AdviceTech Podcast #42 – Feature: Client Value Propositions – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the ensemble advice tech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidas. And this week, we’re kicking off the first of our new advice tech feature episodes, where we sort of discuss broader ideas and issues the industry is facing when it comes to tech. But I promise next week, we will return to regular programming and dive into a specific app. Now today’s featured topic is tech and the client value proposition. And who better to have the first of these conversations with than the self confessed tech geek from net wealth and a particularly stylish wearer of Silicon Valley chic? It’s Matt Heine.

Matt Heine
Oh, that’s very generous of you, Peita, good to be back.

Peita Diamantidis
It is. I’m so glad to have you back. I mean, you’re my first returning guest for the advice tech podcast. I think you were back all the way in Episode Five. Now it does feel like a long time ago, I feel like I’ve aged since. Before we dive in, as we always start and the listener knows this, we normally would dive into things like emoji use and smartphone apps and all that sort of stuff, which we’ve done with you before. So as a returning guest, the first thing I’d love to know to learn a bit more about your tech use is if someone came to you and offered to build the perfect AI buddy, just for you, what task would you want it to magically do for you?

Matt Heine
That’s a very good question. I’m actually a bit disappointed that you didn’t ask me the same question you did last time. So I was a bit embarrassed by my response was very pedestrian and and had I had more time, I’m sure could have come up with something much better. So what what would I have is my perfect AI buddy. So probably like many listeners already using chat JpT for a whole range of things, including writing bedtime stories for my kids at night, which if you haven’t done it is great fun, because you couldn’t depending on what time of the night it is you can choose a 500 word story or 1000 word story. And basically, you get them to pick the key ingredients. So the last one I wrote was, my son wanted to turn into a lizard and fight evil with his best friend Evander. And what was amazing about it was it actually really wrote a beautiful story, but that it finished the story with the the moral of the story, which was about despite adversity, and facing into adversity. When you’re supported by good friends and family, you can fight whatever you want. So that was pretty amazing. Amazing. So if you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. But critical would I want as an AI buddy, probably along a similar theme. If I could have an app, or some technology that translated what I asked my children into something that they actually listened to that. That would be amazing.

Peita Diamantidis
Like the intuitive translation, right? So it’s not language to foreign language, it’s its intent to something that they’re interested in to like, maybe it makes it into a rap song or something. So that at least they’re listening as you as you ask them to do things.

Matt Heine
Exactly. Right. So if you come up with anything, please let me know.

Peita Diamantidis
But I’m definitely stealing the chat. GPT use that’s fantastic, great story. Because there’s nothing worse than those of us that aren’t that creative, trying to come up with a random bedtime story. It’s just not pretty. You know, it’s when you start to fail as an adult. I’ve just got

Matt Heine
to do those things. And the best videos, which I haven’t done yet, but aside next on my list is you can then use daily to actually illustrate the story that you just did not church a pity. So yeah, hours of entertainment.

Peita Diamantidis
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Everybody’s running away. They’ve all pause now. And they do it now. So now my second question actually is sort of taking a look back, I guess, look, not all new tech is good tech, right? Not all new tech makes things better? Is there anything that you love the analog version of better than the new tech?

Matt Heine
Can I just go with wife? Yeah. Living Yeah, living living life was a lot easier without a mobile phone and a laptop.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s sort of is a completely It’s why we all love holidays, we can, when you can just lose you know, you have no contact, there’s no Wi Fi. I love it. When they say that we don’t have any internet.

Matt Heine
It’s actually my favorite favorite thing to do is to lock myself away without a phone up in the hills for five days. With no technology, no newspapers, you come out feeling incredibly refreshed. It’s It’s liberating.

Peita Diamantidis
It is I do the site, I pretend the planes don’t have Wi Fi anymore. Just pretend like I can’t do any of that. Just relax. It rah rah, right let’s dive into client value propositions and tech, shall we? So the boss is like me, you know, we often focus on tech. And we focus on that sort of operational efficiency, you know, the productivity sort of focus, which is natural. I mean, that’s where technology’s always started. But there’s loads going on in the client value proposition space. This can be whether it’s investment philosophy, or even the customer experience. So, you know, let’s start with the investment philosophy and offer we’re doing a lot of discussions about that on the ensemble platform. Advisors are really going much further in terms of what they’re trying to deliver. What are you guys seen in terms of client’s needs or demand? comes from firms and what they want, you know, in terms of how we need to enhance or sort of reconsider our investment philosophies.

Matt Heine
So I think this is a trend that’s been playing out for some time now. So it started in the US, probably 10 years ago. And we’ve seen seen seen movement in Australian market that really has accelerated, I think, throughout COVID, with market volatility, and the need to be doing more regulation, overload, etc. And I guess rather than getting into a discussion necessarily, now about different legal structures, estimates MBAs, if we if we sort of talk broadly about automated investment solutions, so finding ways to scale your investment philosophy is really what advisors are looking for. And really, that means that if they can find a way to first of all articulate and describe what their value proposition is around their investment philosophy, and then implement it as efficiently as possible events that they can start to really focus on delivering great service and, and focus on that strategic place, which is where we all know advisors can add the most value. So we really, SAY HAVE SEEN managed accounts, particularly grow exponentially over the last three years. And I’ve just done a roadshow around Australia talking about some of the things that we’re up to. And one of the interesting statistics was that if you look at our managed account in 2019, so we’ve been in the market for five years, we were one of the pioneers, if you like in the managed account space. And but it have taken some time to get traction. And so in 2019, the manage the size of our managed account was two and a half billion dollars. Now, if you fast forward to today, it’s in excess of $13 billion, or three and a beat yield slide up, which just shows you that exponential growth throughout that period. And what’s really interesting is that within that managed account, we’ve got a very, very diverse user base. So we’ve got everything from, you know, smaller practices, dealing with accumulators, all the way through to very high net worth individuals ultra high net worth individuals looking at customized portfolios and everything in between. So from our perspective, it’s not the product, it’s just a really efficient way to actually implement a firm’s investment philosophy. And that might be that they believe in passive management with strategic asset allocation. Or it might be that they actually believe equities can add more value in the Australian market, they went indexes and managed funds for overseas. So Rob taught the tools and the capability of managed accounts. And that could be through an SMA or in MDA, a very far superior to what they were five years ago, and certainly 10 years ago, and really allow firms to differentiate their offer through their investment philosophy. But also make sure that they’re treating all their clients equally, and that everyone’s got the same access to their best ideas at the same time.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s an interesting nuance there, because I think a lot of the discussion around managed accounts and all of the permutations there can be focused on the investment insights and all of that expertise, when that’s only half of the tail. You know, the other half is this ease of implementation. So So and when I say that, I mean, having something very personalized for that client, and then being able to implement that easily. You know, that was always something that’s been so clunky, historically.

Matt Heine
Yeah. And, and for any advisor, that’s, you know, to try and run the business service clients rebalance portfolios over the last three years during extreme volatility, it’s actually not possible and not deliver a great outcome to the client. So what we saw was incredible outcomes, because investment committees were able to look at overnight data, they were able to convene in the morning, make a decision and literally implement ideas that day for all of their clients. And that meant that as markets fell, they were able to de risk portfolios, by removing assets, and as opportunities presented are able to take those opportunities as they arise. So people were able to actually come out of it far better circumstance than they would have had they not been in a managed account. And then you see really interesting combinations. We’ve got people using MBA licenses and investing into SMEs for certain asset classes. And certainly the anecdotal evidence there is that they’ve suggested that they’ve added maybe up to 3% alpha, because the first time they’ve been able to take the ideas that they’ve had from the Investment Committee and implement them in a reasonable time, rather than taking one to three months, maybe to get through all their clients.

Peita Diamantidis
And certainly, I mean, this has got to play a part when you start talking about ESG. And I hate that acronym, because it’s covering such a broad range of things. It’s a bit just like calling it markets, you know, but anyway, it’s whatever the lens that that client has, when you know what’s important to them. The the It can’t just be well, there’s this fund, you know, it just can’t just be that because everybody’s view on what is the highest priority for them? What’s the thing that’s icky for them? I mean, really, that’s a lot of what they’re looking for, you know, I really am not comfortable with that industry, you know, those sort of things. And I think it’s going to be a challenge just to have a fund that handles that I think it is going to end up being more and more personalized, you know, because the information is gonna get better, too. I mean, there’s, you know, tools starting to come out that don’t just assess the underlying investments. They’re going to assess the fund manager, they’re also going to assess the platform like all of us are going to start to be a assessed on our sustainability targets, you know, the information is going to be there, we’re going to need a way to be able to pull that together and act on it.

Matt Heine
Yeah, absolutely. I think that you’re coming all the platforms absolutely spot on, we are regularly being asked by clients to see what our CSR strategy is. Because they want to make sure that it’s not just the investments that they’re investing into, they’re doing the right thing, but the providers in the middle are also having an impact in contributing back to the community. So that that is very much front and center. ESG is probably a topic for another day, I could spend hours talking about it, I think there’s a long way to go. I think that unfortunately, the data isn’t necessarily there to support the right outcomes. There’s a lot of people working on it to make sure that we get more relevant outcomes. But to rely purely on, I guess, some of the current providers is a mistake, but it’s really good. I think it’s heading in the right direction. And we know it’s important to clients.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And that’s the thing, I think people just begin to expect more and more ability to personalize, but also gain access, you know, they’re going to want to be able to gain access to alternatives and other things that otherwise we used to sort of be outside the primitive of a, an advisor, right. And so that’s just going to be the expectation of the public. And our tools are going to have to reflect that.

Matt Heine
Yeah, I was saying that we get a lot of pressure, or feedback, or whatever you want to call it from our clients, which we love, because feedback is a gift. But around the platform of the the administration services that they’re using shouldn’t constrain the investment choice, or the investment requirements of their client base. So we spend a lot of time over the years looking at how do we make sure we support more and more of those asset classes or asset types have been traditionally very hard to get ahold of. And we’re seeing some really interesting combinations that are very differentiated, using all of the different tools in different ways.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and it’s, um, look, I’m actually a bit curious then about, I mean, we’d spoke about AI very briefly refle up the front, but, you know, I, you, either you yourselves, or what you’re seeing out there is AI being used more in any of the back office sort of admin perspective for platforms or investments is that coming up more and more? Look, there’s a

Matt Heine
lot of people talking about it. I think one of the interesting observations, there’s quite a few articles on this bit of a Segway, but Apple’s just released their new spatial computing headset. Now, you’ll notice in that launch, they didn’t mention AI, virtual reality once. No, they were very clear that that has got a bit of a stigma attached to it now. And so they’re seeking to actually recreate and redefine what it is that they do without sort of getting sucked into all the buzzwords. And there is a tendency for firms. And I think companies to throw around AI, when it might be basic data analytics or machine learning as opposed to try but at the other end, there is some obviously very incredible businesses being built on true AI. And obviously, we’ve talked about Chipotle and some of the the outcomes that that’s producing. So I think, when you think about AI, moving forwards, there’s a lot of business, a lot of companies that we’re all already interacting with on a daily basis that we use to run our businesses to the using AI. I’m incredibly excited about where Microsoft is heading with their copilot products, and how that’s going to be just embedded into everything that we use day to day. And that’s really not that far off. Obviously, Apple, Google, all have very strong AI capabilities and machine learning capabilities behind them. So moving forward, as we pick technology, it’s important to make sure that we are looking at for two or three years, and to understand what their AI or machine learning roadmap is, as opposed to perhaps taking it that it does to do it. Zara doesn’t do it today. But you know, we’re probably as guilty as others, but we’re doing some really interesting things internally, from an operational perspective that help us identify document automatically index documents. We’re using the technology to identify redact teeth ends as an example. So I think the tools and the technologies is certainly accelerating. And we’re gonna say it just populated into our day to day life.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And I guess, I mean, I’m with you with Microsoft, I, I wondered if they were just going to be too slow. Like, this could be one of those moments where they, you know, there’s almost a Kodak moment where they just lose a market because they’re too slow to respond. But they’ve really sort of taken that leap I really looked at and it’s perfect. All of those tools we use every day. They’re perfect applications for AI. You know, there’s so many repetitive things we do in them. So I love that they’re actually taking, you know, taking that leap and going down that path. I’m

Matt Heine
curious, I think Microsoft’s the company to watch. And if not, what’s one of your questions people often ask, who are the leaders that I most admire? Satya has got to be up there. He’s turned around a huge business in a very short period of time. huge elephant, a huge elephant and doing some of the most incredible things. So kudos to them.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it is exciting. And I guess, you know, for those of us that, I mean, you will have a deep understanding of the difference between all these things. But for those of us that don’t, AI sort of falls into a category A bit like blockchain for me in that it’s like computer power. Like it’s like How can you do more with less? You’re seeing more and more things sort of taking advantage of blockchain as a tool as well in investing? No, no, no, they’re not. They’re not going down that path yet. They’re not sort of taking advantage of what’s out there.

Matt Heine
Now, look, I think blockchain as a technology is potentially very powerful. And where we haven’t seen evidence of, I guess blockchain in this industry is really the business models that sit on top of it, right. There’s been different blockchain projects within their industry, one of them just closed down, which some, which was around fee disclosures and fee consent. And the reality is that there’s really good databases and good technology that can solve a lot of the problems that people have tried to solve with blockchain and didn’t necessarily need to. So I’m not saying it’s dead, I think it’s just really go a long way to go before we started Stannis a real practical applications. I know, there’s people that are looking at building new exchanges, obviously, Chess has not been a great example of a use case of blockchain. Probably the worst the worst use case. And that’s gonna set the industry back because people will be naturally gun shy now. If so. I think it’s a good technology. It’s really about the business case and the business layer, that I haven’t seen anything amazing yet.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And I guess, you know, I mean, you mentioned security. And it’s clearly front of mind for all of us now. And I only imagine you guys are well done down that path as well. Are you seeing? Are we evolving fast enough with that? Do you think do you think the industry is keeping up with what it needs to be doing on the sort of cyber risk and protecting our clients? Or do you feel like we’re playing catch up a little,

Matt Heine
I think it’s a long way to go. So cyber is hard. The attacks are incredibly sophisticated. The number of attacks the sophistication of the taxes incrementally, huge. Since the beginning of the Ukraine, Russia conflict, we’re seeing a lot more more activity. And obviously, we’re seeing a lot more companies suffering as a result of cyber attacks. So it’s something that people just have to be diligent about, you can’t hope that it’s not going to impact you, as an industry, we have more data than pretty much any other industry, including medical, and we need to do everything we can to protect that information. So if you’re not thinking about it, don’t have external professionals, helping you is something that you really need to be looking at. There’s a couple of things on cyber. One is that people will almost always be the weakest link. And it’s, you know, we can do trading every day. But ultimately, it’s someone that clicks on the link that they shouldn’t have, or opens an email or an attachment that looked suspicious, but they hadn’t picked up that will cause issues. And equally, we do see a lot of attempted client frauds where it’s the it’s the classic clients overseas, because their Gmail account hacked, starts asking the advisor and ask for money. And before you know it, there’s lots of conversations happening left, right and center. And luckily, we have a lot of processes in place to stop those frauds. But we need to be diligent and aware.

Peita Diamantidis
And it is one of those things we talk about in our in our practice where, you know, the best thing at any point is, is a conversation, like actually, like communicating with a person? Not exactly, just talk to them, because that can circumvent so many of these things, if somebody’s just spoken to somebody else, absolutely. Catch that. Cool. Alright, so then if we then take a look at taking the environment of the client experience, which is probably something that all of us have begun to consider more, but we’re probably in earlier stages, you know, we’ve still got some work to do along that line. We’re still historically had our client experience almost defined by legislation. And that’s natural. But I think with everything going on, and I actually think last time you and I spoke, there were some announcements that dropped on the day that we spoken just recently, we’ve also had QA come out and, and some things said that are going to be changing. So it’s quite good timing, then, you know, technology and the way that it can improve or enhance the client experience is a real thing now, particularly with millennials now being a huge portion of the client prospects we’re going to be dealing with going forward.

Matt Heine
Yeah, I often joke or comment that the biggest innovation in financial services in the last two decades has been digital signatures. But I think unfortunately, it’s there’s actually a lot of truth to it. And as an industry, we need to get much better. And I think your comment before about the number of millennials is probably not the point that’s relevant. In all of our research would suggest that if we use quite pornos as an example in mobile client portals, when we’ve researched and dunera Australia and advisable Australian reports, the needs and wants and desires of our high net worth, establish affluent and an emerging affluent or millennial with money. Yeah, almost identical. Yeah, they all want to be able to look at the Hall of wealth on a mobile they want to be able to interact with their advisor via chat or some other social media channel or, or contact Yeah, they They want to be able to have an idea of what’s going on in their budgeting world. So all of these things that have been sort of, I guess, pushed down the line is that something Millennials want, it’s just not true. And And COVID really did accelerate that. And if we all think about our lives, going back to our conversation about life being complex, everyone lives on their mobile. So these days, yeah, and so the more that we can interact and create context to those interactions, the deeper those client relationships are going to be over time. And there’s lots of different ways that that can be done. But we really do need to start investing in that digital front end experience, not only because we know that advice, friends that have done it, it’s only about 30% of the industry so far, but they’re seeing much higher levels of satisfaction, they’re seeing much higher levels of client engagement. And then if you combine that with things like the consistency and reliability of a managed account, you’re all of these things are generating referrals and helping them grow their business. And ultimately, that is as important as making sure that we can produce SOPs and and those things as efficiently as possible. So it is super important, the firms that do it really well are seeing the benefits. And the ones that continue to under invest in this era, I think for finding two or three years that they’ve lost a lot of ground.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s an interesting thing that when you look back at the way we approach these things, say it was you know, there will be face to face. And then some people were doing video meetings and meeting or email, all those sort of things is, is the danger is that we see these new things as a secondary option. It’s like, oh, we’ll have it, but it’s just a secondary consideration. And so we treat it accordingly, instead of what’s probably the case is we almost need to shift to that as the primary like we almost need to behave as which, as if those new things, whether it’s via the portal, chat, whatever it is, is actually the primary way. And hey, we’ll we’ll do it the other way if you need us to, but this is a way we engage, because it’s a mentality, isn’t it? Like it’s a complete change in the way your team do things, the default in the way they send things to clients, all of that’s got to change, we have to sort of adjust all our workflows and processes accordingly.

Matt Heine
I say, well, probably in two or three years where email is not used as a tool for communicating sensitive information. And it shouldn’t be, it’s not the right tool. So the more that we can work collectively, as an industry and with our providers to have document vaults and secure signing, you know, secure chats, all those sort of things, the better and it’s a better client experience. So I think you touched on a really important point, which is don’t think about it as a separate bit of technology, it has to be part of your process, otherwise it will fail. And so to think about it from the client perspective, think about how that integrates with what you need to do from an internal perspective, and make sure that it’s actually a benefit to both parties.

Peita Diamantidis
And it is a change management exercise, isn’t it, I’m sure you guys have seen that for anything you roll out, right, you’re gonna have to train clients to make the change, even if they’re happy to do it, and you’re probably going to have to almost nudge them to it, even if they accidentally send you something via email is like, fantastic. But can you just try it again via the portal, instead of doing it all for them, you know, I think we try and make things easier, but that’s okay, I’ll handle it, but you’re not creating change, you’re not giving them the new habit, so that they’re gonna go save via the portal every time.

Matt Heine
And I’ve seen some great practices, adopting really interesting ways to embed that change management. So when they first come in for their sort of implementation meeting, they’ll actually sit down with the client, help them get the app set up, make sure that the facial recognition is working, so they don’t have to worry about their PIN numbers and passwords. But the other extreme, and I think this is a great idea is to get their more elderly clients into for lunch and learn. So if you come in for lunch time, we’ll get around, it’s a little bit like the Apple sessions that they run in the Apple stores. And they get them all around table, they have a little bit of a laugh about how hopeless they all are. But through that they’re showing them and they’re working together with other clients to say, you know, it’s not actually that hard. And they get direct feedback as well on the sort of things that their client said, Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do this, this and this. So it’s a great way to engage with the clients, and have a bit of fun as well.

Peita Diamantidis
And they had a huge Apple had a huge take up from that generate the older the boomers sort of generation because of that. Some of them were going every week for another session, you know, and nobody else was offering that you couldn’t buy a normal PC and get that service, you know, so it is a way to differentiate yourself. And I guess I’m curious about your take on businesses, like say Apple and Amazon. I mean, I know I’m an Amazon Prime member. And my complete expectation now is if I order something, it gets you tomorrow, like it’s just given,

Matt Heine
I’m still shocked by it, though, I ordered some things for my computer, I think it was I lost my charger for my Garmin watch, and neither the USB connector for something or other. And it arrived that afternoon or the next day, and it still shocks me. But it’s also said that new expectation,

Peita Diamantidis
hasn’t it? And what do we I mean, there’s so many examples of that. And like you say in our industry, you know, we’re so excited that we’re doing e signatures I guess I’m curious what you think the leaps need to be because part of maybe the problem in our industry is we do do these iterative developments. You know, we’re not sort of making these quantum leaps of what’s the next thing For example, should we be using a signature at all? Or should be this some other two factor or some other authentication method that we should just be moving to instead of, you know, I’m interested in what when, where we might be sort of almost holding ourselves back a little with some of those decisions?

Matt Heine
Yeah, I think unfortunately, with digital signatures, often it’s the use case that will dictate the signature method. So there are still with do digital signatures as an example, for pretty much every form, there’s still certain ones that legally we have to have a wet signature for. But increasingly, as we move down this unintegrated mobile path, if we can avoid a digital signature, just have a accept reject button. That’s the way we’ll go as signatures sort of an interim step because it was convenient. Everyone knew how it worked. But the reality is all we’re wanting is to get the Go ahead. On a piece of work.

Peita Diamantidis
Yep. Yep. And so what else do you think? Yeah, I mean, you guys have spent a lot of time on, you know, even your portal for net worth. And you know, what people use? I’m curious what you’re seeing in terms of the users and what they focus on a lot, like, what are you seeing them use? And what are some things that you’ve put in there that nobody takes a look at? You thought, oh, you know, it was that all that effort? And then nobody’s really utilized it? Was there any surprises?

Matt Heine
So I know, advisors certainly pushing people towards the mobile app, particularly where it’s branded, and they’ve got a bit of ownership. So sort of our strategy that’s going to the product side, was to make sure was a standalone bit of tech that people could use, regardless of whether they had a net wealth account or not, that was still is very, very important to us, sort of agnostic to what we’re doing on the other side. But the reason I’ve done that is, again, it avoids all the issues with logins and passwords, because it’s a matter of holding it up to your face. The one feature that’s had the biggest take up is actually the integrated property feeds. So we launched the product, whilst it wasn’t quite as big adoption as the check GBT. Yep. The, I think we had nine or 900 users over the first couple of weeks at 1700 property. So on average, two properties, which really just reflects Australia’s love of property. And the important things to them, or we debated this a lot internally was, you know, they wanted to say picture the house, because they’ve gotten an emotional attachment to it. And whether they agreed with the valuations or not, they could go in there and put out a valuation, if they disagreed with one that was coming from domain. So property, we thought it was an important part of the total wealth picture, because it’s such a big part of it. But the adoption since then, has been huge, just one that people get most excited about. And I think bank banking is certainly heading in that direction, where people just want to be able to do everything in the one environment and not have to move between multiple applications.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and it’s, it’s, um, because I get why for the institution, I get, you know, it’s well, it’s, it’s your bank, whatever your bank is, and they will, that’s our app. And that’s a login. But like you say, for the client, it’s like what I bought, but I don’t care. I want to just see all my stuff. Why can’t there be one place? You know, in my

Matt Heine
experience in a lifetime, the accounting software, it’s where it’s one of two. But their view was that rather than building integrated apps, themselves, they would just have a huge exchange of different services. The problem for that is it worked really well for the accountant. But as a client, I had to go in, load up a receipt in one app, I then had to approve it in another app. And then if I wanted to see if that had been processed, I had to open up the accounting app. And so I just didn’t do it. I went back to sending emails because it was much easier. So again, got to think about it from the clients perspective and, and solve the problem for them rather than what makes it easy for the advisor.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I think that I mean, that’s the thing that I’ll be curious about as we go further down. Things like the you know, the actual apps on an on clients phones is, is what does what else makes it easier? Is it something that will nudge them when they need to do something? Is it like, what are the features that maybe we don’t see as important, but we’ll add immense value to them. You know, and I guess that only comes out of asking, right, it only comes out of understanding where their biggest blockages are, or interest, like you say, with the property, I mean, of all the things that we could have in there really, really, but everybody’s fascinated, and particularly when the markets going nuts and a bit a bit berserk, then they’re all curious about that.

Matt Heine
It makes Australian will have an opinion on. Yes,

Peita Diamantidis
exactly. Exactly. Rod, is there any other in terms of then the, I mean, it’s not so much productivity, but you know, the customer experience? Are you seeing any more things that could be exciting about, you know, say the next best thing for, you know, the advisor to work on for a client or anything like that, that you starting to see that technology can add some real value to.

Matt Heine
So as a couple of things, and again, I talk about what we’re doing, and I do that, because what we actually believe in so we do a lot of the research and we see waiting where we where we see the industry going so I think customizable reporting is huge. We’re spending a lot of money in that space to make sure that an advisor can basically we’re calling it the advice illustrator. They can tell the story using their data and and imagery to explain it, the strategy how they want to to the client, and more importantly, how the client will understand it. Yes. So it could be that you’ve got a new client that’s not overly literate, that ultimately just wants to say, what’s my balance over time? What’s my asset allocation, if the advisors started having that discussion, and maybe what’s money in money out versus someone that is very sophisticated, that’s going to have all the bells and whistles on line by line asset performance report, and benchmarking and contribution analysis and some of those things. So I think people are being able to tell the story, the way that you want to tell the story to the clients that you want to tell it is going to be really important. So that that’s certainly coming. And then if you sort of think about AI, I was fortunate to do a live interview with the head of data and analytics and AI for Morgan Stanley in the US where they have 16,000 advisors that they’re building solutions for. And they’re doing some really cool stuff. And I’ve got a arrangement actually with open AI, which is the the engine that sits behind cerchio booty. And so they’re, they’re training, so they’ve had next best actions for some time. So when an advisor logs into their desktop, and their whole whole theory is that it’s man with machine versus man without, yeah, so they’re not trying to replace the advisors, they’re trying to make them as efficient as possible, and put them in a position where they can add the most value. So next best actions is when they first log in, in the morning, it basically says this has occurred overnight, these portfolios might be out of balance, or range, or you might want to speak to these clients because they hold a stock, they can then automatically press a button, email those clients or arrange a phone call with them. So that’s sort of the first thing that they do when they go in the morning. Where it’s heading, though, is, is really interesting. So they’re using the open AI engine, they’re training only on Morgan Stanley data. So cat hallucinate, will sort of go off and find weird and wonderful statistics around the Earth from around the web. And it’ll allow the advisors to effectively ask the engine things like, you know, what, what’s better bhp or Rio. And then rather than having to pull down two different research reports, and try work out what the key drivers are, and who’s doing well, we’re gonna do a full analysis and basically say, PHP is a better option based on the following things. So again, potentially saving the advisor 20 or 30 minutes of analysis, almost in real time, while they’ve got the client on the phone. If it’s a new client, and the clients asking some broader questions, they can then sort of query okay, how do I open an account for them now to automatically walk them through the next steps or how a particular process works. So really driving efficiency using the in house capability, and the in house IP around sort of data and, and research. And I

Peita Diamantidis
think what’s exciting about that is it is it actually frees you up to be more human. Right, it’s, it’s the best technology, that’s what it lets you do is it lets you be more human, spend more time with them, on understanding them and what they want to do. And all of its personal stuff, which is fantastic, and the juicy bits, because all the rest is is worked out. Whereas I mean, when I think back to some of those meetings I’ve had years ago, when you’ve got the printed out fact fine. And you’re spending the whole to like, it’s just horrendous, you know, that’s not actually engaging with the client. So all of these things give you more time to do that. And I mean, for listeners of the podcast, you know, the ensemble platform has behind it that we all type in, and we chat to each other on and ask questions. Each has AI behind it. And so when ensemble happens to come out with some thought leadership that you feel wow, that’s exactly what I was just thinking about? Well, it’s because ensemble AI is listening. And they’ve drilled it all together and said, This is the things advisors want, you know, How fantastic is that?

Matt Heine
As I’ve always say, the trick is to make sure that you use it in a way that doesn’t come across as being creepy.

Peita Diamantidis
Right. Right, exactly. It’s just insights, you know, it’s just actually listening when people talk, as opposed to digging through all sorts of layers of awful stuff. You know, it’s it’s really fascinating. Is there anything else that you can see sort of coming up? That’s interesting that you guys might have discovered in any of your similar visits, like your Morgan Stanley one.

Matt Heine
So yes, I think you’re not gonna have a conversation these days. Unfortunately, without talking about AI. It really is evolving rapidly. And generative AI is incredibly exciting. And it’s going to allow us to replace a lot of the processes that can take us hours and hours and hours and hundreds of stories that I could share with you already but conscious of our time. So I think let’s have a look at how that evolves. SOPs are going to change anyway as a result of Q AR. So how do we use some of the tools available to streamline that even further? So that that’s important. I think that digital experience, providing personalized Insights is critical and not that far away. It’s got to be hyper personalized. And to use a saying that I often use is that we can never forget that the service levels that a client expects are based on the last best experience that they had. And inevitably, that will be one of the big tech companies that we will work with an Amazon or Facebook where they do get that hyper hyper personalization At any time,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, I completely agree. And I think the thing we’ve got to all watch all the time is applying tech to something that’s a crappy process just makes it an even even crappier process. It’s not, you know, it’s, it’s, and that’s why the focus on customer experience is so important. You know, that’s where we need to have the energy where it just makes it easier. And even a better communication. I think that’s something that I’m really interested in is how, how can we get better ways of communicating ideas and concepts in, in advice and using smart tech to do that, you know, rather than

Matt Heine
Yeah, well, if it’s Chat GPT every day, I don’t know if you’ve tried this one, but ask her to describe her transition to retirement strategy to a five year old.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice, nice, oh, well is your mission, folks, I feel like that’s a fabulous way to finish up, we’ve all got to go and do that. And, and we’ve got to learn from this round of how we can communicate better, because that’s actually the value we can bring, we can bring that connection with our clients. All right advice explores, if you’d like to find out more about how net wealth works with advisors, you can see the link in the episode, show notes, you know where to find them. I hope you got some value out of hearing as geek out over all the future technology issues out there. And having to tech geeks on the microphone. Thank you so much for joining us, Matt. And for net while supporting the ensemble advice tech podcast as a sponsor, we really appreciate it.

Matt Heine
Great to be back and always enjoy the chat.

Peita Diamantidis
So folks, look, there’s so much going on, right? I mean, I could I could quiz Matt about the things he’s seeing out there, of what people are doing, you know, for hours, and hours and hours. Because it’s interesting, I think for lots of us, it can get a bit overwhelming when we hear all these things that people are doing. The thing is that just keeping your ears slightly to that like just just allowing yourself to be vaguely aware of what’s going on will mean that we are at the right moment, we hear that thing that can just solve that problem we’ve got, you know, and we in financial advice, we just absolutely need to understand how far behind we are other industries. And we really need to lean into some of these changes. Now, that doesn’t mean that we just constantly change the tech stack we have it doesn’t mean you’re constantly implementing new technology at all. Not that at all. But I think an awareness of what’s happening can even just get us to question the process we use, not just the technology. Yeah, it can really, I mean, Matt mentioned something there, you know, the difference between a signature versus an acknowledgement. Now, what are the things internally that maybe a client does? That isn’t a formal, you know, provider form, it’s something they’re doing with us is this something that could just be an acknowledgement via a portal, as opposed to an E signature, all these little things can really start to add up. And, you know, I’m completely with him on the fact that we’ve sort of got to plow ahead. Things like que ir will happen, all sorts of other things, right, we’ll go on, we need to plow ahead, we need to do what we can to understand the risks from things like cyber attacks and and all we can do is continue to understand the next best ways to protect ourselves and our clients. And then, hey, let’s find out great ways we can deliver value to our clients, what are the things that they just wish they could understand better, do faster, or find more interesting? So I’m hoping that you enjoy that conversation. We’ll be having more of these into the future. These feature episodes but and next week, we’ll be back to interview and advice tech provider. And I’ll and also provide you with another curiosity corner tip. However, I’d love to know if there’s other topics you’d love us to dive into in these feature episodes, broader issues that you just like to have, you know me to have a conversation with somebody about as you’re curious, then please let me know either it’s on the ensemble platform or on LinkedIn, I’d love to hear what you’d like to hear more on. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you’ll get your advice tech fix automagically sent to you each week. And you know, if you’re a new team, or a bit stuck in a rock this year has been a bit rough. You know, you’d love to refresh your process and take projects going forward. Maybe do some planning for the next 12 to 18 months, then I would love to facilitate a brainstorming session for your team, draw out your next best products for the business. Maybe give some thought to what tech could assist and then give you some habits to put into practice to help you innovate on a regular basis and really keep on improving and keep on on growing. If that’s of interest, please reach out to me on LinkedIn that’s LinkedIn forward slash Peita M D PEITA M D. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explores: Stay curious.