OpenInvest

Definitely worth reading this Laura Dew article on how Clime Investment Management Limited is using social media to increase brand awareness and engage with a new generation of potential clients. Clime CEO Michael Baragwanath is strategic and right when he says: "It is a big challenge for financial services firms: How do we get our brand presence with younger clients, and how do we deliver things that resonate with them? We can’t wait and only come to them when they inherit wealth and our existing clients have died.” Yep, those ideal future-clients just won't be there in future, as they are being effectively targeted today by a cohort of aggressive, big-spending digital competitors who will fight like hell to NEVER let a client go, instead adding more sophisticated services to their line-up (aka the Schwab playbook). You have to reach them today - and if you want to serve them cost-effectively at scale as they grow their wealth, well OpenInvest can help with that.

“We are particularly enthusiastic about reaching younger members of the Australian-Vietnamese community, those just starting out on their wealth-building journeys. They have the ambition, however, don’t yet have a sufficient pool of investable assets to justify the high cost of traditional personal financial advice. Now with Vietinvest.au they can start investing into a diversified investment portfolio with as little as $5,000,” Nguyen added. Tremendous initiative from financial adviser Dean Nguyen and his colleagues as they announce the launch of Vietinvest.au, an online managed portfolio solution targeted at Australia's aspirational Vietnamese community. It's a classic Win-Win: investors can access professionally-managed diversified portfolios together with engaging and helpful financial literacy content via a simple online sign-up, whilst Dean's firm is able to serve a large cohort of clients at zero marginal cost, nurturing them as they grow their wealth, and becoming the logical destination for a private wealth service for those who want such a service when their wealth grows to the right level. Team OpenInvest is very proud to be underpinning another ambitious entrepreneur aiming for Growth and Scalability!

“Advisers have been asking us to support them with a proposition for their clients who are just starting out their investment journeys or not yet ready for a full advice offering." Interesting to see this transaction (Quilter acquiring NuWealth App) in UK news overnight, another example of how strategic wealth management firms are not waiting around until people have sufficient wealth to make them "ideal" clients to target (when of course, they would be also targeted by competitors), but instead, concluding they can use scalable technology to reach them now, where they are (i.e. online!), in order to offer them a tech-driven experience and a nurtured pathway to full advice. OpenInvest is already helping scores of Australian wealth managers to do this with their "own" online investing+content solution. It's not just an interesting (and obvious) theory you might read about in a McKinsey report; it's working in practice.

I very much enjoyed the Stockbrokers and Investment Advisers Association annual conference these past two days. Judith Fox, Silvana Eccles and their colleagues created an excellent program, with every session lively and intellectually stimulating. My key take-aways: - As per the session I facilitated (see article below), it is now commonplace for US advisory firms to use tech to reach people online, no matter how much/little they currently have to invest, as a means of nurturing them over time until they're ready for an advice relationship - Morgan Stanley is the leader. - In Asia, as per Jason Hoang, advisory firms work hard to also serve the kids of their HNW clients, now, before they inherit. As in: it's much easier to retain a customer relationship, than to win them away from a competitor. - In Australia, everyone thinks the banks will shortly return to wealth management, albeit using tech - and they already have relationships with millions. Fun fact: as per Karin Setchell, CommBank customers can open a CommSec account in seconds, in-app. - Major industry funds similarly have relationships with millions of Australians, huge weekly inflows and a desire to use both tech and advisers to help their members more holistically - which inevitably includes their non-super monies as well. - As online share trading is an over-crowded and commoditised market, and because their customers want more assistance and content, these providers are moving up the value-curve. - Every firm would like to find new advisers, but they just aren't making them anymore. - As per Alex Vynokur, there is a huge Opportunity to reach millions of unadvised Australians with money to invest. And Betashares has a new platform and a 10 year game-plan to win. (What Alex and his team also have is Ambition, without which nothing is possible).