AdviceTech Podcast #44 – Retiremap – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And the guest joining me here today to deep dive into Retiremap is a two time tech founder having developed property genius back in 1999. built an advice and finance business over more than 15 years to then sell and now focus in the advice tech space. Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Andrew Gardner.

Andrew Gardner
Great to be here Peita, thanks for asking

Peita Diamantidis
Not at all. So we’re gonna dive into Retiremap, we’ll get there in a bit. But like we always do, we’d love to get to know you a bit better through your use of technology. So what is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Andrew Gardner
I use emojis a lot actually, I find they’re a great way to sign off and to wind down a conversation. I think the emoji I use the most would be thumbs up sometimes a smiley face. But that’s the thumbs up I use a lot. So that’s a really good but

Peita Diamantidis
now I read an article on the plane yesterday actually coming back into Sydney and snorted with laughter which is always a bit embarrassing, surrounded by people you don’t know on a plane. And the article said, for those of us that aren’t the millennial or Gen Zed is that the thumbs up emoji has now become the equivalent of the middle finger. Would you believe so?

Andrew Gardner
I could be embarrassed, right?

Peita Diamantidis
And I’m like, oh, I need to reconsider whether when I’m using that

Andrew Gardner
particular the smiley face a bit more often than

Peita Diamantidis
I current so I figure I will share that with all of us that are used to using the thumbs up because it is something that we all use a lot and and share the fact that I you know snorted with laughter and embarrassed myself in a plane which you know is bound to happen. I’m one of those people was always happy to provide entertainment

Andrew Gardner
body we’re out with our grandchildren. The youngest one is only four years old. He says ha he is that this is my naughty figure on long lead to use.

Peita Diamantidis
Quite gleefully I imagine. It’s always love that. Well, then let’s talk smartphones. We’re all just living with them all the time these days, if you had to delete everything off your smartphone, and then just keep three apps, which three would you keep?

Andrew Gardner
That’s a tough one. But I’d have to come down to three Aw, I listen to them routinely. Probably AFL live or the AFL apps, I use that to keep a track of what’s happening with with my teams. And Google Maps would be the LM one. And if I had a fourth and you gave me that extra leeway, I probably keep the app store apple.

Peita Diamantidis
Yes, just in case just in case there’s another one beautiful well let’s dive into retire map show if so, for the listener who may not have heard of the tool at a very high level. Talk to me about where it sits in the advice sort of tech space. You know, who is it? What category does it sit under? Who is it sort of sitting alongside generally when people are comparing tools,

Andrew Gardner
but retire map is essentially a sophisticated planning tool. We’ve put a lot of work into it core function of planning, and probably sits right beside extra tools and that capability. Yeah, and it’s most specifically designed for advisors and planners with more complex clients more sophisticated structures. So we’re talking trusts and companies and businesses and corporate beneficiaries, sort of space is where it excels. It also does a lot of work in the property investment space. Now, there’s some big space for advisors. But for those clients who are property investment, it does a lot of analysis on there and provides a lot of information that the advisor can work with around advising clients, or with their property investors, particularly when they get closer to retirement age, they need more cash flow than capital growth. So it’s very good in that space.

Peita Diamantidis
And so I’m betting you didn’t just have a whole lot of spare time and suddenly, wish you wanted to build an app, there’s got to be a reason that this came about, right. So what made you embark down this path and start, you know, an analysis tool like this?

Andrew Gardner
Well, as you said, in your introduction, I own the financial services business, which helps financial, financial planning, as well as finance. And we did some work in property as well, but they were the key areas. And what I found was that the advisors were really struggling with the platforms that are available and how long it took to do some functionality. And the capability was limited in some spaces. We built this to make our advisors more efficient, particularly for high net worth and high income clients, which form the base of my client base, what it was able to do was to do things much more quickly, for example, calculating the capital gains tax on the sale of a property could be completed in just just a to two and a half minutes, doing sabe sacrifice, overall long term, it worked out the optimum amount of salary sacrifice and do that in maybe 30 seconds, something like that. But it did a lot of this functionality very, very quickly. And we initially built it on an Excel spreadsheet. And then after I sold the business, I had more time. So I put a team together. And then we built it out into a web based program from there.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, okay. And so this is sort of combating the end, we’ve all had to do whatever we want, no matter what analysis tool you use, where you’ve sort of had to force the tool to do the thing you want it to do, as opposed to it intuitively knowing so you’ve, you know, lots of layers and entering fields in here. And, and adding transactions and all those sort of things that can, can first of all be, like you say, time consuming, but also are a bit fraught with error. Because if you don’t quite get it right, this thing appears in that year. And that one appears and that, you know, like those sort of things can occur when you’re doing this sort of analysis. So it’s trying to really deal with those sort of more layered transactions and you know, assets and all that sort of thing for people with a really complex environment that you’re trying to analyze for them, you’re one

Andrew Gardner
of the things that we worked with to perfect was to build wizards into the program. So that does the heavy lifting, do it really quickly. So instead of having to go through layer by layer, and building out a 30 year plan, which this is capable of doing, it goes into the wizard, and it repeats the process. So you set the parameters around what you’re trying to achieve, it’s able to distribute 30 years of trust distributions app to internal and external beneficiaries, as well as corporate beneficiaries, and about 20 seconds over 30 years. And that flows all the way through the program to provide the best outcomes. And it does the same for company dividend distribution as well, that’s able to distribute that very quickly over a long period of time as well.

Peita Diamantidis
And I guess that’s the sort of thing that, you know, for some advisors, they go, Oh, that’s, that’s something that may not come up that often. But actually, there’s more and more people establishing these types of structures going forward. And so particularly as they’re giving consideration to other planning they’re doing, whether it’s estate planning, or other reasons that they’re doing some of these things, then you do need tools that can then handle that complexity with ease, rather than driving you nuts with difficulty.

Andrew Gardner
Well, when you look at the Super environment at the moment, and now they’re putting a cap on the $3 million cap, which is going to make it all the more difficult for higher net worth clients. And the album was set up a trust and have multiple district distributed distributions and out to corporate beneficiaries where there’s a tax benefit as well. The word coming back from those sorts of planning firms as that’s become becoming higher and higher and demand to be had the capability to do that, but no, they do it but to do it efficiently and effectively, that it doesn’t take up half your life and doing the sort of things and having to build spreadsheets to do these sorts of things. And then the difficulties around maybe the the formulas not quite right to do that. The tax considerations, top up packs, all those sorts of considerations. Whether the company is a trading company tax rate or non trading company tax rate, they’re the sorts of things that can really take up one’s time and trying to develop a really meaningful and powerful plan for a client that sets the plan and their practice apart from everyone else that phone

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting area I know they’re looking at and I’m I’m a bit of a mess freak myself, you know, studied actuarial studies. So So numbers are my language, but I think we can get caught up Sometimes in doing these things ourselves in that we’re trying to, you know, do it with grunt, some of this analysis, when anything that has a formula should be in a system, like anything that, you know, can be calculated. I mean, that’s what these systems are for. And when I say systems, even to, you know, the full extent of AI in smart systems, they can do this stuff. So well, you know, we don’t, we don’t need to be manually doing this stuff.

Andrew Gardner
And I think the other strengths that retirement is able to do, because this can be done so quickly, so efficiently. And without having to use a lot of brainpower to do it and be distracted away from the client, this could all be done with the cloud. So you’re sitting there, and you’re looking at the screen together, and then you work out and build a joint neat Bill plan that makes sense to the client, if they put their structures. Either they understand them now, Holly, or you’re able to explain to them how this flows, and you can do it collaboratively with them. If the costs involved in the input, then end up planning, that definitely going to take ownership of the output, because they’ve been a part of the structure design.

Peita Diamantidis
So then it’s natural to you, your primary users will be the advisors. And the people dealing with clients do you find many are using, say, paraplanners using the tool? And then, you know, the adviser might check it or work alongside them? So what what would you say the the split between that is, is there? Is it more common that it’s the advisors or do it some of them have support team that actually set up the analysis for them? And then they go and look at it? Yeah, great question.

Andrew Gardner
The plan is of the ones who do the the primary work, and then the paraplanners, come in behind them, and finesse the outcomes and who it’s a matter of then working together and, and building a plan that really works both of them. So sometimes they may well get 90 or 95% of the way during the meeting, and then they at the powerplay to go back just refined a little bit, because some of the nuances might have changed. Or maybe there’s a slightly better way of doing trading a better outcome. But yet, primary use is definitely the planners, and then the aeroplane is coming in behind them to support it. And they’re all working out exactly the same platform. So that what’s a paraplanner has been tested, the advisors got back there in front of them, and they can then put it up on the screen, show the client walk it through with them when they get back together, whether it be in person or bazoo.

Peita Diamantidis
So then it clearly suits you know, any practice that’s got some of those clients that are in that high net worth or more complicated space, that makes a lot of sense. Is there any, you know, environment that like? Is there any practices, you think that it just doesn’t suit well, for they just don’t extract the value? And it may even be the by the way they implemented? Is there any ways you’ve seen the little, you know, that didn’t quite work for them. And there’s, you can see why.

Andrew Gardner
Yeah, I think the practices who work primarily in the space were sent a link is the bulk of the work and the bulk of their, their core. That’s where I think that retire map is not going to be as good as some of the other platforms around that specialize in this space. We’ve got a niche market, we built that niche market. And we are looking at adding a lot a lot more into automating the settling process. But at this stage, I’d say for the next six months or so that’s not going to be where our strength is our strength will be at the other end of the market. So more that middle to upper level. And in summary, we’ve been interested in that band the opposite, but I would say that middle level,

Peita Diamantidis
okay. And in terms of then somebody that sort of starting to onboard, is there anything you’d suggest that they do first or anything that that will make it that much easier to sort of onboard retirement into the practice?

Andrew Gardner
Yeah, I think the easiest way to to get on board with it is to spend a little bit of time with us maybe 45 minutes to an hour to actually go through the sequence and look at how the program was put together and how it functions. It’s laid out the very sick sequential way of doing things of our system would be like, so starts with facts mind that goes into the strategy section where you build your plan, and then the words off the back of that. So we provide a service where we’ll spend some time with new clients to onboard them and make them feel comfortable about how this comes together. And then we’ve got a range of tutorial videos that clients can follow up. And when we push out another enhancement, deploy another enhancement, we deploy it with a tutorial. And what we’ll have very shortly is these tutorial embedded into each section of the program. So when you’re doing a certain function, you’re able to click on a question mark and be able to bring up the tutorial and it will show you how to do that functions. Most of the tutorials we’ve been able to keep right down to quite quite small sizes. We’re talking about two or three minutes. Some of them are all the one minute and some of them might be four or five minutes for the more complex areas. And but also having an overview of where things are. I think that’s the best way to onboard and get the word and then at works its way sequentially to start the top, let you work your way down to the bottom and started in the middle in the, at the top, again, work your way down through certain through the strategy section. And the URL, the report said. And it’s straight, quite straightforward, but it is designed to be simple and easy to learn. And it doesn’t take like five years to learn how to use all the nuances all but within months, you’ll be mastering this program learning that is quick and easy mastering, but it doesn’t take that long.

Peita Diamantidis
And so then, excuse me, you talked about the client and potentially using this tool, you know, while you’re talking to the client, what do you see? I mean, it’s, it’s always a bit of an interesting question to me, because planning tools are designed for people who love numbers and graphs, right? So all of us like what who planning tool? And so I’m curious what you think that particularly for these more complicated structures, is, is the tool by doing that in front of the client isn’t isn’t making it more tangible for the client? Because they’ve often just seen accounting reports. And, you know, here’s the distributions, and here’s how, here’s how it’s working. Is this sort of making it more visible for them? Is that where you see the value of sort of using the tool in front of them?

Andrew Gardner
Absolutely. I think that’s a really good point that the client being engaged involved in the process, they, you create one scenario, one, one plan, you click a button, clone that plan, and then you introduce, for example, external parties, or you introduce corporate beneficiaries, and then you start to distribute there, as you can see straightaway on the outputs, what difference that makes to their tax tax liabilities. And then you can do the comparisons where you can compare at our limited number of scenario plans against ordain different metrics, and KPIs to identify which of those fans is the most effective for the client’s needs on a case by case basis. So yeah, and allows them to sit there and see the function happen right in front of their eyes, and they can input and they can say, What about if we do this? What about if we do that, or the adviser can provide a sequence of options as well. So you’re being involved in that, it certainly creates a sense of realness. And I’ve used this with a lot of my clients over the years and found that the end result is a common feedback we get from clients is, this is the first time I’ve really understood where I am, understand where I’m going and understand how you’re gonna help me get there understand the numbers more than anything, because they do flow in sequence.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I think it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting challenge with anytime you’re using sort of layers of structure, you know, where money sort of flowing through things is, it’s very hard to get your head around those if you don’t play in that game. It’s really, because it just sounds also complicated, you know, and it sort of needs to be because that’s where the value comes from. But, you know, for your everyday punter, I think, I think sometimes we overestimate how much they are grasping of those things. And so anything that can help you, or you know, us, as advisors demonstrate that so that they can clearly see what’s going on. Is is Well, I think fundamental, really, it’s a way that they can really grasp their situation. So that then, you know, they shouldn’t, they should be less surprises, you know, they shouldn’t really get a better handle on why they’re doing it. But also what might happen into the future? Well, it’s

Andrew Gardner
interesting, you say that about the complexity and how people don’t understand what they have, in some circumstances, or a difficulty in grasping at what we’ve got in the design process now, and will have delivered over the next month or six weeks is as the structure has been built, it’s going to does that build a plan or diagram with it, so that the client can actually see the diagram growing in front of their eyes. So as the advisor is setting up the trustee and the trust than the beneficiaries, etc, it’s going to have a diagram that appears in front of them. And they’ll be able to show on that flow map about how all the old how the money flows from one entity to the next, and rolls down to their to their pockets in the end. And that’s something we’ve been asked for. In fact, one of the key contributions we’ve had from our planners so far is they say things like, if only our platform could do this and saying, Well, I reckon we could do that. So we get together with a team, we and we have our design team get together and say, This is what the plan is, we’d love to have this is, then we go about building that part of the process. And we’ve built some, a lot of our stuff that we’ve built beyond the base has been our goal, landers wanting another capability. And we’re very eager to get that feedback from clients. What do you need? How do you want it to look? And what sort of outcomes do you want? And then we build almost to a custom order, as long as it’s got an application throughout the industry.

Peita Diamantidis
And it is an interesting point is it because a lot of those boxes and arrows you know sort of diagrams are often used to describe say a strategy and they are distinctly separate from the analysis or the or the flows. As in the, you know, over time, like we see those as two separate things when you’re right. In reality, they’re very linked. And I think by, you know, laying them next to each other like that, then it can also probably help the client, like, I know that looks a bit complex in the diagram. But can you see what that did you know, like, it’s helping them connect the benefit to the complexity. Because that is important. It’s, it’s, you know, they need that anchor, because there is some extra things that need to happen each year, and that they’re going to have to embark on. And so to help them anchor that understanding and that benefit, that’s a great idea to have that sort of side by side effectively. For them.

Andrew Gardner
Yeah, that’s right. And you can go into a section called income planning. And in the income planning section, you can actually map out the capability of not only having organic income growth, such as wage rises, that might be 3%, or whatever the number is, there’s accountability there to put in maybe a promotion, or maybe a change of job and go from say, $125,000, a year to $140,000, a year that you’re mapping out and planning for in 2025, for example, or it could be that when you turn 60, I want to go and do some charity work, I want to lead this high paid high pressure job and drop back to say 100 grand a year, 120 grand a year, then that can be added in so the client can get a feel of what the impact will have on their cash flow, their ability to fund their lifestyle, and that sort of thing as well to give them a much broader feel. And you and I were talking a little while ago about people having midlife crisis and go up and doing things that they haven’t done before with bigotry change or whatever, that being able to map out a scenario where this is incorporated into it, it gives them the end result of cheat, what if I did take a less low pressure job or something that I really want to do is send me volunteering and drop a half by Sorry, can I still afford to live to do that? When do I need to sell that investment property? What impact will that have about helping fund my cash flow and my lifestyle going forward, being good, being able to do those sorts of scenarios, or even just dropping back that I want to stop working five days a week to fall and then the three days a week, that’s all part of that planning process. So that I think is also helped a lot and helping people see that, yes, I can afford to do this, I can work toward that. I’ll put in a big effort over the next two years, and then back off in the last few years. So I think that has been beneficial advice to see the consequences of their, their dreams and their ideas about what they’d like to do into the future.

Peita Diamantidis
And I think I completely agree with you. And I do think there’s needs to be a bit more onus on us as advisors to prompt that thinking. And it’s because what happens is people get so conditioned for assuming they can’t do things. So assuming they can’t quit work and have a six month sabbatical, assuming they can’t like all these things, and they just because they can’t even get their head around trying to work out if that’s possible, they instantly discount it. They just don’t even let their brain latch on to it. And therefore when we say hey, is this something you’d love to do? They won’t mention it, because they’ve already completely discounted it in their head,

Andrew Gardner
we’ll have a moment and stop for six months for months and months, for one part that the do that, be able to map that out and see if they can afford to do that, or when they can afford to do that.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, so people, you know, and people really, we’ve got to help them. And sometimes I mean, there’s, in fact, I’m sort of right in doing a little bit of this for a client. And it’s, it’s just some, hey, what ifs, and I’ve come I came up with a couple of random ones the first time we sort of interacted on this and it they were just sort of off the top of my head and just taking nuances. You know, one of them was not ecstatic with their work, you know, and I feel like I need to take a moment to breathe and work out if this is what I really want to do in the long term. You know, that’s just those hints you get. And so I just threw in an example that had a six month sabbatical. And which was possible, they’re in great shape, they’ve really really knuckle down in terms of their finances and they were just done to completely change the way they look at what was possible for them. So I think there’s a bit on us to sort of do some of that interpretation and and show pick now some people you’re doing the reverse, you’re like, Ah, no, all those grand plans you’re not gonna be able to do but I do think the reverse is necessary as well I think sometimes I mean, our purpose is not to stop people living you know, we I don’t want for my clients tend to have this lump of money at the end and and have not done anything they want to do. So I think we’ve just got to balance that with inspiring them almost, you know, showing them what’s possible and demonstrating the numbers that we produce. You know, it’s it’s a valuable it’s a valuable insight.

Andrew Gardner
I think a big concern and on top of running out of money is not having the life that you would love to have had an ending up with all this money but too old to enjoy it. So I think that’s a really good Oh, boy.

Peita Diamantidis
So let’s talk about integration to see does retirement integrate with other tools, you know, for maybe feeding in from a serum or anything, anything like that?

Andrew Gardner
Yes, we, we’ve had tech partnerships with intelliflo. But he’s really making a mark in the Australian market now. And also, it’s been through a facing slide, both great companies, both had great CRMs. And so when we integrate with, then you go into that CRM, and then you’re able to access retirement from there, and then hit a button, and it puts the data straight into retirement from each data point. And then you do your analysis and the strategy development inside retirement, and then click another button it exports it back out into the CRM seamlessly, and like installation of retire map into intelliflo. For example, we’re talking four to five, maybe five and a half minutes. So quick, very efficient. And we’ve streamlined that process to make it really easy for people who have those two CRMs to be able to access retirement without much of a break in stride.

Peita Diamantidis
Perfect. And and I’m betting part of that was possible due to the API’s, they’ve both got sort of really accessible. API’s that make it easier for tools like yours to talk with them.

Andrew Gardner
Absolutely, the API’s are terrific. And we put a lot of work into optimizing that API capability to be able to draw as much information as what the CRM has gathered to be able to feed it straight into, into retirement, retirement does gather quite a bit information. So if there are any pieces here and there that may not have been imported retirement will tell you what those pieces are, so that you can plug those those few pieces in and just takes a few minutes, then to be able to complete that process. And then you’re ready to go and then start the strategy development, complete that export as straight back out. And you’ve got it all in the CRM again,

Peita Diamantidis
perfect, perfect. So is there any features or elements of the tool that you are surprised people haven’t used more that you think or this is a, this has got some value there, and people just haven’t quite got to that point. And you know, maybe it’s the masters or the you know, the ninja users that get there. But people haven’t quite taken advantage of that element of the of the tool,

Andrew Gardner
we’ve been really conscious about making retirement app, easy to operate and sequential. So we haven’t had that kind of problem. A lot of platforms, I’m sure we all know a bit like photo copiers where it’s got 3000 functionalities, use the green button, and that’s about it. But with that, because it does take a sequence. And each step takes you to the next next step. And they’ve got the building wizards, I would say that 95% of the program is used on a on an ongoing basis where if the client has a need for that capability, it’s done because the program actually moves moves you into that next step automatically. And you can move around to it separately, but the automation takes us all the way through the process. So I reckon about 90 to 95% of that is used routinely by the advisors who have it. And then with the tutorials and the support that we provide, they’re able to use that capability quite comfortably.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s an interesting thing, actually, with, it’s probably not used as much generally in tech, but particularly advice tech is that sort of user journey, you know, the just just taking people down the bouncy balls so that they know that they’re entering things in right and, and rather than sort of forcing them to become experienced users to know we’ll make sure you put that field in or make sure you put like that, particularly in analysis, what worries me about that is, that’s when the numbers go really wrong, you know, and you miss this one thing, and it’s, you know, it’s escalating it at, you know, 12% instead of six, so, you know, like, these sort of things are so easy to do. And whereas, you know, it’s great to have that path you just go on and and this is the next thing you’ve got to do. And here’s the next thing you got to do is a powerful way to just get some consistency, you know, and comfort for the user that they’ve entered everything they need to

Andrew Gardner
Yeah, I agree. And that’s why the the safe buttons, have two words on them, save and continue. And you can step back and go straight back to doing what you’re doing, if you want to have a look at it, but it does take you on the journey all the way through to to make it easy. Our design team has put a lot of thought into how do we make this as user friendly and as easy to use as possible. What wizards can we incorporate into it to provide the automation but also then give the adviser the plan or override that they can reverse whatever the automated process is, or have an input into it. Another feature that we have that also makes it a lot easier for advisors is what we call practice set parameters. Practice set parameters means that implementation you set the parameters around the assumptions and a range of other repetitive tasks where the program will automatically embed those numbers. And then the practice leadership sets the parameters around the advisor as to what they’re allowed to change what but not allowed to change, like leave them all open for full change, or they can restrict them. And suddenly, other groups want to have that control over advisors as as well as to what they’re allowed to use as assumptions or those input numbers as well. And then there’s a an ability within there, for the practice to set the parameters around what reports the client is able to view from their own portal, so they can open them all up, they can open one earlier or none at all depends on how the practice wants to set those parameters. And that leads to the next point, I suppose that for those who are using retire map as a fully standalone planning tool, they’re able to set up the initial basic parameters around the client, click on one tick box, and that will automatically send out an email with the link for the client to use their own unique username and their own password to be able to go in and enter their own data. And we find that is also very simple for the clients to use. Because again, save, save and continue. And it just walks the client through the process of the data entry. And it saves so much time where it’s not incorporated into the CRM, standalone, the client can enter their own data, and then you’ve got that benefit that eight you entered the data in Amelie using your data. And so they’ve got no confusion about what the correct information is because the clients entered with no circumstances and where the advisor enters the data in or whether it’s imported in from 365, or from intelliflo. The first report that’s produced is effect bind, which lays out all the data that’s been collected down the bottom, its export to PDF, and then the adviser can email that out to the client side, please check this side up and acknowledges been true and correct. And then you’ve got sign off on the client straightaway before you start doing your planning process.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic. And you mentioned then, sort of like the client portal or access for the client, is that just for, say, the data collection? Or do they then have the ability to see results through that as well?

Andrew Gardner
Yeah, they can see the results as well, that depends on the practice, setting up the parameters around what reports the clients allowed to see them, some of them, none of them, it’s up to the practices to what they can see. But it’s a fully secure environment, we use multi factor authentication, all those security points, and we’re constantly working on that security, that make sure that the clients information is protected, we don’t gather any more information than is required. And the client can feel quite secure about going in there. And having a look at those reports, or indeed entering their own data, or if the advisor has allowed them to adjust the data into the future.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s an interesting point, the sort of system wide assumption, do you know being able to set those across the board? I think a lot of advisors sort of apply that to something like you mentioned that to license set, you know, like it’s the licensee have said, Really, this is what we should do up returns all sorts of things. But what I’ve realized with some of the tools we use is it’s also an opportunity to set things that just make it more efficient, because of the way say you provide advice or the tools you use as in the offer or the structures or whatever you use, then to start getting smarter about some of the fields and just say, Look, this just needs always to be this can just make it easier as you go forward. You’re not just constantly entering that figure in so I’m big, I’m a big fan of those, you know, sort of tool wide assumptions being set, because it can just save you a lot of time in the future.

Andrew Gardner
Indeed, and in the reporting every assumption as listed as to what assumption has been used, whether it’s a 3% or 6%, or whatever that long term assumption is that’s been used as an index number. It’s all listed there other bullets so the clients can see this has been based on those parameters. Not not unknown parameters, if you like,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah. So then what’s on the plan going forward? You know, what are the things that you’ve got coming out, sort of in the near future? And is there any sort of Blue Sky Way out that you you’d love to take retirement up into

Andrew Gardner
yet, we were not looking for a mass distribution. And every planning practice body means because it’s not just the foundation, but we are looking to work very closely with those more sophisticated ladders. So the in terms of pipeline are two, we just counted them up before the interview a couple of days ago, actually and found that over the last two years, we’ve done 1500 Plus enhancements and upgrades and some of those nuances and civilize a significant. We’ve got a pipeline full of different enhancements and upgrades that we’re building. At the moment. We’ve got a group of financial planners who work in the property space and now For the next two weeks, we’ll be doing some more enhancements in the property investment space, where you can go into a client might have two or three investment properties, we’ll be doing more work and upgrading on the capabilities in the Super space and the Self Managed Super, to provide even greater capability and flexibility in that space as well. And we’ll do some more work in the structure, the cash flow, we’ve really put a lot of time into that. And what’s one of the the areas that I’m really pleased with that, through the different process of capturing the data in the in the data directory, and the fact on discovery phase, we’ve been able to gather a really, really strong whole of life scenario where we’re able to capture things know that like, their basic household expenditure, then we get to things like planned long term expenditure. And there’s a section in there where it’s got a wizard, and you want to plan to replace your mobile phone every 70 years. So you might put in there update mobile phone every three years from 2025 to 2050. And with an index rate of birth, 3% increase, and that takes you about 12 seconds to do that, click the button, and it fades all the way through the 30 years. Same for laptops. Same for replacing the cars, those sorts of things. So you got a true picture of what your actual household expenses are.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic. And is there any other so we’ve touched on the client portal, there’s there’s a report is there any other sort of elements of the tool that we’ve sort of missed covering off in the key features,

Andrew Gardner
we covered off the comparing of plans or scenarios that you’re able to create as many scenarios for a client at any given point in time. And then compare those added has the the charts that show the variation of what that means. So what is the tax position, which is the option where you paid the most tax, or the least tax, and we’ll show that which option has the best outcome for superannuation balance and continuity of superannuation. In Australia, that sort of thing. In terms of the reporting, we have multiple levels of reporting. So first of all, we provide a table with all of the detail on a sequential basis, which is what I used the many, many years and clients follow that really well. Then we added the graphs, tables and charts to it as well. So the clients can see it in the format that makes most sense to them, whether it’s from visual or whether it’s from pure numbers.

Peita Diamantidis
Exciting. All right, advice, explorers. Well, if you’d like to find out more about retire map, then the website link is in the episode show notes, along with Andrews LinkedIn details, I’m sure he’s happy for you to reach out. And he’ll point you to the right place to find out more and maybe get a bit of a demo and run through of the tool. Thank you so much for joining us here on the show. Andrew, it’s been great to hear about that’s the you know, a specialty tool in analysis, which I think is so powerful, to be able to, you know, a planner to understand what niche they’re playing in what they do the most of and have an analysis tool that matches that perfectly. So thank you so much for your time

Andrew Gardner
that you’ve heard, it’s been a real pleasure. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. And I look forward to the next time.

Peita Diamantidis
So are you a current user of Retiremap, this is a really interesting analysis tool to me with the fact that it is designed for a specific type of world client, but situation and therefore potentially a specific type of planner. And so I think this is one of those situations where it would really be great to put your hand up on the ensemble community platform. Because if you are using the tool because it suits your the structures you provide with clients or the structures they already have that you’re advising on, and you found that it works, please share that on the platform, maybe just drop a post in there and let people know, because it is the sort of thing that may not be for everybody, in fact, almost certainly won’t be but the people it suits, it’s probably going to suit deeply. So I’d really encourage you to share that so that I’ve and if you’re curious, feel free to post and post that question up there. And I’m sure you’ll get some responses from people currently using the tool. In terms of my thoughts. I think, you know, I use the word niche as we were chatting, and I’d want to sort of clarify what I mean by that. When we are selecting Tools. It’s not just about who we’re niching on right or who we the focus or the type of person that we focus on. It’s also the type of work we end up doing. You may have a specialty that’s about the structures you put in place. Now that’s naturally going to attract a certain type of clients. So that is a niche. But understanding the type of work you do for your clients and the structures you put in place can then mean then the tech tools you pick could be different and this is one of those cases where a tool that responds proactively to companies structures SMSFs other things, and makes it easier to demonstrate that and analyze it for the client clearly will suit somebody that’s doing a lot more of that. So it’s an interesting little shift in mindset to think about all the way your work could define the tool you pick. And not just who you do the work for. And so thinking that through, and adding that almost to your specifications list, when you’re looking for a tool, I think can make a big difference, because it will help you narrow them down a lot quicker. So if there’s something in particular you do a lot of, and you’re comparing a whole lot of tools, you know, to add that to the list means you get to one of the first questions you can ask, run me through how you would do this type of structure. And you know, if they’re 47 clicks later, and it looks like you’re going to have to basically butcher the thing to really get it to do what you need it to do, then clearly, a tool isn’t for you. And I think on analysis tools, look, there’s so many coming out, there’s so many things that are going to evolve over time for analysis tools, it really is going to come down to finding the right one that suits your practice the way you think, and the things that your clients need, there isn’t going to be a perfect tool for everybody, it’s just not going to work that way. The great thing about how smart tools are getting right now is they’re going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for us, you know, even from a scenario basis. I mean, in the bad old days, and I’m gonna show my age here. But in the bad old days, you recreated from scratch each scenario. And it wasn’t that easy to line them up next to each other, you sort of had to do it yourself by you know, printing out the graphs and holding them up next to each other, right. Like it was a, it was quite a different exercise. And it was super easy not to match them right not to actually have them line up. And so you slightly changed an assumption in the sexual second one that you didn’t want to, and then it blows out the analysis. So a lot of that stuff is getting much easier. And I think now we’re going to be able to pick tools from an analysis perspective that really match what we do, which is exciting. Now, as you know, only one skill we need to become bionic advisors, think Ironman think Tony Stark, right. That’s what we’re all going to become but financial advisors How exciting? Well, the school we need is avid curiosity. And to help you build that habit. Today’s curiosity corner app that I was hoping you take a look at is called machined, you can find it@machined.ai Now machine is actually an end to end content generation machine right. Now what you can do sort of in a matter of a few clicks, then it can generate hundreds of high quality articles written and ready to be polished and then published. Now what it does is based on a topic and initial topic selection, it creates articles in a cluster. And what I mean by that is it’ll come up with like a primary article on that topic. And then a cluster of five or 10 expansionary articles underneath it. Now the primary article, and those ones underneath it are based on its smarts around keyword search, and advanced analytics. And so it will carefully choose keywords that work well together and will automatically interlink the articles in each cluster, sort of using natural sounding but certainly keyword targeted links, right? So it’s his clever way of coming up with sort of a whole suite of articles that sort of blending together and link will. So the process is that sort of generates that list of titles, you’d have you decide which one do you think you want it to write? And after telling it? How’s this for, for a laugh? What tone and what perspective to use? So, do you want first person or third person? Do you want casual tone? Or do you want professional so you could have a casual tone in first person or a professional tone in second person, you know, all these things are possible, then it goes away and writes all of those articles. Now, I can’t imagine ever letting a tool do this in its entirety and that you just okay, it’s written them publish, right, but getting it to do the initial hardly yards, do that keyword searching and really understand how that can play out in the articles you’re writing. And then, you know, helping and then basically what I’d say is Peter rising it or whoever you are, right, adding your flavor and your character and personality, maybe sense of humor. I think that’s really powerful. It’s clearly using, you know, AI and other things in the tool. And so that’s part of the power of it. But this is just something that I think is interesting. I’ve only just started to sort of set it up so I haven’t gone a long way down this. Haven’t even really started playing with that, but I did want to flag it because it sounded interesting to me. And, you know, I mean, there’s always lots of ways you could be using this tool in terms of generating information and articles for your consumer, your targets, even your current clients. So Well, I hope you check it out. And I’d love to hear if you had some fun and had some great outcomes from it. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you will get your advice tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And like I always say at the end of each episode, hey, if you’re stuck in a rut in processes and tech, you’re not sure where to go for the next 12 to 18 months, you need a brainstorming session with the team. You want to work out the next projects or even how to how to sort of streamline the tech you’re using you feel like it’s all got to bid much then I would love to assist by facilitating a session for you in your practice. So please reach me out that reach me out, reach out to me. Tongue Twisters. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn forward slash Peita M D. That’s PEITAMD. I clearly need to go and have a low down. So I think I’ll leave you with that folks. Otherwise, I look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explores Stay curious