#412 Jeffrey Bonnici – Transcript

James Wrigley
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’ve got pleasure speaking with Jeff Bonnici from Grimsey Wealth today. Jeff, thank you for joining me here.

Jeffrey Bonnici
I appreciate the opportunity, thanks James.

James Wrigley
We were just saying before before we press record. Now, Grimsey if for anyone that doesn’t know, if you’re in Melbourne, you’ve probably come across the clumsy name. Over the years Grimsey has been around for a very long time. But I’ve known them for a very long time. I’ve been working in financial advice for a while. But Jeff is just saying, I don’t know that I’ve ever had the opportunity to speak to someone from Grimsey certainly not for half an hour or so like we might do recording a podcast episode today. So yeah, absolutely. So coming along. Now.

Jeffrey Bonnici
Thank you. Yeah, grew up. See, we’ve got a long history. Last month, we just celebrated our 40th anniversary. And you know, that’s a significant milestone, but our late founder feel Grimsey established the practice 40 years ago, and he had a vision of making a holistic practice that helped medical, dental and pharmacy professionals at all stages of their career. So it really didn’t matter where you were, he wanted to equip the business to be able to help you with whatever milestone and journey and stage of career you’re at. And he successfully did that. So now 40 years later, we’ve got about 5000 Odd clients within the practice, and the head counts about 100 across Melbourne and Sydney.

James Wrigley
Yeah, right. So I want to I think, I think maybe the main theme of, of our chat today is probably going to be around this idea of specialization. So a lot of a lot of a lot of the marketing gurus and financial advice and business coaches and so forth will kind of talk about you can’t be can’t be everything to everyone that you need to be the hero to a to a small group of people and Grimsey certainly built a business around that. Let’s let’s go back a bit before we get too deep into into the kind of the Grimsey story and what you’re up to and who you’re working with and so forth. But let’s talk about you, Jeff. And so your, your, I guess your role at Grimsey what what is that? And then how have you ended up? Where you are? What? what’s your what’s your story?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Great question. Now, I, like many people entered the financial advice industry by default. So I started through the banking system, I did my interview based learning so my degree at Swinburne and then entered the retail banking network, which was an incredible experience, then worked in London and was a banker for a long period of time and always had an attraction to financial advice, sort of firsthand working in the premium business at Westpac and really saw how it helped people and change their life and always had an attraction towards it and then moved into financial advice. I spent three years within the private premium network at Westpac. And then as you know, they obviously stepped out of it and the decision was made redundant. And then at that opportunity, I stepped into the Grimsey practice. And fortunately, I was working in BT, and there’s a bit of a link between the two and I was able to transition across. And now I’ve been at Grimsey court circuit five years as one of the senior advisors here in the team. So it’s a bit of a shame now that the banks are providing financial advice in the sense that the opportunity that I was afforded doesn’t exist in the market, I was able to jump across and unfortunately, banks don’t obviously provide those services anymore. So if I look back on my career, I probably wouldn’t be where I was today, if it wasn’t for those opportunities that were represented at the time. So incredibly grateful. within the four walls here, you are right, we do specialize in medical professionals, and there’s no shortage of organizations here in this country that do. So we’re part of what’s called the proline network, which is medical advice firms and here in Melbourne, that Schubert backs the biochip on journos DPM medallic. And then there’s firms glow all across the country, Smith coffee, but we all are part of the same family. And effectively what we’re trying to do is just grow our clients through the different functions of the business and help them with whatever’s required for them stage as a career.

James Wrigley
Yeah, right. So that that that pro loan network that you that you’re talking about, that’s not a licensee? I’m not I’ve never come across it before the licensee is itself licensed business. So Yeah, correct.

Jeffrey Bonnici
We sell boxes. Yeah, yeah. And I think the vast majority of firms within the network probably would, okay. But in effect, what the proline network is, it’s an arrangement with Westpac, a financial institution where we’ve got a number of policies from a lending perspective that enable our clients to get into a property with a 5% deposit without lenders mortgage insurance. We can use future income if they’re looking at buying a house and we know they’re in a training program. They’re about to specialize. And there’s all these different solutions that we have for clients and unavailable to the mass market.

James Wrigley
Yeah, right. So what what was it that made you obviously Westpac was kind of got it was getting out of financial advice, so your position was made redundant, but was there something in particular that that attracted you to moving across to Grimsey?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, it was, I think when you deal with medical professionals on a daily basis, they’re incredibly impressive people that, you know, they’re breathtaking. They’re leaders of industry, they spent decades to get to where they are. And the vast majority of them don’t talk for the money. They’re incredibly time poor. And what I’ve found I’ve been here for five years is that they’re really in their line of work, they generally give advice. And then when it comes to their turn, when they need advice or recommendations, they’re more than willing to listen and be helped along the way. So I think that’s where the attraction was. And also, you know, the similar clients that I was dealing with at Westpac. They were time poor professionals. And all of our clients are time poor professionals to

James Wrigley
talk us through. So we kind of get into this idea of specialization, as you said, there’s, there’s a number of businesses around the country that specialize in medical professionals and in one way, shape or form, whether they’re accounting businesses, financial planning businesses, or or so forth. How is that? How is that? Like? What I’m trying to say is has that kind of worked from like a marketing client acquisition perspective? What have you had to do or haven’t had to do? Because Grimsey is known so well, in that medic medical professional field?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, it’s an interesting one. So we’ve got a few approaches to how we acquire clients. And the primary one that we’ve utilized over the 40 year history is speaking at the university events when graduates graduate from medical school, so your Melbourne Monash and your deacons and we present you top tips and traps in your first year. So we go through salary packaging, budgeting, a lot of clients when they come out of university tax budgeting income is completely foreign to them. And the medical professionals within this country, it’s the only profession where you graduate from a university and you’re guaranteed a job, it also with pay increases through their training, through their placement. So they’re in an incredibly unique position. But what we do is take an incredibly educational approach. And what we find is if we can help a client when they’re an intern, then we generally have them through the journey. And the practice takes comfort in being here for 40 years and helping many different specialties and disciplines that whatever trajectory and in turn goes through today, we’ve got a high degree of confidence that someone has walked in those footsteps steps before whether it’s doing fellowships, PhD specializing buying practices, etc, we’re biased to think that we’ve got we’re well equipped to handle whatever, whatever journey they go on. So in answering that question, we’re very active in the university space. And that’s been the lifeblood of the practice. And then secondary to that is obviously word of mouth, all about medical, dental, and pharmacy professionals swim in the same circles. And what we found if we can look after their needs, help them manage the complexities of retirement mattacks, money time poor. And the practice is built in a manner that supports them. So I work within the wealth team. So in the wealth team, we’ve got call it fire financial advisors here in Melbourne, and then we’ve recently split out the insurance team. And that’s got two advisors within it. But then the accounting team where the crux of the client set its large headcount, then we’ve also got a self managed super to team within the business. And then we’ve got a broken team. So we like to think whatever neither client has, we can satisfy within these four walls. And whatever stage your life they have different requirements. But as they evolve through their career, obviously, their needs change.

James Wrigley
So you’ve mentioned before, it gets about 100 people across all those different holidays, different service lines. So there’s not there’s not that many businesses that that managed to build up to that, that kind of level. So there’s kind of clear evidence in whatever you’re doing is working, if you’re able to, if the business has been able to build over 40 years to a headcount of that, of that many 5000 clients, it’s, it’s worth it. Yeah.

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, absolutely. I think everyone’s passionate about what they do. And, you know, we’re very active in sponsoring the industry events, seminars, speaking and so forth. And that’s bad, a lot of clients over the journey. But yeah, it’s definitely the universities and look, it’s a competitive market every time we go there, all of our competitors, their brands, providing our tax packages, but what we find if we can get a client in the practice early in our ecosystem, and they’re they’re listening to advice, we’re explaining salary packaging, we’re explaining the importance of personal insurance, then it opens their ears to receiving advice when they progress through their career. What we generally find is we come across clients that are quite self directed later on, it’s definitely a more challenging equation to try to influence them in a positive light through their career. Yep.

James Wrigley
Can you maybe maybe Talk us through. I know he’s there a few different life’s major life stages that these medical professionals are going through. So what is an initial engagement with, with someone that’s just coming out of university? So you’ve been to the university presented and someone’s like, Hey, I like I like the look of Jeff. I like what he was what he’s saying, what what does an initial, what is your initial financial planning engagement look like for them? In those earlier years? And then maybe what kind of tackle some of the other bigger milestones as they move on?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So initially, from a financial planning perspective, we would accompany that with the tax solution. And that would be around your salary packaging, explaining your meals and entertainment, your deductions, and so forth. So the tax is definitely the in initially, but then as someone progresses through their career where all come into the picture is helping them with cash flow, budgeting, saving personal insurance, and and structuring their investments for potentially their first home, and facilitating that. So that’s probably what’s common with your first your interns five to six years, as clients progress through their careers, they generally, they all have huge tax problems. And we try to manage the complexities associated with that. And then as they progress through their career, so they’re specialists or they’re the consultants, we can help them with different solutions, what’s relevant to them, whether it’s buying practices, recycling debt,

James Wrigley
the like, yep. Gotcha. So that the was gonna say next, the buying of the practices a bit. So that kind of that that specialization. If you mentioned before, it’s a little bit more difficult for someone that’s already doing. It’s already been self directed, if they’re coming to you later on that that’s a far more challenging client to deal with. Yep. How do you? How do you turn them around? Like, is there if you already bought their business? Or about to buy the business? How do you? How do you any kind of swing them around to

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, you’re saying I think, okay, ultimately, it will? It’s a great question, because people come to us all the time, and they’ve got businesses they’re selling, they’ve got tax issues, business partners, and it’s about, I think, how it works effectively, within this practice. It’s a seamless relationship between the tax advice and the financial planning advice. So it’s two heads, it’s two schools of thoughts, looking at their position and advising. And generally, with an accountant, I find their retrospective, so look in the revision mirror, so they’re looking at your tax deductions. And then, as an advisor, we try to map out the future. So the transactions that obviously, warrant advice are quite quite pivotal and people’s in their life. So whether it’s buying practices, marriage breakdowns, disputes between partners, the stepping into private practice, from public practice, and what that actually means for them. It’s about having conversations that are holistic of those different points of time. But what I’m finding more and more that the when I’m talking to medical professionals in the past, they just wanted to keep on going forever, and they never want to stop, they loved what they’re doing. But the public hospital system, that a lot of clients are incredibly burnt out. They’ve got huge hours. And now it’s a conversation of, hey, when can I potentially stop? Have I built the resources up to enable me to do so? And am I on track? So that’s more of a conversation that I’m having more frequently with clients about where they’re going to end up? Because the days of working through your 60s, late 70s and consulting probably think in the past with the younger doctors I speak so.

James Wrigley
I would, I would imagine so and I guess being 40 years other clients that have been there the whole time like it, if they’ve gone in in an intern in their late 20s or so through to retired in their late 60s, like at 40 years, there’s probably getting to a point where there’d be some might have been people that have been there the whole time.

Jeffrey Bonnici
Absolutely. Yeah. So we recently celebrated our 40th birthday, I think there was about 100 clients, all of them had been here over 30 years. So as you can imagine, they’re definitely not young. But it was crazy. One of our clients got up and ophthalmologists he’s 75. And he spoke about income tax rates when he started at 66%. He doesn’t know what we’re all complaining about at 47. So yeah, we’ve definitely got huge amount of clients and they’ve been here for a very long time. And, you know, we’ve done right by them and they’re prospered. And I think that’s fundamentally why we’re here.

James Wrigley
You mentioned before about like the you kind of the banks not providing the financial advice anymore, and maybe there’s a there’s a bit missing, missing, maybe not the right phrase, but like you spoke really fondly of the of the learnings and the mentoring and things that you might have got through the banks that kind of opportunities to develop as a financial advisor. How do you? How do you think? Do you have any opinions on how, as an industry we, we deal with that, that gaping hole that there isn’t this fault for big banks with a big army of financial advisors and good, bad or otherwise? Yeah, there’s a lot of good people have come out of the banks and gone on to do other things that, that otherwise without without that, I wouldn’t be here where the future lies.

Jeffrey Bonnici
It’s interesting. I was recently invited by Macquarie to hear the federal minister Stephen Jones speak about where he’s taken the industry. And he said, but I sat there, and I don’t like your thought everyone’s got their opinion on what happened with the banks and what they did or didn’t do. But I think a lot of practices in the industry, they just don’t have the balance sheet to bring through the amount of advisors that the banks did. The bank was an incredible environment to learn from experience, people, masters of industry, we’re in the fortunate position here where we’ve got, I’d say, three associate advisors coming through the future of the system. And now they’ll become incredible advisors when the time’s right. But it’s a shame because I just I know, I’ve listened to your podcast frequently. And I just, I speak, I know you support the interviewer to smaller practices that they just can’t afford to pull people on. But yeah, I don’t know how you plug the hole. To be honest, it’s probably, if anyone’s worked in the bank for a long period of time, you do know things go in circles. So they probably will get back into it in some period of time. Because how will they grow their revenue if they’re not doing it? But yeah, I don’t know the answer to that question.

James Wrigley
Yeah. And like it’s, you know, someone I saw something a while back a couple of years ago, and the, you know, the, if you look at the accounting profession, you’ve got the big accounting firms that that, what are they? What do they do? What does the accountants do the CPA, accounting, pulling all these people through the CPA and I saw some stat, it was something like, half of the people that finished the CPA working for PwC, or wherever they worked for within a year or two of them finishing the CPA, they’ve, they’ve gone and they’ve moved on to something else, whether they’ve gone into a smaller business, whether they’ve gone to work in the industry as well. They’re feeling that and by and large, the banks have fueled the financial advice industry, we’re fortunate enough that we’re not going to quite the same size as what Grimsey is, but big enough that we can afford to take on associate advisors and support them through their professional year, whereas a lot of a lot of businesses that are in the ensemble network, and as you mentioned, a lot that I’ve that I’ve done podcast interviews with may be not in a position to be able to do so. But it sounds like you guys are saying.

Jeffrey Bonnici
So that’s yeah. And I think that’s that’s evident with the whole industry where there’s a lot of people dropping off and the amount of people coming in sort of don’t don’t doesn’t balance itself out. Yeah.

James Wrigley
Yeah. You mentioned before about your spend a couple of years overseas, what, what took you overseas and and what were you doing over

Jeffrey Bonnici
the years, I was working for Westpac at the time, and I was in the migrant banking team. So I went over in 2009 just ended the GFC. So it was a refreshing experience because anyone that was over there at that period of time know it impose everyone in the UK was trying to get out. So at the time Westpac had a migrant banking center there, and we were proactively trying to obtain UK migrants before they came across. So we’d help them with their banking set up their affairs helped them with currency transfers. And when they got to Australia, it was a seamless integration. But we would promote the business across all of Europe. So whether it was Ireland and Scotland and do seminars and so forth to get them across. But in short, we were placing 1000s of migrants each month across from the UK to Australia. And that was a pretty eye opening experience. Because during the GFC in the UK, it was a horrible place, unemployment was surging, property values had to deteriorated and a lot of people were in dire dire need. So I know in this country have been quite immune property prices have generally always gone in a map like manner and people have been employed. So that was a very eye opening experience very early on in my career.

James Wrigley
That’s a pretty unique perspective, I guess that you bring with you then through your financial planning journey, because he said we had ever lived or worked out worked overseas before. So we had a kind of had a bit of a fairly sheltered view of what was going on. We didn’t live through some of the some of the tougher times that happened overseas. So So you were there helping people effectively leave the UK to come to Australia?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, absolutely. And there’s no shortage of them here. So but yeah, it was incredible time and then I came back and helped the UK migrants with their affairs on shore. So buying first time and UK pension transfers, personal insurance. And then the nexus between advice was very strong, and I jumped into it because, in effect, and then we’re currently trans was purchasing homes and there was a there was an immediate link between the two and moved into advice.

James Wrigley
Have you? Have you done any more in that sense? Because it’s been someone couple of podcast episodes ago that’s coming out from South Africa. And he was talking about this idea of, of building up an AI business around this idea of helping people migrating to Australia, have you? Have you ever given that any thought?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Or to be honest with you, I haven’t really given thought too much. Because when I came out of the Bangkok, it was very evident that I was under a quack from an education perspective. So I spent more time doing my master’s, my CFP through deacons. So that absolutely has absorbed a lot of my creative thinking, because I’ve spent the last four years working and studying part time but yeah, there’s definitely a need for that. Because when people move cross country, there’s there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknowns around what they do.

James Wrigley
How did you find this studying given? Clearly, you’ve got a lot of experience before you even opening the textbook to do that studying, how did you find the studying together? Together with all of the work experience you’ve got up until now?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, it was challenging a lot. There’s absolutely no doubt about it. So originally, when I stepped out of Westpac, it was evident that I was very under equipped from an education perspective, my first degree was in marketing. And it was non related. So I had to move fairly quickly to strike them outside of my resume. And I started my graduate diploma at Kaplan, I did that and I found it okay, but I wasn’t, it wasn’t really, I wasn’t really obtaining a huge amount of knowledge. And then I moved to Daikon to finish the masters. And look, it was probably tripled the work and triple the cost, but I found it a lot more. It probably suited my style of learning a lot more I found the lecturers were very generous with their time and their knowledge. And I actually found it very valuable that absolutely huge costs. So once I did that, then part of their program is the final subject of the CFP. So fortunately, I was able to complete both and get both qualifications in such a short period of time. But it’s incredibly hard to juggle work and study. The prior experiences from work were beneficial in the sense. I sort of knew what I was in for, but trying to manage a full time job while studying part time is always challenging. You’ve just really got to be aware of what’s coming up in your diary and so forth.

James Wrigley
So that masters, the masters program that you did, did you have to was that just an extra four subjects on top of what you’ve done from Kaplan or you had to start again? Like did you

Jeffrey Bonnici
get now it was a good question. I got some credit. So I think from memory I did I had to do five more subjects.

James Wrigley
Yeah. Okay. And, and how was the course delivered? Was it was it online lectures, or did you have to go to Decot?

Jeffrey Bonnici
A variety. So I did it through COVID salvado. It was virtual online. Yeah. Yeah. And that look, COVID provided me with incredible opportunity to tick these boxes because there wasn’t a huge amount of things to

James Wrigley
my mind associated adviser had to do a degree it’s similar here didn’t have any any related degrees done it through uni essay. And for the bulk of it was done during COVID. It’s like, Well, fortunately, I had nothing else to do. I was told I wasn’t allowed to go and do anything else.

Jeffrey Bonnici
Sort of a distant memory now try. Yeah, it’s definitely trying to think about it. But there it seems like it was definitely a long time ago.

James Wrigley
CMP five, so that last subject CSP CFP, five, yep. It was that a subject of the Deakin course. And so it kind of crossed over

Jeffrey Bonnici
now as a separate subject. So yeah, they give you credits for I think it’s the first four and then the final assignment and an exam. You need a pass. I know that you’ve got your CFA your final exam, it was a doozy.

James Wrigley
Yeah, exactly. So I did exactly the same. Well, not exactly the same. So I did the Kaplan. I had a relevant university degree but I did the Kaplan was called The Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance back then, but it was the financial planning thing. And that gave me exemptions from CFP two, three and four. So I can do for one, I think I think subject one was probably ethics or something like that. And then you had to do the CFP five, which was right, the SOA and then sit an exam. The long exam.

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, it was, it was crazy. Especially doing that sy from scratch I think was about 80 pages by time so

James Wrigley
yeah, I I failed the SOA the first time. I submitted it, and I got to a point where I was just sick of it. Like I’m just meeting this starting to run out of time, but I’ve just submitted it and that wasn’t good enough. Had to resubmit. Yep. So what So what’s next for you? What’s on what’s what’s the career path for you? Where are you headed? What what’s next?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, I think the major change within the practice here is we’ve we’ve we’ve consulted a firm called peloton and they’ve come in and they’re basically lifted the hood Have, they’re really redefining what we do for clients, how we charge how we position what we do, because I think in a multidisciplinary practice, something will be neglected. And I think it’s been evident that we need to focus on holistic financial advice for our clients, and build that aspect of the business. So, as of recently, my role was sort of split between personal insurance and financial advice. And now we’ve segregated team to personally run the personal insurance team. So we’re no longer doing that. So I think that the challenge in the medium term for the business is really to build our financial planning business, ongoing advice, help clients navigate complexities, and peloton are here to definitely assist and help us do that. I think they’re going to be here for the next couple of years piloting that change, and making us clear on what is a client? How do we charge? And what are the services we provide? Because, you know, we’ve had a mindset that as long as they’re in the ecosystem, that’s fine. But now that we’re we’re really looking at this function in the business as a standalone and how we can really grow it. So I think that’s definitely front of mind. But there’s a huge thing, that amount of things on the technology stack that we’ve introduced. But the main thing that I’d say that’s really changed over the last six months, we’ve been, we’ve partnered with a firm called Drummond capital. And they’re a managed account provider, and they provide, they’ve managed account solutions to our clients. And that’s beneficial from the perspective it sort of cuts out the noise with constructing your own portfolios, managing risk profiles, meeting with fund managers, they do all that for us. They’ve got scale, they believe the market is inefficient, and they make tactical decisions in line with market conditions. So it will be virtually impossible for us to replicate what they do. So that’s provided to huge efficiency, tight efficiencies within our business, because we’ve got a lot more time back in our diaries, but I think, yeah, what’s the short to medium term with the practices, obviously, building our advice? And focusing on that, and then just Yeah, from my perspective, it’s really just building up ongoing clients and growing.

James Wrigley
How did you manage it so that we’re going through the whole managed account thing here as well? How did you prefer to manage accounts? How did you manage client portfolios?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Great question. So what we used to use was digital advice. It’s a Macquarie portfolio tool through their platform. And they effectively they would create the ROA and restructure the portfolio in line with whatever the risk profile was. And we thought that we use that predominantly for exchange traded funds. So we’re very happy to house for you on passive management. And that was an incredible solution. But what we found is it wasn’t really engaging, there was no commentary, there was no communication. And what we found with Drummond is that level of communication they provide to clients around their investment can use their market outlooks, their portfolio rebalancing, it really does the advisors with the knowledge and know how to talk to clients about changes within their portfolio. And that’s important because what we found, and we’ve only done this in the last six months, our clients have a lot more confidence in the people managing their money. And decisions are made in real time. So you and I both know that markets don’t work in annual reviews, investment cycles. So having people making decisions, real time around clients portfolios and money, it’s incredibly beneficial because clients are seeing the benefits of those changes being made in real time. And ultimately, we’re here to drive the best possible investment outcomes for clients. And I think, what Dromund do, it’s incredibly hard to replicate. They’ve got scale, they’ve got some of the best minds in the market. And the technology around managed accounts. It’s vastly superior to a bespoke tailored portfolio we’ve found

James Wrigley
here and what’s your answer in the early days, but what’s the client feedback been like on on the on the transition and the new role for the

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, it’s been very, very positive. Obviously, it’s a case by case situation because we’ve got a lot of clients with capital gains. A lot of clients that the great thing about Drummond is they use a variety of passive and active management, and their clients have the clients have the visibility over the portfolios to so all feedback has been incredibly positive to this point in time. And then once you sort of plug them into Drummond’s ecosystem around their newsletters, their investment committees their outlooks, it gives clients a lot more confidence around the people that are involved with their money. And it shows that we’re acting in their best interest because we’ve gone to market and found the solution. So that’s been something that’s been very well received with the clients manage at the moment and also what they do that’s not hugely relevant is they give us opportunities around deal flow. So if there’s anything of relevance, private equity, we can present those solutions to clients and that’s good because we couldn’t really compete with your crest dangerous scholars, your JV years previously, but now we’ve got the ability to provide these solutions to clients see for elephants. So, you know, it’s all been very positive. Yep.

James Wrigley
And so you’re following on from that? Do you treat a segment of your client bases? Kind of wholesale sophisticated? Investors? How do you operate in that?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah. So that’s, that’s actually a good question, Tony. So traditionally, we’ve just done everyone under the retail umbrella. for no real reason, I would say the vast majority of our clients are wholesale, if you just look at how that test is satisfied, the 250 or the 2.5, it’s easily done by all of them. We’ve always just taken the approach to retail advice, because although they might tick those criteria, they probably aren’t that savvy around investments and markets and so forth, and the factors that influence them. But we are in the process of now of trading a lot of these high net worth clients as wholesale clients. But yeah, I’d say the majority of our clients within the practice are under the retail umbrella.

James Wrigley
Yeah, we were much the same as much as there’s certainly there’s clients that we work with that meet that, that meet the particular definitions. By I think we, I think we might only have a handful, you probably count them all, on one hand, the number of clients that we have that we actually treat as wholesale or sophisticated. And they just treat everyone else as retail is.

Jeffrey Bonnici
Well, it’s challenging. Yeah. Because if you’re providing contribution advice around super funds, which I’d say overwhelming majority of all of our clients need. That’s retail advice. I do it anyway. Yeah. So that’s where it’s a little bit gray. But when it comes to getting that up and running, it’s definitely a priority.

James Wrigley
Yep. And just kind of last thing you mentioned just briefly there yet tech stack. I’m always interested to hear like what what bits and pieces you’re using in the business and how it’s going for you what, like, what are you using?

Jeffrey Bonnici
It’s crazy when I did the least because I know that you talk to a lot of clients about what you’re using and what’s in the universe, I actually saw there’s about 15 different programs we use, which itself probably answers a few questions. But what have you got, we’ve got my prosperity as a client facing CRM. So it gives it’s an incredibly powerful tool for a client to understand their balance sheet it surprised us to this day, how little people actually understand where their money is, and especially if someone takes a controlling reigns in the relationship that the other party has no idea. So that’s good for that. We use filed invite for document sending out to clients in a secure manner. Padua is something we’ve recently started using, which is a power planning tech company. We used to have an in house power planner, but we’ve started using Padua and the they’ve been incredible so forth. We use x plane internally for projections, risk researcher well solver, swipe files for document storage, Adobe sign for sending documents to clients, Salesforce at a practice level. So Salesforce is the glue that ultimately brings the practice together. So between your lending, your insurance, your wealth, and your accounting team, we can see the whole share of client and we can forecast pipelines and revenues which is very important. Use class for self managed super funds, zero on the tax front. Face energy for invoices, nitro for amending PDFs Calendly. For the meeting, sorry. Yeah. And then we’re in the process of looking at finna metrica for risk profiling, because, you know, with risk profiling, you can never ask enough, you it’s always better ask more questions later. Little Nice. Last. Yeah, it’s a bit of a tough

James Wrigley
one. At least they are not on I know of some of those. But for anyone that’s listening, maybe re listen to that section and write down all the names and do your bit of research. It’s always interesting to see what business what what kind of tech businesses are using and what they aren’t. Jeff, thanks for thanks for your time this afternoon. If anyone wants to chat with you more, where can they find you? Where’s best to reach out to?

Jeffrey Bonnici
Yeah, probably just on LinkedIn happy to source anyone who’s you know, I think about what to do from a study perspective or medical space or just general chatter about the industry and in whom, you know, at all so thanks for your time. And

James Wrigley
Thanks, Jeff. We’ll put some links to your to your profile in the show notes wherever you might be listening to this champion. Thanks. Thanks for joining me back there.