened financial solutions, rather than James wortley or Scott Jemison as the financial advisors. So it’s a corporate business. So when we do the sign up, we don’t do the sign up, the advisor walks out the admin team come in to do the actual sign up. So we’re actually building a corporate relationship with our clients. It’s not about the advisor, but it’s about this team of enlightened financial solution. So that’s working really well as staff lover, clients love it as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. Now I just want to dig into that, because I think this is actually off the back of it’s not just a corporate relationship, but it’s a professional relationship. So I sort of have this theory that if we go to the doctor, and they ask all the questions about our past and our history, and what we’re doing and our habits, and then and then they created, you know, they might diagnose something and then they talk about a treatment plan and then they prescribe some medication. But then you go off to the chemist to get the medication, you know, the prescription field, and that’s kind of what you’re doing in your practice that the doctor is in the room, prescribing what needs to be done and then talking about the treatment plan or what I call it that that financial planning part and then the prescription which is the financial advice part, but then They go off to another part of your you know somebody else in your organization to fill the prescription essentially. And worse, well, just, again, advisor always looking for more time that we can actually spend with more clients. And that gives us a time to be able to do that. But still come back to this the client experience, the clients love the experience, as well. Fantastic. Now I just I just I just want to go back on one one step and talk about that transition from old world to new world and those clients that have been, so there’s been no resistance because I hear the quest that thing all the time from people that says, Yeah, but some clients still like the paper document. Yeah, some clients still want a, you know, a written SLA. So we’ve got to be able to make sure that those Have you had many clients that still say they want the paper?

 

James Wortley 

none, none at all. Look, this is the way that we’re doing things. And, again, with, with, we know those more technical clients that want more information, but that’s fine, because we actually put that into our videos anyway. And we can we can move across into into whatever we’re talking about from a strategic point of view. So this is where we’d have additional information up there as well. So so it’s still the information, probably, probably the one thing that that I’m not a massive believer in is projections, again, projections, when you actually go to all these numbers on a tax assessment, everything else. Look, it’s important. But when you’re doing projections, life is not like that things change. The projections are out the window, we saw that back in March last year, we might find that in another three or four weeks, something happens, what what’s the projections do? It’s nothing. So probably on the projection side is really important that we do projections at the annual review. So we’re doing it yearly, are they on track? What are we looking to be able to do? And this is probably a nice little segue to what we do as part of the annual review process. So when we’re talking to our clients, we’re going through that, when they walk out the door, it’s well it’s an hour and a half. That’s Hi, can you remember what we were doing? And what when everything’s gone, okay, but what does that actually mean? So we then turn to the visor finishes men, they go straight back upstairs, they’ll then actually record a video, generally five to seven minutes, and explain exactly what we actually went through. So and that and so. So again, come from a client experience and feedback point of view. They love that feedback to say, Oh, yes, I can remember that we talked about that. This is where we are. And guess what we are on track. We know everything you’re actually providing for us so. So I think that is not just a video advice, when it comes back to the statement of advice or record of advice. But the annual review process as well, to be able to bring that in board for clients to be able to understand that a lot better. So there’s been some real fantastic feedback on that.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, wonderful. And, and definitely nobody in their lives. You mentioned before in there, you know, maybe the 80s, or something like that having a problem with the video rather than the paper.

 

James Wortley 

Now, because the video again, it’s unless you got hearing issues, which, which some clients do, but again, they got hearing aids these days, but because we’ve got a massive screen there in our interview office, and we turn the volume up to that once a client it’s just like we’re presenting with the client anyway. But it is it sighs financial advisors time when you’re going through a summary in talking about it in five minutes. Compare that to if you presented that PowerPoint presentation with a client, and you’re going through that, it’s you’re not talking about five to seven minute presentation, you’re talking about 45 minutes to an hour. So there’s definitely some efficiencies that you’re actually getting as part of that process.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, speaking of those efficiencies, have you actually worked out quantified what that might mean to your business from a from a point of view,

 

James Wortley 

we haven’t quantified it with with how much time saving, I suppose from an expectation point of view, with our advisors where we’re finding that we’re at least getting in our back of our time, every day. I don’t what we’re actually doing so. So that’s big, from an administration point of view that the admin team, just they don’t have as much work that they actually do from an administration point of view. And then from our paraplanner point of view, is because we’re actually now we’ve got all our sets of advice, we got those pro forma PowerPoint documents, he can turn them out really quickly. So if we had a client that came in today, we could have a video to them this afternoon. So how many businesses in Australia can actually do that? There’s not many,

 

Fraser Jack 

1. And it sounds to me like there’s at least sort of three or four or five hours of planning time saved alone?

 

James Wortley 

No, it is and still come back to keep on harping on over and over again client experience. Forget about our experience, what is the client getting out of it? And that’s what is building trust building relationship with those clients, and providing the advice that they actually need to make sure that it’s in their best interest and, and making sure that it’s working for them for their for their financial life goals. Yep. Fantastic.

 

Fraser Jack 

Now, let’s let’s dive into the compliance side of this because I know there’s going to be people thinking, Well, my compliance department will never allow that. And they probably won’t just yet, but it could be coming down the track, but talk to me about the legal opinions you’ve had what the lawyers have said. to you with regards to, you know, is this compliant or is it not?

 

James Wortley 

So, the legislation, again, I’m not going to quote all the regs for it. But that part of the advice is it can be a written format, it can be through gamification, it can be through video, there’s a big range of advice that you actually can provide. And I suppose it just takes a few people to be able to sort of take a few more risks and, and that’s the one thing that we’re very confident about as the advice that we provide to our clients. We are very diligent when it comes back to the advice where we work as a team. So, so we weren’t sort of scared of Okay, taking this step. So number one is getting that legal advice to say, Can you do it? That’s, that was the big one. Yes, you can do it. Okay, then how? What are we going to be able to present and it’s still everything in the statement advice, obviously, the projections is, is one thing that we keep out of it, because in that five, six pages, if you’re actually looking at know, your client, that we were talking about another 10 pages of know, your client, that we’ve got all that information in that process as well. So So from a compliance point of view, it’s it was a little bit hard to be able to get compliance people to be able to understand what we’re trying to do. They could see it, they could understand it, but they weren’t confident to turn around go, Oh, okay. Yep, this, this is great. They actually know they did think, look, this is fantastic. This is where we need to be able to go. But But how can you do that from a compliance? Because it doesn’t fit the checklist, does it? Oh, compliance checklist, okay, have you done this paper, so I have I the accountant, it just it doesn’t, it doesn’t form part of that. And that’s why we really need these, these big licensees to really start to have a look at what we’re doing. Again, we’re just original financial advice business that decided to be able to take some risk. But the risk was to present a better advice process for our clients. So he said we anyone can do it. We’ve done it. We’re we’re not tech tech, technology gurus in any sense. Yes,

 

Fraser Jack 

it just takes a little bit of motivation. And so I think I’ll go back to this mindset, because this is where this is what’s holding a lot of the profession back in this mindset of you know, that’s not the way we’ve always done it. It’s weird. It’s outside the box. You know, anytime you take something to an underwriter or compliance person that’s outside of a box, it’s very difficult for them to go well. It’s okay. How has that been? Like, have you? You know, you’ve had lawyers look at it, you’ve had other compliance people, how have you seen that shift that mind shift and the people that are giving you advice on?

 

James Wortley 

Well, it was good. It Shawn Graham, is one of the guys that we use for our compliance audit. So the one question we actually said to him, once we went through that audit process it Look, everything’s fine. And we came back and said, Look it should we should we move back to a steimer? advice? Is this. Are we going too far? What’s your thoughts on that? And he just turned around, said, you’d be crazy. Why would you go back this is this is the best thing, because it’s not one, you’re ticking all the boxes from a compliance point of view. But it’s, again, come back to your client experience, the client understands the advice. It’s simple, it’s concise, they understand that. And that’s what we need to be able to be able to move to so. So it’s so instead of just when now there’s no way we’re actually hidden backwards. Now, let’s continue on with the video voice and continue to make sure that we can actually provide advice in a better way and and, again, bring more energy to our videos. That’s always something that we’re trying to do with that with our advisors as well. So we’re building on that client experience.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, the the understanding is the big part there, isn’t it outside of a outside of a mistake? and misunderstanding would have to be, you know, one of the biggest cause of complaints.

 

James Wortley 

It is and to me that why are we actually doing scoped advice, I can understand why, why we would go back to holistic advice. Because if you make one little mistake to say, not, not, don’t hang out the paraplanners. But if there’s no x plan, or whatever you’re actually doing, you put some wrong number, anything like that, and you don’t pick it up. But if you’ve got a lawyer coming through, and actually having a look at this is what you’ve got in your statement advice. Or guess what you’ve done holistic advice. So why haven’t you done this? Why haven’t you done that? Why haven’t you done this? So it becomes questionable with the advice you’re actually providing. You’re probably thinking that this is fantastic advice for the client. But But when you’ve got a compliance person looking over it, I’ll guarantee there’s always you can always find holes. But if you’re doing strategic advice, that scope, and you’re just you’re taking all that taking all that and just keeping really concise, guess what compliance, you’re a lot more compliant than you probably would ever be in doing holistic advice.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yes, it’s very in that whole understanding conversation comes into that as well. You know, we all know that if you overload somebody with too much information and too many decisions at once, then attend to just go into a state of shock and not make any decisions. So yeah, I think I think from that point of view, if you’re if you’re overlaying estate planning and super and you know, family issues and you know, risk and all these things in one go, it can be very daunting. For, during their experience, very good. So so there’s a lot happening in your space. You’re you’ve created this video stem advice. How long have you been doing it for now?

 

James Wortley 

Yeah. So. So we started two and a half years since we got ourself, got a licensing it. So it’s probably been two years now six months of making sure we got the legal advice, but we still had to do documents there and videos to be able to show them to be able to get through that legal process of approval. So that dyad to two years, and we’re still learning.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, fantastic. It’s amazing evolution, and talk to me about strategies. And because I know that you’ve done a lot of work in that space, as well, and just some explainer videos around some of the strategies you recommend?

 

James Wortley 

Yeah, so from a strategy point of view, we’ve developed a strategy checklist. So this is why we’re really confident with the advice we provide, we’ve got 60 to 80 strategies that we do in a spreadsheet. And we take them all off to say, okay, for every client every year, making sure we don’t miss out on anything. And again, how about our session on Fridays with the five financial buyers, we’re reviewing all their clients as part of that process. And we’re learning so new clients going through that as well. So, but from a strategy point of view, it’s, it’s making sure that clients understand that. So when they’re doing a PowerPoint presentation, what we found is clients are actually pausing the video and just going back, and that was probably the critical part of what we we know with the video vise that it actually works is that if clients aren’t sure, they can just go back required. If it needs a couple of times, then they can do that. So strategically with our videos, we’re still going through this strategy and actually giving them a good understanding with with the way the adviser sheet works. So so so clients can can understand, especially when you go complexity might be read contribution strategies, or,

 

Fraser Jack 

you know, whatever, the complexity is fantastic. And they’re all provided in the as you go through their strategies, you provide them with a video of each individual strategy, if they want to go back and get deeper and deeper.

 

James Wortley 

What will actually give phrasing that one is actually still forms part of our video advice or the strategy and everything else is in that there’s no additional videos that we actually have that that strategic advice.

 

Fraser Jack 

Okay. Fantastic. And so, so exciting times. And certainly, it seems to me like, you know, a great way to, you know, provide efficiencies and effectiveness in your business, especially when that client experience point of view as well as you know, the time savings incredible. Tell us what else you’re doing. Because I know you’re doing a lot of work in the in the space of, you know, talking to clients about their hopes, dreams, goals, aspirations, understanding what their values are in life, understanding that they’re on the same page. And you’re you’re evolving in that space as well. Yeah, so

 

James Wortley 

1. So we’re, we’re one of the founding businesses in the Lumia business, and I had Santi back in February. So Salome. So we just to come back a couple years ago, we actually went to United capital over in the US over in Dallas, and met a guy called Joe Duran, who’s built an unbelievable business. So we actually went through that boot camp and actually went through the training. And it was all about giving value based advice. So when we came back, we decided as a group to say, Okay, look, what can we be able to do? So we’ve been developing that technology and actually just rebuilding it for Well, what’s important to us, because we can see when you go through, when you look at a process, you can say, look, this works really well. But these other things don’t work as well. So again, five or six businesses got together, and Santi being being a little later decided, decided, let’s let’s build this thing. So it’s all about making sure that number one, we can actually work outside processes, doing a competence video. So again, sorry, competence, questionnaire, understand where the confidence levels are for the clients and all the different areas that values advice. So this is the critical part, which I think we don’t do well as financial advisors. So when we talk about goals, again, the goals bass advisors actually doing really well. The other advisors when it comes back to more investment advisors really struggle with this, but but when we talk about goals, we might come back, your client wants to retire at age 60 with this amount of money, blah, blah, blah, it might be three or four goals. But when you’re talking about values on what’s really important to clients, what makes them tick, and I want just to run through Joe, his example to us because again, he uses one of the financial advisors and, and Joe met with a financial advisor, he’s just been on a whole life for six weeks in Spain with the family. And, and one of his values was making sure that you spend more time with family and friends. And, and that’s critical. Do we have those conversations with our clients? generally not. So with our values conversation, the financial advisor said, okay, Joe, at zero to 10, where do you think you are on this particular goal? The guy’s nine fantastic, just had six weeks great holiday, and then went to his wife and said, Oh, what score would you do? And she said, three, so Joe’s turn around ago. Hey, we’ve just been overseas. We had a great holiday. And then she explained that Joe, it was fantastic love the holiday. But we also know we’re probably not going to see you now, for the next nine months, or 12 months. This is life planning. When you get that when you get that feedback from a partner to say, Okay, look, what’s your priority, you said, your priority in life is family and friends, what are you doing, you’re thinking you’re doing a good job. But when you bring that accountability back in, that’s what we call this is what advisors love. And, and I know, we’ve got a lot of advisors that are leaving the industry, but but I think lumion with what we’re actually built is something we can actually bring those old advisors that are getting in the industry, get them back in, because this is what they love, they love talking their clients about values, and what’s really important them in life. And guess what, there’s no product advice, there’s no strategy advice. So, so my big call out to those advisors that love the industry, but are getting out because because of exams or all the education standards, that there’s a big opportunity with lumion, to be able to have really quality conversations with our clients. So that’s the values, I just want to cover. One thing that we don’t do really well in our industry as well is on the risk profiling. And actually, so we’ve come up with what they call the best, I think the world’s best risk profile questionnaire. So it’s about investment preferences. So it’s talking to clients having a conversation, given them the education about what’s really important to them and understand what what what, again, growth assets, income assets, do the education side, but what’s actually really important to them. And for some clients, that might be fees and charges that might be their driver, they just want to make sure they got really low, low fees, but then also pretty low direction, when it comes back to their investments, they just don’t care about what they’re actually doing. Whereas other clients want to be, okay, look, I want to be making sure that we’ve got good investments there that are good for society. And, and we want to be a lot more customized, we want to be able to have a say with the way that we’re actually investing in, we don’t, we’re happy to pay a cost for that, as well. So currently with our risk profile, and unfortunately, our statement advices come on back into that, bring that back into it is without one risk profile, which is absolutely ridiculous. clients don’t have one risk profile, they should have a risk profile for every goal that they have. So if it’s superannuation, and it’s going to be 30 year time frame, then they should have a different risk profile, if they’re actually going to save money for wear, whether it be a car or or doing something like that, that might be two to three years. So it’s a completely different risk profile. If it’s kids education, and it’s next seven years, it’s a different risk profile again, but unfortunately, with what we do with risk profiling is we do this ridiculous balanced and high growth language, which still astounds me today that we’re actually using this language. But we’re talking about clients, and what’s really important to them. What’s the client experience? So so that’s where I think this the area, what we’re actually doing with the investment preferences, is what do the clients won’t grasp on the clients what they want, not the compliance side saying, you’ve done a fair metric, you come back at a 50 score, you’re now a moderate portfolio, this means you should add 50% here 50%. There, it’s, it’s a ridiculous conversation be able to have I know, advisors have a lot better conversations, they do it from a compliance tick. And that’s what it’s become. It’s like the statement advice. It’s a compliance tick. But the better is that the better conversations that we’re having is talking to our clients about risk and return. That’s, that’s the power and to be able to use lumion. In that process, we’re actually taking notes and clients are actually saying, What’s important to me, we want this, this, this and this, the clients are telling us that it’s not about luck, we’re going to provide this type of advice, this is going to be more expensive. And then we got asik turning around and saying it’s more expensive, why you’re doing that, because clients are saying this is what they want. It’s the client experience. Again,

 

Fraser Jack 

it’s 100. down to that conversation around know your client, right. I mean, you mentioned the compliance tip before, but the compliance tick is only there because somebody in compliance, put the tick there around that, around that, you know, investment for profiling conversation, which just happened to coincide with all the names of the products available. What are the chances? I would have thought that but certainly that idea of, you know, client preference certainly makes up the note the client to me makes another client a lot. Well,

 

James Wortley 

it makes a lot more sense. We’re just we’re again all you’re gonna get very passionate about this, as you can see, but yeah, just summarize the holes and where we’ve actually come from. It’s been grown a lot in love with where the government’s going. education standards and things like that. I’d send a consultation to ask as well just about what my thoughts are but but it’s about product is where you get in trouble. Yeah, our whole industry is is when you bring product. That’s the issue. And, and we need to be able to classes, accountants and solicitors where we can provide advice, we can do it on an hourly rate, give fantastic advice. Let’s leave the statement advice for the product. I think that’s a better way of actually providing advice. So we’re again trying to reduce fees for clients. That’s, that’s going to be a better way to be able to do that again, do that once once we got the exam ticked off when we’re all University educated, let’s treat us like professionals rather than salespeople. Yep. Wonderful. Well

 

Fraser Jack 

said, Thank you. Thank you, James, thank you for coming on the scale of series and just talking about what the stuff you’re doing in your practice now that you have done and you’ve tried and tested with clients and they’re proving to certainly love the experience. So I really appreciate you coming and sharing. And if somebody wants to continue the conversation, how can they sort of find you

 

James Wortley 

they’re probably the best ones LinkedIn Yeah, happy to happy to connect with anyone there. Again, because I’m really trying to get some momentum of I’ve done a few webinars now just talking about and giving you examples of what we what we do with our video advice. So it’s probably something that we need to start doing a little bit more of as a business just so we can share that out to other businesses like and see what we actually do how we do it, and try to try to get other businesses to embrace what the when the where we’re going which is going to be better off at night.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Let’s let’s get some other businesses joining the joining the bandwagon following you in following in your footsteps. Thank you, James. Really appreciate your time and in generosity and sharing what you’re doing. Thanks, guys. Have it another episode of the Expert Advisor podcast. I’m Fraser Jack, and I’m joined by Emily Blanche. Hey, him. Hey, Fraser.

 

 

How

 

Fraser Jack 

are you? I’m, I’m Fantastic. Thank you for asking. Appreciate it.

 

 

I really cool part of the week, we get to hang out every week and talk about what some great work people are doing. And we give them a bit of a shout out this time. So who should we shout out to today? Today, we are going to give a big shout out to x y advisor for events and that he jumped on to join us for an X five plus web event recently to discuss acquisition or growing organically versus acquisition. And it was really a case of Paul jumping on really giving us a look into his experiences and his journey. So he has done both organic growth and acquisition. He’s learned a lot along the way and made plenty of mistakes. And yeah, it was just a really frank conversation of him sharing those experiences and what he’s learned plenty of great comments coming through the session as well from other advisors just saying thank you for sharing some really good insights in there. So it was just an awesome, awesome conversation. And you know, my favorite thing and good old dose of p2p learning, so shout out to Paul

 

Fraser Jack 

Rodin for good on you mate. Yes, certainly a bit about giving back to the community. A bit of thought leadership and cattle have a little bit of experience. I love it when when you hear the stories when things go right. But also when things are rolling, you can go You know what, that’s a pretty good idea. Pretty good learning from that mistake. So thanks for being vulnerable. Paul. What

 

 

a legend.