AdviceTech Podcast #30 – Moneysoft – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl Advicetech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis and the guests joining me here today to deep dive into Moneysoft, is well, something of a guru in the open banking space. So we’ll make sure to pick his brain on that previously worked at Big Blue or IBM to the rest of us, and has an engineering degree with majors in aerospace and avionics. Thank you so much for joining me on the show, John.

John Shaw
Thank you, Peita. Thank you very much. What an intro. I think that’s the best one I’ve ever had. Thank you.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, thank you. And I’ve got to say, I can’t believe as many conversations as we had at overseas conferences that it’s never come up that you’ve got an aerospace.

John Shaw
Well, it’s not really relevant isn’t in the world that we’re in. But I don’t know.

Peita Diamantidis
But it sounds pretty cool.

John Shaw
I pull it out from time to time. Yeah. Dine out on it when it’s appropriate.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Particularly within dads see nerds like me think that’s really exciting.

John Shaw
It was fun to do.

Peita Diamantidis
I’m sure it was I’m sure it was. So before we pick your brain about money. So often, there’s lots to cover. I want to get to know you a bit better as a user of technology. So all the listeners out there, I can get a feel for you. What is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

John Shaw
I do use emojis. And actually, it’s an interesting question. And I have had a look through a couple of apps that I use. Just because and we can we can be honest about that posed question. So I actually looked through three apps, right. Yeah. To see what is my most used. And it’s actually depends on the app, right. So I think in WhatsApp its thumbs up tears of laughter. And, and fist pump. And then in in SMS, it’s thumbs up tears of laughter and love eyes, probably because I’ve seen SMS, my wife, right, right. And I think in email, it’s tears of laughter smiley face and thumbs up. So thumbs up came up all three types. Must be

Peita Diamantidis
okay. Okay.

John Shaw
I love though that it’s a little different based on the audience. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, if we had to do away with all the all the apps on our smartphone, I mean, there’s quite distressing The Raven site, really? And you could only keep three which three would you keep?

John Shaw
It was a toss up with a toss up between what’s happened and the SMS app. Like I’m old fashioned. I just like using phone. There’s a phone, right. So

Peita Diamantidis
Heavens to Murgatroyd.

John Shaw
So it was a toss up between WhatsApp and SMS, but I went with WhatsApp. So definitely keep WhatsApp Firefox web browser. I’m an Android guy. I can’t keep my email at the unit we get assigned to treat the phone app. We get that?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s a given. Me we won’t get a phone on our phone anymore.

John Shaw
That’d be nice. Right? So WhatsApp Firefox, and

Peita Diamantidis
you can get old school I like it.

So let’s dive into money soft. Now. I’m figuring most people listening have at the very least heard of you guys, if not played with or use the app. But just for everybody’s benefit. Let’s take it up a bit higher so we can understand where you guys sit. So in advice, tech or FinTech, kick your tech space. what category do you guys normally fall under, you know, who you’re generally lined up against? When somebody’s looking for a solution?

John Shaw
There’s there’s a few areas and it depends on what the customer is looking for. The main ones are client portal and ongoing service portal. Know your client, in fact, final KYC and backbone. And in Process Automation. That’s sort of the three main areas that we fall into. And it will depend on what the customer is looking for as to who we’re up against. So client portals, surprisingly, is usually explained. Yeah, it’s not you know who you are the usual suspects. I mean, my prosperity might be in there on the ongoing service side, but client portals usually explain KYC In fact, I’ll explain midwinter again, it’s generally the traditional CRMs Process Automation. It’s pretty rare that we fight anyone in that space, we generally have that nailed. So and so that’s a higher level or higher value part of the puzzle. So yeah, that’s, that’s where we play and generally who we’re, we’re talking to customers about.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, so and I know like if you go onto your website, there is the opportunity for a member of the public to access money soft, but I’m assuming really, you know, the game you guys are at is is channel partners. So it’s going Going through to from advice firms right through to super funds and all sorts of people. Right that tool yet. So for say an advice to him, what’s the primary problem? You guys are trying to solve for them? You know, what’s the thing that’ll just they’ll just be going oh, this is fantastic. This is exactly what we need.

John Shaw
Yeah, yeah, well, the I’ll start with the company vision. And company vision really is to help close the advice gap. So there’s a whole bunch of people out there, we know everyone, you know, there’s a lot of advisors who want the high net worth their lucrative clients, they pay the bills. But then there’s a huge cohort of Australians. And this is true all around the world of people who want financial advice, but find it difficult to get because of the cost of service. Yeah. So where we really trying to play is, is to close that advice gap. And providing features functionality capability that helps advisors do that in various ways, which may be understanding a client’s cash flow and understanding how they might be able to execute the strategic plan to increase their wealth, it might be automating process and making just the fact finder or sorry, the prospecting and in fact, find process quicker and removing all that double king of data. So you make the process more efficient, it doesn’t cost as much you can operate, cheaper. And then for ongoing service, same sort of thing. You want to be able to service those less sophisticated clients or non high net worths in a way that’s scalable, and cost effective. So really, all of those things, Client Portal, no point data integrations, Process automation, feeds into that closing advice,

Peita Diamantidis
object. And I guess that’s an evolution of how the advice industry is looked at these sort of tools, because because I’m betting early on, it was probably taken very much of a look, if you’re in the game of cash flow advice or coaching, then sure use this, but they probably hadn’t got their head around the extent to which you can make fact finding or accurate fact finding different prospects. So run us through that, because there will still be people out there who, who haven’t fully understood that, you know, these type of data feeds and this type of information can give you a really fulsome fact find.

John Shaw
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The key part that we found with factoids, Peter is the pre population have data. And it’s one of the one of the main capabilities that many SOPs got, that’s probably hidden from most people, apart from our apart from our enterprise, customers, like link group, as I was talking about earlier. So the pre population of factoring and making that fact find process easier for clients does make it more accurate, because they’ll have, you know, most most people, you and me included, will have an intense attention span of maybe 10 to 15 minutes, right, where you’re actually really getting into something. And that first 10 to 15 minutes is where you concentrate on doing things properly. And then after that, it becomes Oh, God help me, please just get through this. So, so pre population data is really important. And we pre populate from explain and then synchronized back to it. And we can also pre populate from other CRMs as well. So to sort of go back to your question on that accurate fact, time piece, we think the key is pre population and making the clients job just to fill in the gaps, right to run through an entire backbone and do the whole thing, right? Yeah, that’s where you lose clients. That’s where they lose interest. That’s where you get inaccurate data.

Peita Diamantidis
And to that point, then what you’re talking about filling in the gaps is anything that you otherwise couldn’t get by connecting a financial instrument, whatever that is, it could be this. It could be. So they they connect all those things through to the app, and then it’s just the other stuff. So anything that doesn’t fit in that, right.

John Shaw
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So and that process automation. I mean, obviously, we’re talking fairly advanced level here already know straightaway. But the process automation that I spoke about right at the start, the very first thing that most people would know about myself is that we automatically collect financial account data, right, which is a pro forma process automation, instead of advisor or client service officer having having to go out and ask the client for statements and balances and so on. Yeah, we just get it all in the client portal. And that can be pumped across into explain or whatever tool is being used by the adviser. And it’s, and it’s up to date to the date. Yeah. So yes, that can be used. In fact, it can be used across, you know, on the IT services and reviews and all sorts of things and then there’s a whole bunch of other process automation can be

Peita Diamantidis
added on top of that. So then, because the other thing that I can see that that’s going to be powerful for is, is the affordability of insurance, for example, where, you know, we’ve sort of been tasked over time with not just how much Arnstein a bit can they afford it? Which bless their cotton socks? What a wonderful question to ask. And they afford it. Right. And so having data on hand that at least you can point to Well, there’s certainly a gap, you know, there’s certainly money available. Or, look, it might be a bit tight. But I can see here the $40,000 per annum spent on whatever the luxury item is. Do you want to try that off certainly makes that a more real conversation rather than I mean, we’ve all experienced where the clients say, hey, you know how your expense level? What do you think it is? And to be quite frank, only 1%? Or even ever within QE of getting that, right. Like people just aren’t onto it that well, are they none of us? are really,

John Shaw
we’re not? I mean, look, I use money soft every week, and I’m not really on to it until I look at it. Yeah, then I know. Right? Yeah. And great point that you make about insurance. And I don’t know whether you knew this already or not? I don’t think he did. But Peter Molech is the founder of money. So who, who originally came up with the idea of automating having this system to automate the analysis of cash flow to understand how much free cash flow that was started in insurance advice, really, for exactly the reason you just said exactly why he invented myself in the first place. So

Peita Diamantidis
and it’s not just affordability, right. I mean, one of the things that’s coming up all the time where your premiums are rising, people are struggling with it. And one of the the most important things I think we can do for clients in that situation is tweaking features, you know, and things like income protection, well, it’s very hard to, to talk through increasing a waiting period unless you can get a good sense of how their cash flow is going. And whether that’s realistic. So to me, I mean, I’m pleased at how more intrinsically linked cash flow is now getting in the advice process, because it’s sort of the beginning. Beginning of it all.

John Shaw
Really? Yes. That’s right. Yeah. That’s, that’s true. And I think another part of it that people forget, is that some advice strategies will generate cash flow. And that’s a great thing to show to the client. Hey, this cash coming back in? Yeah, and if you can actually demonstrate that and show how it affects the overall cash flow. It’s a good thing. Yeah, that’s a way to demonstrate that as well.

Peita Diamantidis
And so if so, advisors can, you know, engages with the client, they sort of set up their appropriate connections to, you know, their super funds and bank accounts, and all that sort of stuff. And so it’s feeding through how far back is. So once that happens, I know there’s a history you already get, as part of that first sort of turn on how far back is the data they get from day one sort of

John Shaw
transaction data can go back 365 days, or months? or anything in between zero and 365 days, depending on what the business wants? Right? But there are standards either either 90 days or throughout and 65 days. Yeah, which we just John, according to the business ones, that’s the transaction data. Yep, balance data is from the day the account is linked forward, we get, we can’t get historical balance data yet, we might be able to get it.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay. And look, that’s an interesting, it’s an interesting concept. Because I know, cash flow coaching, or whatever you choose to call it is a different game. And it’s a different way of engaging and, and when we started looking at it, the thing that the dread was about, okay, you start engaging with somebody now, but you can’t really have an impact for months, because you’ve got to collect a whole lot of information initially, like there’s a, let’s watch and see what you do. So being able to get transaction history back for up to a year means there’s no waiting, it’s like, okay, let’s take a look at the transactions in and out what’s been going on, you know, and so that is that sort of takes out a whole chunk of what would otherwise be torturous for both the client and us to monitor them over time. So I do think it’s something I know I didn’t realize was part of the sort of wins that you get with this sort of information. And of course, you know, the way you analyze that can, I’m betting can be quite superficial, you know, top down or can actually be in a detailed fashion bottom up, what’s the usual? Like, is there a usual way advisors approach that? Or do you find it’s pretty evenly split?

John Shaw
The ones who look at 12 months worth of data, funny enough, generally go down into more detail. Okay. And the three months worth is usually high level, just give us a general picture of where you’re at. And we’ll extrapolate that. Assume that’s how you operate. And we do have tools in the system that help advisors so the ones that get detailed, will generally have their own set of custom categories. So they’ll have a way their own chart of accounts that they categorize the transactions with and on top of that, they will generally put in their own categorization rules right into into the, across their client base. So we’re able to do that sort of process automation for them, which takes away a lot of the pain of having to go through client by client, categorize the transactions, make them do it, and then work out where their cash flow is. So we can really help automate that make that a lot quicker. But it takes a bit of work from, you know, from the business themselves and with us to get that in place.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, once you do it, right, once you do these things, once I’m, I’m a big believer in those things, there’s some of these things that are torturous once, but then once they, once they’ve done it makes everything easier. And the thing I like about that expression, er, with your own chart of accounts is it can become part of the language of the way you talk to clients about this, you know, and that’s where it gets powerful. It’s really hard when it’s bespoke every time. And that’s probably something that we struggled ways that we found hard, and I probably am about halfway, I reckon, you know, a, your own sort of practice Chart of Accounts. But then I always ended up picking one thing that we broke out for a client, because it was the one disastrous thing, you know,

John Shaw
having kind of a custom category for the client, but in terms of real power users have money. So the ones that do do it, the best will generally have their own chart of accounts, and it’s locked down. And they say, this is how we actually look at your cash flow. And they’ll tell the client how to do it. So money source no coming along and telling the businesses how to deal we have we have defaults, yeah, but we generally allow our customers to be very creative in the way that they use the software and, and impose their own process. But it’s the best users will impose that their process on their clients. Yeah, and I’d strongly recommend doing that. Yeah, absolutely. Analyze.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Well, because the, the, it’s interesting, the logical way, and there’s, you know, everybody’s seen a budget and the way things are broken down, that’s great. But logic doesn’t necessarily drive emotion. And a lot of this is about identifying emotive categories. You know, it’s so it’s in your right, you know, determining that for your client base, or for that your niche that you’re targeting is really important. Because you’ve got to be able to match that it can’t be too vanilla, it can’t feel too distant, it’s got to feel connected with however else, you’re talking to them about what they need to do.

John Shaw
That’s exactly what that’s generally what be the most successful customer.

Peita Diamantidis
I’ll do that. Yeah, fantastic. So in terms of the the individuals within a practice that are then sort of engaging with money soft, do you have like some practices? It’s just the advisors? Some, it’s the whole team? Like, how is that sort of running now that you guys, you’ve been around a while now. So I’m imagining you’re really embedded in some practices? You told me through the difference there.

John Shaw
Look, I there’s I don’t think I can really give you a structured answer on that. Because it’s, you know, the businesses are very different intent, I can’t give you a structured answer in terms of the position of the people that we, that we interact with. But what I can tell you is that the ones we interacted most with are the ones that are very much focused on their service focused versus, you know, the, okay, okay, client, here’s a tool, you’re on your own, and I’ll give you some service. And we still do have a fair few customers that come along and want to use the software like that and believe that putting the software in front of clients will give them some sort of advantage. And it may, but it’s marginal. Yeah. And I generally don’t like to take those kinds of customers on anymore, because they’re not will usually fail. The very, very service focused ones who are saying, Okay, we’re asking you to pay us. X 100x $1,000, whatever it is, we’re going to make sure this works for you. Right? That’s, that’s generally the stance of the people that we’re dealing with all the time. Yeah. And they might you, they might have a admin assistant, client service officer, offshored people, it could be the advisers themselves, depending on the size of their business, but they’re all doing the same thing. They might not hold the same position, but they’re doing this.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And I think that’s something that you’ve probably witnessed this, even more than I have working with practices is one of the things they struggle to get their hands or their heads around is, you know, you can have somebody that’s either in the support team or like you say offshore, you know, follow a whole lot of rules in a system like money soft and then flag exceptions or other things to the advisor as they come up, that you don’t have to be doing every tiny bit yourself. And that’s when these things can get really powerful and we’ve sort of applied that across all of our tech usage. We you know, we’ve engaged a lot of people that are I get it, get it to a certain point, and then highlight anything that can’t solve or anything that stands out to the advisor. And then you know if the advisor goes, so that’s

John Shaw
really. So to get someone to carry out the hygiene process, and then you can, as the business owner or the advisor can concentrate on activities, and

Peita Diamantidis
look, we can we can tell us those are, but how are they going to catch that special thing that only we can catch? Like? Well, my view is, if you write your rules well enough for them, they will catch

John Shaw
it. Yeah, that’s right. It’s

Peita Diamantidis
courage, right? Taking it out of your brain, the process you’re using, and then writing it down well enough. And

John Shaw
we do help customers with that. And, you know, that’s part of the onboarding process that we provide are we recognize that that is a key piece of the puzzle, we provide a free trial period. And that’s really the purpose of it. So that we can a make sure that the customer who’s trialing money self has that sort of mindset. So we know yes, okay, this will be successful, and then be helped them along that path and give them tips and tricks and show this is how the successful customers do it. Is the work instruction almost pre written point? Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
exactly. So if somebody’s considering a tool like this, then, you know, is there anything you’d suggest they do before? You know, onboarding the tool before? Like, is there any prep work? Or? Or heads up? You’d give him the, you know, people that have done it successfully versus not, that you think the practice could do?

John Shaw
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that really comes down to the service that you are either currently providing or proposed to provide have a very good handle on what that service process map looks like. Yeah, a very good handle on what the tasks are that need to be carried out what the inputs and outputs are, and the processing tasks are as part of that service offering. And then ask yourself, Okay, or ask us kind of tool like money serves to help with this process. And that’s really where the most successful usage of tools or any technology really comes from. Do a bit of prep work like that? Seeing you know, think of what you’re going to use it for, and how, how it might give you benefit, then dive in. Yeah, but it won’t expose itself just by going and trialing bunnies often. Yeah, there’s some great bells and whistles and features.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And look, I’m gonna be completely honest with the audience here. That’s exactly what we did. Ages ago is we’ve we I tinkered, because I’m, you know, tech curious, like, fatally tech ears. All I want to play with this looks great. And But what we didn’t have yet was, well, what is the problem? I’m trying to solve for the clients. And so we did put some clients through it, they got immense value, but we hadn’t yet got to the point where I had a, this is the offer I want to deliver. This is the gap, therefore what fits?

John Shaw
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And just just to sort of be clear, we have absolutely no problem with someone coming and doing what you just described, come and have a look at the software, get some ideas. No problem. That’s, that’s absolutely cool. But just set your expectations before.

Peita Diamantidis
And I completely agree. And, and I think that’s the thing. And look, it may actually be if if people are sort of embarking a bit early on in that sort of cash flow world, or any of the other ways that that we’ll talk through people can apply the tool. Sometimes it is a matter of trying it out for a few clients, right. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s valid, but I completely agree what stalled us was we didn’t then go Alright, well stop, what is the offer gonna be you know, we we ended up on other projects, and all sorts of other to scratch distractions. So for us in our future project plan, the first step is then going to be what is literally the consumer experience we want to design. And where does a tool like this fit? Right? And what do we want it to do? Because for some clients, what was interesting in some of the testing we did for some of them, they never really looked at the app at all. It was us, it was all about our data on what we needed. That’s a bit of a squatter advisors to grow.

John Shaw
That’s right. And clients are very much the secondary use of tools of PFM tools. And it’s important that, that everyone realizes that the client is the secondary user. And they will always be except they’re really, you know, OCD ones, but they’re not that prevalent.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. And that is a difference. And I think we can get really obsessed with why but wouldn’t it be great if they looked all the time at the year but they’re not gonna

Unknown Speaker
know, these all sorts of other notifications on their phone? They’re gonna look at first.

John Shaw
clients, clients want advisors and coaches to come to them and tell them what they need to do. Just give me the instructions. What do I need to do? Like you’re the expert, give me the expert advice and the expert instructions and all Then I’ll go do it. And then I don’t want to have to worry about it anymore. That’s what I’m paying you to do, honestly, is the attitude and how it should be

Peita Diamantidis
looked at. Yeah. So to that end, let’s talk about sort of the client at the end client experience, as opposed to the advisor client or potential client, then, you know, when we use the word client portal, there’s no I mean, Portal is the New Black 20 theory, right. So to help people understand, you know, what elements you guys have, or don’t have, from a client portal perspective, then clearly, okay, we’ve got the, the cache on all this information that’s coming through. Great, what else is there in terms of the way you can interact with a client via the tool?

John Shaw
Sure. We have various ways to communicate. So there’s emailing, there’s automated reports. So you can actually send you can send custom alerts straight out of the software, if you’re logged in here as the advisor and the and the user. So there’s plenty of communication options. Obviously, a great way to communicate is just by showing relevant information straight on the dashboard, which which we are very much focused on. And you want to keep information that you’re putting in front of the client, my, in my view, being an engineer, I like the KISS principle, keep it nice and simple for the client so that they can see is where I’m at, what do I need to do now there are some more advanced ways of communicating. And we have some some customers who use the transaction notes in the transactions list to communicate with clients, and they use a custom category. So for example, they might categorize a transaction as client node, then put a transaction node on each of those transactions that are categorized that way. And all the client has to do is log into money soft, find the client node transactions, and categorize them to what they need to be all of the rest of the work done before them. So you can use some process means of communicating to arrive smart about it, right. And most people don’t really want to be bombarded with messages all the time. And I just, I think that is an absolute cracking way of dealing with clients the way that this particular customer has come up with, because the client knows I can log in whenever I like, all I’ve got to look for is this set of transactions. And once I do that my works done.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, I’ve done my homework.

John Shaw
And they get automated reports sent out to them every I think they do weekly, particular customer and I do some weekly, some monthly and some quarterly. So that’s really where the clients getting them, the key communication is in those reports, is how you’re tracking to the things that we have spoken about and that we care about. But otherwise, all you have to do is log in and look for this particular category of transactions and read the note against do what’s asked.

Peita Diamantidis
So then, in terms of the other elements of a client portal, and we’re using that really broadly, then I’m assuming you know, money stuff isn’t designed to be the document signing the document vault, the any of those sort of things that it’s really you do.

John Shaw
So we do document vault we do, we’ve got a DocuSign integration, okay. But I mean, it’s not our key focus, we understand that that is part of the process automation mix. So it’s in there, it’s definitely in there. And we actually had the end of the fact fine, we’ll pump out a fact find document in PDF, and that gets shown across to the client in DocuSign, for sign up. So we really look at those integrations as part of process automation, we have been asked for the ability to send PDFs through the, through the money, self portal and DocuSign integration for signature of other types of documents. And we’ve got that on the roadmap. So they’ll come. That’s their direct plan, integration document bulk, if we’re talking along those lines, we don’t want to store the documents. This is still an internal internal, let’s say debate, I’m having a development team. I think it’s much smarter to to outsource that to a Google Drive or OneDrive, or Microsoft OneDrive, or Dropbox, or all three. So that will probably be some more integrations that we do where it’s okay. They look after the document bolt over there. That’s what they do really well. Yeah, we’re going to do the process automation really well, but we’ll use all these other bits and pull them all together. So that and on your subject on client portal. That’s really our philosophy. We started off with pulling a whole bunch of bank accounts, superannuation funds, credit cards, loans all together in one place. So we’ll keep pulling stuff into one Place. Yeah, but we don’t want to change where you have to store your documents. I’ll put all my stuff in Google Drive. I want to keep it. Yeah. I don’t want to put it in. I don’t want to keep it. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll stick to the aggregation of data and stuff into a single place. And that’ll I think that’ll be how we, we ultimately do.

Peita Diamantidis
Awesome. And so. So then, for the way practices are then utilizing it. So I mean, that example you’re given where it’s, I mean, basically, the client has some homework, right? It’s like, okay, this has come through, we don’t know what the hell that transaction is. To identify, are there and that sort of sounds like to me one extreme in terms of it’s quite regularly interactive. And I’m imagining that in that first, we need to resolve some stuff process. Like it’s that early. Wow, that’s an ongoing

John Shaw
process for that particular customer. They really hands on the clients heavily. They’re mostly mostly recycle. Yes. So they did anyway, yes. Sorry.

Peita Diamantidis
No, not at all. No, that’s helpful. So there’ll be some I’m imagining there’s others that may be it’s more about at review time, whether that’s every six months, or whatever it is, were they using it as a as like an update? So it’s like, Okay, how are you traveling? Is that fair? Is that a fair description of how practices are using?

John Shaw
I think it’s close? I think you’re on the right track, for sure. So I think what would be more relevant to most practices and most listeners is that a lot of our customers who have who do have a lot of clients on board on the software will generally look at the high level, they’ll have their own custom report that tracks particular KPIs against the plan that they set for the client. And there’s this is generally sort of fairly cookie cutter plan for a lot of different client types, right in the types that go into money. So there’s no cookie cutter plan, but they don’t worry about the transactions. And they said, Well, if you want to run a budget, and keep on track to the goals that we’ve set to you and myself and and keep you on track to your debt reduction plan, or whatever the case may be, you go in and budget yourself, right, when you use that tool to help you achieve the outcomes that we’re setting and reporting. Yeah, I would say that’s probably the most scaled usage of money. So that type of use, yeah, okay.

Peita Diamantidis
Because it is a Yeah, I think it’s because there’s, there’s a wide variety isn’t there, there’s the people that that like a bit of a disaster, right? Where you’re gonna have to point out the 12 different things they need to specifically change, you may even have to give them ways to change them. So a lot of behavioral stuff. Whereas for many people, I’m betting it’s, it’s the insights, really the trigger, it’s just understanding where they were and where they got to and has what they’ve embarked on. Move the dial, like have has, has it changed, you know, and I think actually, it’s probably a bit healthier anyway. I mean, I think about the relation, you know, a similar thing with diet. You know, I’m, I’m never like I watch people when it’s that whole really narrow, calorie counting thing, and it can can become unhealthy, mentally unhealthy really quickly. And I think it’s the same with money, I think it can become really unhealthy. Yeah, where’s that overarching? All good progress made or plateaued. sort of feedback, I think is probably healthier for the individual and they can find their own. Now, maybe you could have, you could support it with some behavioral exercises that somebody could do tips and tricks how you might, you know, expand the gap between what you earn and what you spend. But, but yeah, I think that sort of middle ground just seems a little bit. It also puts a lot of onus back on to the client, because really, this is their spending. They’re the one that stands

John Shaw
out to be teamwork. Yeah. Right. That’s right. And I think that’s another tip that I would provide in terms of tips for success is that the customers that I see that do really well with money, so often this sort of process automation and this scaled type of advice offering. They actually reject some clients too. You’re not right, you’re not ready. We’re not here. We’re not here to walk you back for you. Okay, you’ve got to be part of this team. Yeah, we’ll give you the tools and we’ll tell you where you’ve got to go and set your plan for you. You’ve got to execute. Executing.

Peita Diamantidis
No, and it’s it is an important realization, I think for any type of work, whether it’s this or, you know, financial advice in other spaces is, you know, a client who sees themselves at the beginning as a victim, you know, in terms of like, things happen to me not you know, I happen to things that’s that’s a red flag. Right? That’s a big red flag and and it’s, you know, we’re definitely there to help. But all just told me, you know, just tell me what to do. I don’t know about this stuff. It’s like yes, you do. You’ve got money in your wallet or you’ve got your card. You No enough?

John Shaw
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, look, there’s got to be direction at some level. So okay, this is where we need to get to that your next your next task, the next bit of homework the next mini objective. Yep, off you go. Yeah. And I think that actually gives both parties a lot of satisfaction working as a team, the client, the client see that they can achieve it. And it feeds on positivity. So it’s a good way to approach it. Sure. So

Peita Diamantidis
I am curious about something this is a bit out of left field, I haven’t I haven’t prepped you for this. So I apologize in advance. You guys now have a whole lot of, uh, you know, individuals or families or whatever, into the system? Are you starting to get any broad sense of you know, the average that people are spending on this as a percent of income? Or, you know, that sort of stuff? Are you starting to see that sort of data?

John Shaw
Yeah, we actually already have it, we’ve got a benchmarking report in Microsoft. Okay, already. So in terms of that behavioral change that you were talking about here? So there are quite a few of our customers that use that benchmarking report for that purpose. Where a client might think, Hey, I’m not spending much at the tip or on shoes, or, you know, going out to restaurants or whatever, well have a look, whatever else does. Yeah, so there’s, there’s your benchmark, so your double will at least come back to 20%. More? Exactly. Yeah. So there are tools in there. And yes, of course, we’ve got, we’ve got a heap of data that we can use to benchmark on, it’s a matter of actually running those analytics in the diets data science process to update it from top. Okay, what we’ve got in there is perhaps a little bit old, we could update it, possibly in the next few months that we already do.

Peita Diamantidis
Look, and I think, you know, AI, and all sorts of other things are going to start to help make those things really deeply relevant. You know, it’ll be rather than broad averages, they’ll get narrower, and you know, all that sort of stuff, I think, will start to come out. Because we tell ourselves stories about all but I’m just like everybody else, surely everybody’s doing these things. And so many of those stories are just off way off base, you know, and I see that a lot, actually, with funnily enough with food as a spending on and lots of our but everybody spends, like, only two of you. And you’re spending, you know, even just grocery shopping, you’re spinning in a family of six, right? Like,

John Shaw
yeah, I just had a similar conversation with my wife.

Peita Diamantidis
And the thing is, it’s funny, because we will go out, but who are you to judge? Oh, not judging, so I’m, I never judge that stuff. But it’s doing it be informed. In that way you do it because you know, exactly. like, Nope, we love we love getting, you know, only organic this or, you know, meat direct from the farm or, you know, I mean, my husband, I fall firmly into that category where massive foodies. So you know, our dog has been absolutely, but it’s, it’s knowing that knowing the dollars, reflects, yeah,

John Shaw
you may spend more in one area and less in another. And that’s okay. It all balances out. That’s fine. Having that information to handle is what allows you to make smart decisions.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also, I think, I think it alleviates me, I miss director guilt. So I think when you make the conscious choice to like, what, but I really love that thing. I think it can take away the guilt you might feel potentially inappropriate, you know, maybe feel guilty about that thing over there. You don’t even know you’re spending on

John Shaw
this a junkie, but this is going to go into been. Exactly, exactly. Of course. That’s right. And it’s you’ve got to have a healthy relationship with money in the way that you spend, and, you know, what do we go to work for and there to enjoy to some extent, but you also want to build wealth. So get the balance. Right. And that’s, I think, is a really important point, if advisors or coaches are going to go into that realm. That this is not it’s not it’s not all stick in fact, it’s mostly carrot. Yeah. And that’s the way you approach it.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, I 100% agree. I’ve been speaking to somebody recently, who’s done a lot of work through reading Barefoot Investor, right. And I mean, kudos to them. They’ve really gone hard, which is great. But it’s actually really demoralize them because there’s no carrot, right? Sorry, that’s not fair. There is this to a certain extent, but they’ve been so focused on the frugality. Right? Yeah, there hasn’t been a why, like, Why the hell are we doing this? Like, it’s a win win, you know, not doing things and continuing to not do things and even not do things for our kids, potentially. And so, exactly, so. So you know, you’re right. It’s that balance. It’s getting it so that actually it then drives you into other behaviors, better behaviors over and over again, because it feels good.

John Shaw
That’s right. It’s that positive reinforcement? Yeah, yeah. that positivity feeds on itself achieving something, okay, you’ve given something up, you’ve made a change, and you’ve got a great outcome. Now let’s go again and read it.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Now you’ve touched on integrations. But I just want to make sure we’ve we’ve sort of caught them all. Then you talked about, so explain is one of the things that you guys integrate with.

John Shaw
Yes. Explain. We’ve got a few integrations with explain, actually.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay. And so what level because I think that’s people probably don’t understand actually, that that, you know, an integration isn’t isn’t a one size fits all sort of take, so talk us through that. So, you know, how does that differ in terms of the different places you might integrate with explain?

John Shaw
Yeah, look, I, I probably just keep it to two areas, one being CRM, which is which is the fact fine. And the other being the portfolio system? IPF. So that’s all of you balances and transaction data. Yeah. Okay. So anything that’s in money, so including property values, will go across into explain to complete the client’s portfolio and IPS, and then any data in money. So fat fine can be pumped into x plan as well. Of course, we totally customize the factfinder according to whatever the client wants. We’re there the two main areas, we do have a budget integration, which is quite an old one. Yep. And have been around for a long time. But definitely the two most used are the CRM integration.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, perfect. So then outside of explain, who else do you guys integrate with

John Shaw
midwinter? Same deal as explained same sorts of data? We integrate with fin 365. Yep, we integrate with DocuSign. We integrate with Lync group CRM, which is a superannuation administration platform that’s probably more internal for them that is there. Who else have we got? This dash is about to I’d like to speaking out of turn of

Peita Diamantidis
the day won’t tell anybody movie.

John Shaw
Done. So wait, that’s what management? Yep. And Zippo? Yeah. Okay, fantastic. So the other ones off the top of my head. There’ll be a couple more. Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
perfect. Well, and I’m, I’m betting that that if somebody is uncertain, or really, you know, is using the tool, and therefore can think of something that they’d like to integrate, they should just ask because it may not be possible now. But it might be something down the track that you guys could factor in is that.

John Shaw
Actually, I always forget about this. But, you know, another integration that we have is with a payment gateway called EY. And part of our roadmap and plans for the future is to expand that integration to allow advisors to take payments straight through the software. Fantastic, instead of having to invoice them separately. So that’s something that the Americans, which listeners may not know, that we’ve launched in the US, but it’s something that our American friends are really keen on. Yeah. And it’s quite, it’s quite prevalent in the US that the software platforms allow the professional users to do that. So it’s, in fact, a feature that we’re going to need to get out to be successful.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, and so just to get a sense of what they otherwise would have to do, I mean, sorry, aside from through a dealer group, it’s like a stripe, is it alternative to stripe or something like that?

John Shaw
Anyways, mobile payments, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, global payments. So it’s the same as a stripe? Yep. So it’ll just mean, you can create a website, sign up to this package, credit card and take payment, the whole payment changes happens automatically.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Nice. And look, I think there is going to be more of that as as the way we charge and what we charge for evolves in advice, you know, we’re going to need to have easier ways to do this stuff. We make an audit really hard at the moment.

John Shaw
Yeah, it just makes sense. From a process efficiency point of view. You’re pulling out a whole bunch of manual work. And you’re also not having to chase bills. Yes.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. That’s all good. Absolutely. Now, in terms of the practices you’re currently working with, is there anything you think that people don’t take enough advantage of like, you think, oh, you know, they could really get some value out of this particular feature or, or, you know, element of the app.

John Shaw
I think in terms of standard feature, I would say goals, right? It’s probably not used as much as as it could be. And the customers that do use it, use it really heavily and successfully. So goals, I think, is just as a standard feature a really a really good one as an add on feature. And in fact, we do sheduled reporting for free as part of a standard subscription. So sheduled reporting would be another standard feature, possibly not used as much as it could be and it’s very, very helpful to customers. Then there’s custom reporting. So I’ve got a particular telco report I like to send to my clients, it’s a standard one across my client base, hey, money soft, can you create this and have it pumped out of the software automatically? Yes, we can. Okay, that’s it, that’s a real big one. And then getting a bit higher up the chain to the more advanced users, just single sign up. So, you know, if you’ve got your own website that you have customers log into, they can automatically be logged into money. So I can through Single Sign On so we provide single sign on capability. And in fact, we do that for free, as well, you have to develop it, but you get the feature for free. So you know, the points, that sort of thing. And then we get into, obviously, the integrations explane. In particular, integration with fact find, I think there are customers that use that very, very successfully. And once it’s in place, it saves a heck of a lot of time, a heck of a lot. So getting, again, getting up the value chain here, I’d say that’s, that’d be next cab off the rank. And then it’s for the really, really advanced customers at their API, we’ve actually got several customers that write their own apps over the top of our API, so they put money, so features in their own app. And then clients don’t even see the word money. So anyway, okay, use all of our capabilities inside.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, okay. So you’re all about the data and the analysis, and they’re putting a skin,

John Shaw
yeah, they’ve put their own skin. And if you’ve got the right amount of scale, obviously wouldn’t recommend doing that, or even white labeling until you hit the right level of scale. Once you are up around the 500, to 1000 client level, and you want to put what features that you’re putting in front of your client base, it becomes a bit of a pain to have to rely on a supplier to do that for you. Right. So right in your own app, put a skin over the top, and you’re a lot more nimble. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
And it really does start to, to make it such a wonderful user experience then to you know, so the things that you can do, and the way it can look, and all that sort of stuff. I mean, it’s something that we never really get that far down in a lot of financial stuff, advice stuff, but I think it can make a huge difference in the way people engage. So that’s exciting that you guys have that capability. You know, we all just sort of need to get off our button get to that point.

John Shaw
progression, right, it’s a progression. So if we were talking about some very advanced things here, so we have all of the out of the box capabilities that will give a huge amount of value to users. And then it’s just a matter of working your way up the chain. And you’ll stop where it makes sense for you just keep going. And the natural progression of going all the way would be get rid of money. So often do your integration with financial account data aggregators. prep yourself?

Unknown Speaker
I don’t think I’m ever gonna

Peita Diamantidis
know that sounds like a disaster. Oh, goodness. But I’m interested, you mentioned single sign on, and it’s something that I think we probably underrated a little in advice, because you look, I don’t think we look at our own behaviors enough with this stuff. Like, you know, what do I love about using Kindle and having books via Amazon? It’s the single click. And the thing is just in my, my iPad, you know, it’s and so, you know, single sign on, even if it’s through something else, and it matched, like that makes a big difference. A huge difference to the likelihood of somebody being willing to go in, you know, the ease with which they do you know, all that sort of stuff. Yeah,

John Shaw
absolutely. Never forget to put yourself in the boots of the client. Yeah. what it’s like for them? Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
absolutely. So then, all looking into the future. So first of all, there must be some things that are just on the development path, so that you guys have planned but then I’m sort of curious about any wishlist items, that it all would be lovely to get to. So start with the reality.

John Shaw
Okay, well, we have open banking coming out in June. So we’ve, we’ve worked with your lead to get that done, we’ve gotten the accreditation, we are hosting our environments in link group. So we’d be under the same regime as superannuation data in terms of privacy and security. So these are some really sort of back end big wins that we’re getting which which will give our customers and, and their client base a lot more comfort around security and data privacy. So that’s a big one. And we’re really concentrating on that new mobile apps are coming out in June, July and lining up with the with the open banking. So the mobile apps will be a lot more feature rich, a lot more usable. And will shift towards mobile, mobile later develop. I want to say mobile first but mobile limited. So we’ll really look at how we get that in obviously International has started and we’re working on that. So that means we’ve got international data as well. And that’s probably the most interesting thing for the Australian audience. We don’t care that we’re in the US or the UK, but we’ve got international data. So that may be something that we put out. But in terms of futures, and where we want to be, probably next cab off, the rank will be a debt reduction calculator or tool that we’re going to be sort of half report half in our tool, it will be a communications channel. So we really want to do in our chat, and integrate that in with document the signatures. And so you can actually do, and I’m a really big fan of not forcing someone to come and meet when it’s convenient for you get into the portal, leave a message for the client, they get a notification to their phone, they come back when they’re finished work, and they do what they’ve got to do. You don’t have to be at the same time as each other. So yeah, that’s really the thrust behind that one having the you know, chat and and communications channel. And then finally, there will be some developments around retirement income covenant. So, okay,

Peita Diamantidis
oh, exciting. Okay, so, so more than just the reality of their current data, it’s all what would be possible, or what’s it going to look like in the future sort of stuff? So that’s, yeah, which is exciting, because the, I’m always wary of really complex forecasts for clients, because there’s too many assumptions. And the minute you get more than one, you know, it becomes something that that is, you know, as long as a piece of string and all that sort of stuff. So I love simple tools that just give them a really, once again, that sort of thumbs up thumbs down of where they’re at. Yeah,

John Shaw
we’re working with, we’re working with length group on that, obviously, being a superannuation space and, and servicing the Superfund. So their solution will be really complicated. Yeah, no doubt about it. And we’ll help them with that. But then we’re going to take the beats and stick to the KISS principle, as I said, and in general money so that you’ll provide at least a tool that can be used either.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Perfect. Now, is there anything else we’ve missed? Any elements that we’ve missed of the tool? Or?

John Shaw
I look, I don’t think so Peter, and it’s been a real pleasure talking to you. The audience probably wants us to stop now. So

I think we’ve covered everything, and it was a great chat. Thank you very much.

Peita Diamantidis
Not at all. Not at all. You’re very welcome. All right advice explores, if you’d like to find out more about money softer than the website link is in the episode show notes, along with John’s LinkedIn details. So I’m sure if you just nudged him, he can point you in the right direction of who should look after you and can do a demo all those sort of things that you should do. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m excited to hear where you guys have got to since I last saw money soft and can’t wait to see what’s happening down the track. So best of luck in the future.

John Shaw
Thank you, okay.

Peita Diamantidis
So, are you a current user of money soft, I know there’s a number of you out there. Perhaps you’ve just started or you’ve been using it for a while I know the wonderful Adele Martin uses the tool really well. So I’d love to hear what everybody thinks, what their feedback is on the tool, please head over to the ensemble community platform and share your insights. I personally would love to hear your take in terms of my thoughts, then I think it’s really, it’s really powerful to think about the way instant insights into a client’s positioning or situation outside of say, just an investment account or a super account how valuable that can be. Right. And there’s so many parts of advice where that can be valuable. We spoke about, you know, the affordability advice being one, you could make a tool like this just a core part of your insurance offering. And I know that’s not necessarily something a lot of us would think but I think you could really take advantage of getting confidence about the cash flow that is available similarly, with somebody’s updated, you know, wealth position, including, you know, their cash accounts and things like that. So, I do think we’ve got an opportunity to use these tools Well, above or beyond cash flow, coaching or monitoring. However, I do think all of us should take a moment to consider what cash flow monitoring or coaching or other, you know, offerings we could provide to clients to really get the confidence around the way they spend money, remembering, you know, to invest and get a return you have to have money to invest, you know, and so for many people that’s not as easy as it might sound In the current environment, people are struggling with, you know, the hip pocket pocket getting hit by a whole lot of things, including interest rates. So, you know, these sort of tools are absolutely well worth considering. And, you know, they are benefiting from, you know, you know, overseas interested us, you know, John’s making progress over there in the UK, we can benefit from a tool from here, going further into the advice markets or other markets over there. So, you know, this is something you know, and there are other tools that do these feeds. But I think we all should just take a moment to consider how we might be able to position it in our practice, and then go and ask them, you know, put that idea to them, and see how they might set it up. You know, how many users you would therefore need, how many logins, what it will cost, all those sort of things. So, you know, I’d really challenge each of our thinking, or what we imagine a tool like that is it’s not just money coaching, it’s not cash coaching, it’s, you know, we think broader, think bigger, and really imagine how this could become a core part, or a core tool in what you’re doing. And like John said, you know, your client may never look at it, right, the minute we stop it being about what the client does with it, and what it becomes what we can do with it, what that data can do for the service we offer, I think that’s when you’ll get really creative, I would love to hear ideas, I’d love to hear what you’ve already come up with. Because I think there’s some magic, we can all work in that space. Now, as you know, if you’ve listened to any more episodes, before this one of the advice tech podcast, there is only one skill, we need to become true bionic advisors. And that’s just avid curiosity. Now, to help you build that habit, today’s curiosity corner app that I’d love you to take a look at is muse. You can find it at Muse app, that’s m u s e a double p.com. And their tagline is diving into big ideas. Now, I’ve just got to laugh. Because actually, when I typed up the note about this, it said diving into bog ideas, which I’m pretty sure is not the deadline. So please, excuse me forgetting momentarily distracted by my own, you know, bad spelling.

But we’ve chatted on the podcast before about brainstorming tools like things that can can help you come up with ideas or, or collaborate with team members. What’s interesting is, what makes Muse a bit different is that it’s got this concept of nested boards, a board being like a whiteboard, like imagine you’re brainstorming, right? And then you’ve got your whiteboard, you might start brainstorming about say your whole advice process, and it’s all up there on the whiteboard, then you decide, you know, what we’re going to deep dive into risk profiling, say is one step, well, you could have a nested board. Inside that bigger whiteboard, we’re talking about a nested board just for the brainstorming on the you do on risk profiling, sort of imagine it as a layer below the original board that covers just that one topic in a much deeper fashion. Basically, nested Muse boards let you sort of dive in and out of ideas with this sort of zooming interface. And since sort of everything in Muse is laid out, really visually, you know, then fall gnomes, or document titles or any of that just isn’t needed, right, you’re going to be able to find what you’re looking for just because of this particular nested board layout. So when you make you make a new board, you can just start putting down your thoughts and ideas, you don’t sort of have to organize it too much, or get too structured with yourself. And you can give it a name later, right? When you actually know what it’s about. Sometimes the idea is just there, and you’re not sure exactly what you need to call it. This is absolutely an app for anyone out there who struggles with the structure of most brainstorming tools, you know, maybe you need something that’s a little more free flowing. So let me know if you check it out and how you go with it. But this is another different type. You know, if you’ve struggled with other ones, mero or other boarding tools online, then this could be another one that might just work for you. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week, folks, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get your advice tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And look, if if you’re still feeling pretty overwhelmed about where to start on your advice, tech journey, then I’d really encourage you to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Ask what we’ve got coming up we’ve got some lunch and learn sessions. I’ve got a niche down and scale up masterclass coming up. So please don’t hesitate to link to reach out sorry on LinkedIn. You can find me at Peter MDPE it AMD otherwise all look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explorers Stay curious.