AdviceTech Podcast #54 – Oko Adviser – 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 Oko Adviser has been a financial advisor here, but was also an advisor back in the UK. So you know, all sorts of experience all over the planet has a degree in business law amongst others. So we all need to behave, everybody sit up straight, and founded an app to help consumers invest ethically. But is here today to talk about helping advisors do the same. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Tom Culver. Welcome.

Tom Culver
Well really got to dust off the cobwebs of the resume there to get back to the degree and everything. So thank you.

Peita Diamantidis
What some of us need to remember we had those things, right. It’s been a long time.

Tom Culver
They were very important. Once upon a time, remember?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, exactly be the first thing you might say not so much anymore. Not so much. So very keen to dive into our current visor. But first, just to get to know you a little better. You have been on the ensemble podcast before or slash x y advisor when it was that, but let’s get to know you through your use of technology. What’s your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Tom Culver
I do use emojis. I creep into even my business texts these days. But it’s mostly through Slack. So you know, we work with a lot of our teams and customers through slack. And that’s where the emoji comes in. So I think probably my most used emoji that I can share is probably the thank you emoji. Nice. People do great things for you. It’s always nice to say thanks.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice. I’ve got one actually we use a lot in Slack. We use Slack for the business, too. I think it’s, I can’t believe more businesses don’t have it actually an advice because it’s so great for keeping in touch with a team. But it’s we’ve got this actually moving emoji that’s like a head slap. So we use that a fair bit, I’ve got to say, just for situations or what we’re all dealing with, for sure. And now we’re all permanently attached to our smartphones. So if you had to wipe everything of the smartphone, and you just had to keep three apps and only three apps, which ones would you keep?

Tom Culver
Hmm, that’s a tough one. Luckily, I’m not a social media user. So I actually got rid of all my social media apps some time ago for kind of mental mental health issues and focus issues. For me, it’s really about, I guess, messaging to keep in touch with my wife, my family and friends. I can’t move without slack, as I’ve already said, and then Netflix for a bit of, you know, Netflix and chill, I think

Peita Diamantidis
nice. Well done, you know that that’s the first time that Netflix or any sort of streaming services come up. So I like it. I like it entertainment. And in fact, now you’ve prompted me, I don’t think I’ve got it on my phones. I’ve got a job to do. And we finished recording. All right, let’s dive into oppo advisors, shall we? So just to give everybody who hasn’t heard of the the tool at sense of basically where it sits in the advice, tech space, sort of what category do you guys fall under? Who do you normally get lined up against? Just give us a feel initially?

Tom Culver
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I current Advisors, a very, very specific tool for advisors to engage with the clients around sustainable investing, what the platform does, and kind of where we sit. The advice base, again, is very, very specific. So as we’ve kind of built the platform, and as we work with our partners and our advisors, we’re very cognizant of the fact that we’re not trying to become the next CRM, we’re not trying to get advisors to move all this stuff, which they’ve already moved from, you know, many times throughout their careers to yet another platform. And so our platform is designed to kind of complement everything else that kind of goes on in and advisors life, and all the other systems that they use. And so where that kind of makes us fit is that we’re essentially a risk profiling tool, but for sustainability. And that’s a great way to think about us because risk profiling is incredibly important part of the advice process, but it’s usually a supplementary part where you might use an external provider away from your CRM or your portfolio management tool. And it’s something that you might dip out of your normal process with with a client to use the platform, use the information and then come back into your advice process. And so Okay, advisors very, very similar to that. If a client wants to include sustainability in their decision making in their advice, at some point through the advice process, typically after the risk profile, the advisor would jump out and use our platform to kind of gather information, understand the client’s needs, do some research and discovery and analytics and our platform and then feed back into the usual advice process.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, and so so the way Then, with this is interesting. So the way you’re seeing it is almost like a second layer of profiling. So you’ve done your first layer. Do you then suggest that there’s like more generic question at that first level that sort of almost digging into their interest into such a thing before you, they would then introduce the fact Okay, let’s get to know you a bit better about your values, is that how you’d generally get people or suggest advisors approaching?

Tom Culver
That’s exactly right. I mean, typically, you know, I think we’ll, we’ll probably talk about this a little bit later. And typically, the types of advisors that we work with, and we deal with, this isn’t an area of absolute expertise to them. And it’s, and it’s not also an area that is relevant to all their clients, is about just giving an advisor the opportunity to ask a very simple one or two questions and the normal factfinding process, you know, something along the lines of, do you want to include sustainability values, or have a values conversation around environmental and social issues when we get to your investment advice? And if the client says yes, then it’s fantastic. It’s an acknowledgement from the advisor and go look fantastic. We’ll come back to that. But right now, let’s continue the process, let’s really get to understand you know, you, and then we’ll dig into that a little bit later. And when they do, then they use our platform for that.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice, nice. Okay. And so before we dive into some of that detail, you guys recently had a rebrand, right? So people might have heard heard of the tool under another name, so just run us through. I am curious, I want people to understand what it is. So they’re like, oh, that’s who you guys are. But also, why? What triggered the rebrand?

Tom Culver
Great question. So we used to be ethic advisor, and we did recently rebrand to a new company name called Oko platforms. And Oko advisor is one of the tools within our platform that directly replaces the ethic advisor tool. The name itself means it’s a play on the German word for eco, we’ve just removed the two dots that sit over the first row. And it makes eco transparency. And it’s it’s a nod towards the fact that that is what we do with our customers, we’re helping engage on this conversation around sustainability and transparency. But we wanted to actually step away from the woods, ethics and ethical. And there’s there’s lots of reasons for that, but of right, rightly or wrongly, at the moment, sustainability, ESG ethics. They’re very politicized these days, particularly within the investment world. And that’s not actually our mission, our mission is not to force any client or any advisor to feel that they have to make a particular set of decisions. What our platform is there to do is to help advisors guide their clients to make decisions that are relevant to them. And so by stepping away from that word, ethics, it really steps more towards where we are as a platform, which is a technology platform that helps guide towards transparency and alignment to a client’s needs. And it’s an

Peita Diamantidis
interesting challenge, isn’t it then, and look, one we, as a practice have been facing in that, you know, I’m the person that’s, you know, obsessed by food waste in our house. So we’ve got all sorts of techniques to try and reduce that we do every second, you know, there’s some things we do, but I wouldn’t have ever put myself in the sustainability warrior space for investing, right, I wasn’t one of those early adopters like there, there are out there. And to date, and I’m hoping we draw this out in what we cover here. To date, it has been a bit like, you’ve got to jump into the deep blue sea to do this, it didn’t feel like it was something you could gradually introduce into your practice for yourself, let alone your clients. And so I think it’s been needed, you know, something that lets you take your own journey, as you go along with introducing it to your clients. So is it do you actually recommend that advisors when they first take it up, it’s like, put yourself through this, assess your own values in terms of sustainability? So you’ve got a position to come from?

Tom Culver
We absolutely those are the kind of first part of the demo process when when we onboard the advisor is actually we do that we use the advisor as the dummy client in inverted commas to kind of get them comfortable, get them to kind of understand how the platform works, but use them as the kind of decision making process and get them to ask the questions that they think that they would ask as a client, because that allows them to really get into to how the platform works, and to see where the value works. It’s a really interesting point you just made about that kind of how you live your life as well. That’s actually the first place that our platform starts. So we don’t really kind of talk too much about typical screening criteria. And you know, what you’d normally hear in the kind of sustainable or ESG world. The very, very first piece of the conversation which our platform kind of helps advisors engage clients with is actually understanding from a client, how they live their lives, rather their habits and their lifestyle factors when it specifically relates to sustainability because you’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head. For most consumers out there. They’re not sitting there thinking well, well, what’s a what’s a good ESG screen for me? So we’re thinking, geez, I you know what? Plastic really pisses me off? Right? It’s really key recycle. But because that is just something that drives me effing mad. And so that’s what our platform tries to capture is these, these kind of lifestyle pieces around who a client is and what they do and how they live their daily lives before then kind of getting into the kind of more classical piece around kind of screening and sustainability. And the reason we do that is because it’s the connection, is the really important connection, which advisors are so good having a conversation on and unpacking. And we really want to understand about clients and then take them through that journey.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and it’s, look, it’s an interesting point, too. I’ve I’ve had lots of conversations, you know, you’re out chatting, and, and things like ESG. I mean, when you’re in the industry, it comes up because it’s, you know, it’s the New Black, isn’t it, it’s the New World covering, but also with the public and their awareness of not so much with the with investing, but just generally. And, for example, you know, what I might have encountered women who had no have no clue that in fact, there could be almost a gender lens or a gender parity lens, they could apply the way that they invest, like, it’s just not, and when they hear ESG, or ethical or suspect that’s not necessarily the thing that pops to mind, because it but it is a value for them, it’s like, they might be somebody that fiercely believes we need to get better at that in business and in boards, but they don’t, like they’ve never made that connection, that that belief can be something that you could then apply, you know, and so there’s so many layers of this, we’ve got this acronym, you know, this ESG thing, and it’s, it’s covering 427 values, it’s like it’s ludicrously wide, what you can have is something that you see is really important.

Tom Culver
And that that is absolutely spot on. And that is that is ultimately, what the problem is that we’re trying to solve with, with between both advisor and client is to kind of become this common language for advisors and intermediaries to be able to have this conversation with the client, but also to help reshape what the conversation is, from a client’s perspective, it’s, as we say, you know, it’s not about the kind of the ESG criteria necessarily, it’s about what is the sustainability value that the client has, that’s important to them, that’s going to influence the outcome. And that can be, you know, anything and everything from, you know, wanting to buy an Eevee, because they really believe in the future around emissions, or as you say, it’s around gender equality, and promoting those pieces through diversity in business or on board, or even just making sure that they’re backing companies that have really great working mother policies or return to work policies around parenthood, for example. And the app is already kind of key driving motivators that kind of grind the gears or drive emotion in, in kind of human beings. And trying to get that to then factor in into into what that looks like through kind of investment. And advice is, is really the next challenge that advisors are there to facilitate. So it’s a, it’s a massive, massive piece. But you know, what you’re talking about exactly what we’re talking about, which is this is this is about sustainability values and values is, is the really critical key word here. We could solve out sustainability for almost anything, but really what we’re trying to get to is the values led decisions that clients want to make.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and, and, you know, every time I’ve seen somebody engage this way, as as a client, it just, it connects them so deeply to whatever that you’ve done that for, whether it’s this super on investment, or whatever it is, it creates these, you know, tendrils of link to that investment, that’s, that’s far deeper, and means they’re far more interested and engaged, and also are going to, it’s not the sort of money they’re going to forget about, you know, whereas I mean, super can often fall into that wears off. Yeah, that’s for later, right. Whereas if there’s a purpose for that money, like they can see how it reflects them, then that’s the last thing that’s going to happen, it’s not going to be about for later, it’s about what it can do now, you know, it’s about what the impact of that money can have. And that’s an exciting prospect, I think, for some of the things we do, which are a bit long term. You know,

Tom Culver
you’re absolutely right. I mean, I haven’t been an advisor on the front line for a few years now. But you know, I have very clear memories of clients eyes glazing over as I talk through asset allocation and the benefits of diversification. And, you know, the conviction that we have, in particular investments within a portfolio that we want to highlight. You know, for the majority of clients, that’s not overly important. There’s some interest there because it’s their money, but it’s not going to generate a really deep and meaningful conversation and build a relationship. And values is and that’s it, you know, if you can give, you can hold a conversation around something that’s important to a client, but most importantly, give a client agency over some of the decisions or the outcomes, which is what kind of sustainability lead values investing does. It encourage incredibly powerful, it builds incredibly deep and powerful relationships with clients in a way that is, can otherwise be very, very hard to do.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I was just actually, I just watched a McCrindle generation report, they just released their latest report on the generations. And what’s interesting is, we’ve made assumptions about some of the oldest, well, I’ll put my, my generation in this Gen X, some of the older generations and what influences them. And people are forgetting that their kids are a direct influence on their decisions. And so the messaging that these, you know, the older generations are getting from their children about these issues is as strong as external messaging. So we can think that maybe say Gen X isn’t as interested as like, well, their kids surely are, you know, and so if they hearing that from the children, and they’ve participating in the education kids now get on these sort of issues, then absolutely, they’re going to start to be more and more informed, and want to be more and more informed. So I think we probably need to take away our sort of assumptions about who wants to do this type of sort of lens, you know, across their portfolio, and like you say, ask the question, we’ve just got to ask, is this something you’d like to do? And to that point, so the first step, hey, to help them work out their values? So it’s sort of what’s in what’s out? You know, what are the things that you deeply care about? Then? I’m assuming that the next phase is then well, how does that look against what you’ve currently got? Is that what that what the tool does next is sort of assess their current investments against those, those values.

Tom Culver
Yeah, that’s exactly right. So I mean, we’ve talked a lot about the fact that we’re, you know, we’re talking about sustainability and sustainability values and advice. But ultimately, you know, who we are as a businesses, we’re technology business, more data platform. And so everything that we kind of do in the backend, you know, our secret sauce as a company is how our profiling system works. And then how that profiling directly then connects into kind of direct system analytics. And the first step of that is exactly what we’ve just talked about. So after a profile is done, is then essentially a gap analysis. So from where a client thinks they want to be based on these kind of things that are really a motor to them, when they sit based on where they are invested today, or where an advisor might be recommending that they be invested today. And, you know, those recommendations are going to be made on those more classical methods, right, you know, it’s it’s the off the menu that the existing Manage Portfolios based on a risk profile and a set of kind of longer term goals. But then how does that align from a values perspective, and for us, that means a couple of things for advisors. So again, you know, as a platform provider, it’s not our job to pass judgment on what that means for either client or advisor, we’re very, very careful not to do that we want to do is provide transparency and kind of give over the information to create the state of play. And so that then facilitates a conversation between client and advisor is going well, you know, maybe there is, there’s some great exposure to areas that you really want to have impacted. And so you know, let’s talk about renewables and gender diversity, for example. But there’s also some areas which you wanted to avoid having exposure to, and that could be anything from, you know, what, you know, we have categories that include Trump, or gaming or fossil fuels, to gambling to whatever it may be that really kind of drives our clients, clients agenda, social media being another one. Yeah. And once we understand that, it’s actually talking about what is the exposure there based on the entire portfolio base, looking down into all the funds that maybe within the portfolio, and then therefore all the holdings within those funds? What is the true exposure? And that’s a really, really powerful conversation point between client and advisor of going well, look, you said you didn’t want having exposure to social media companies, for example, because you don’t like the impact that that’s having on your children. As an example. As we look through your portfolio, there is some exposure, but for example, it’s 1%, or 1% of the entire portfolio. How do you feel about that client and the Here are the options and what we can do from here. And again, it gives that agency back to the client, and then it facilitates the next steps for the advisor to use our platform, which is researching alternatives, potentially researching to build satellite positions, which might offset something or simply acknowledging between client and advisor that there this situation exists, but actually the clients okay with that, and we’re going to now just going to complete that as part of our advice process. But really importantly, for advisors, we’re going to record that we’re gonna have the audit trail and the compliance trail to show how we’ve got there to show how we’ve got to this outcome. And so it really is kind of, it’s facilitating all of those pieces around the advice process for the advisor and client.

Peita Diamantidis
And look, it’s an interesting thing that I think when those of us who aren’t deeply into this just yet, sort of look at this. I think we probably figure you’ve got to, like, look, we’ve got to exclude everything. The client says, Hey, this is what I don’t want anymore. It’s like, Oh God, I’m gonna have to build this portfolio. That’s like excluding all those things. And that’s not just going to be difficult, but also potentially not possible in some circumstances, depending on where their money is, and all those sort of things. Whereas I think, and you mentioned the word offset, and I think it’s a great way to look at this is, you know, this is a, this is a journey and client you hear but okay, we could put like you say, satellite, something that will shift that dial, let’s just shift the dial for you and make some changes that start to better represent your values over time as more opportunities come up to do that, because it is going to change over time, isn’t it? I mean, if, if you’ve done this, right, you know, a few years ago, they’d be like, Well, there’s one fund we could think about. It wouldn’t be right. I mean, what options would you read? So I think it to acknowledge that with the corner. So here’s some alternatives. But this is a journey. So we can we can incrementally adjust this over time, I think recognizes what’s important without having an extreme response that to be quite some clients wouldn’t want to pay for that extreme response, you know, sort of bottom up build, is that something you guys see in the way that advisors engage with the tool?

Tom Culver
Yeah, absolutely. And that, that that’s kind of how we build a platform, really, why we build the platform is that again, you know, coming back to this, the central premise and kind of who we are as a business, it’s, it’s no judgment. And that is even reflected in our profiling. So and it’s a journey that we’ve been on as well as a business. So the very first version of our kind of profiling or factfinding tool, categorize things as being good or bad, we predefined things as being good or bad, because we thought that that would help. But actually, what it did was it put a client in a position where they went, Oh, my God, I’m being told all these things are bad. I’ve got to agree with this. And I’ve got to say that they’re also bad whether I believe that we’ll know whether I’m thinking about it or not, the system is saying that bad, therefore, they’re bad. And that did lead to some of those outcomes you just mentioned, which was everything was in excluded, and the advisor was going, Oh, my God, what on earth am I going to do for this client. And so we really, really learned from that we’ve taken a step back from that massively. And so we’ve got this, this client driven place where our profile doesn’t predefined anything, so the client gets to select. And now the outcome of that is the what we find now for clients is they are just choosing or selecting their real motivators. So rather than selecting 100, things, which are terrible, they’re going well, these are the three things that I really, really care about from an impact perspective. And these are the three things that I really, really care about, in terms of an area that I want to avoid, and I want zero exposure to and that has then lead to these fantastic outcomes for both client and advisor of going well, we’ve got a much more reasonable starting point to have a conversation about, we can start to understand where these drivers are and how serious the client is about exposure when we’re talking about trade off offsetting, for example, or replacing, and it enables the adviser to kind of facilitate all of that. The second thing that our platform does really, really well, and it’s really powerful, particularly in today’s world, is we don’t again, we don’t take position on pretty much anything. And that means that we don’t actually promote anything, we don’t promote ESG branded platform solutions over anything else. Because that’s not always the best alignment for the client. And in today’s world around greenwashing. You know, I’m not going to talk about any names, but there’s, there’s obviously lots of stuff going on in the press at the moment have funds and super funds and managers being tagged for saying things that aren’t necessarily truly represented in their portfolios or their funds solutions, our format, she has a look through into all of that as well. So we don’t care what the fund manager says. We don’t care if it’s botched ESG or not, we’re actually looking for alignment to a client’s that that balance between high high investment conviction and balance with clients values.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and it’s an interesting challenge, isn’t it? I mean, I had a discussion with somebody and I think their take is is a bit early stage where they were assessing businesses on this front, and I encouraged them to say I think we need to assess fund managers on these things too. So not just where they put the money, but how they behave as a corporate citizen. Because I think for clients or the consumer who is passionate about a particular value, if they said yes, Peter, I’m really passionate about X, whatever that is gender diversity. And that fund measures up, you know, we run it through a go on and it measures up but the actual fund manager business themselves don’t. Well, that’s not great, you know, like that’s the mismatch. And so I think, you know, I’m hoping there’s going to be layers of this over time where we can get better, sort of transparency on all of this so that the the best Businesses that are responsible for this money are as accountable as the actual investments are

Tom Culver
100 100%. And I think that that’s where we want to get to. And I think a first phase on that is, this is education piece around the processes that fund managers go through in which to construct their portfolios, particularly when they’re including ESG. And, you know, there’s, there’s various methods to do it. But, you know, the concept of how material and exposure is, is is a challenging one. So from a client’s perspective, if they say, you know, just pick another example, I want zero exposure to tobacco, a fund manager is able to list a tobacco free funds, because they constitute being tobacco free is not having direct exposure to tobacco, and maybe what less than 1% of the supply chain, as you look through the entire list of holdings might have some exposure to tobacco. Right. Now, that’s fantastic. I mean, that’s that’s a good outcome. That’s right, serious work from fund manager. But that’s not what the client wants it. That is not their expectation, their expectation is zero. Yeah. And so the starting point, and again, something that our platform does is it provides that transparency and goes well, look, there is some exposure, but this is exactly what the exposure is, this is where it is in which holding, and this is how large it is. And usually, that doesn’t lead to a change for a client, what it leads to a firmer client is, is knowledge and understanding and feel a sense of transparency and fairness and going, I now understand everything I’m looking at, because if I found out about this, in six months time, after I’ve just paid the fee to my advisor, and I’ve been invested for six months, I would have been pretty angry. But now I know, and I’m happy. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
Look, and you know, awareness is really important. And also, and balance. I mean, you know, lots of us might expend a whole lot of time. And and I mean, in Australia, we’ve all got, you know, the multiple bins at home and all that sort of thing for recycling. But we might head out to something I don’t know, like the Easter Show, or whatever. And we’ll buy a kind of drink. And it’ll end up maybe going into a generic being, like very few people would carry that empty can home, and then recycle it like we’ve all got layers of this. Right. So it’s, it’s about informing ourselves as to how far do you want to go? And so as long as they’ve got that information, then they can make that choice. You know, that’s

Tom Culver
absolutely no judgment, it is about choices for each individual. Yeah, absolutely.

Peita Diamantidis
So let’s talk about the practices that take this on, talk to me about, you know, are there any characteristics or approaches that you’ve seen work well, for practice versus those that have struggled? Like, is there anything they could have done better beforehand, or, or tools are things they’ve set up that made it easier to sort of fold something like this into the way they engage with clients?

Tom Culver
Yeah, it’s an interesting one, I mean, on the whole, we kind of have probably three, three different three varying experiences with advisors who kind of come into the platform all the way to the on the first hand, we get advisors who are extremely excited about having the capability, because they are being asked about it by clients directly. So clients are coming to them saying that I want to talk about sustainability. It’s something that’s deeply important to me or my family, you know, as we look at the, you know, the entire wealth across the generations, and advisor of science about our solution that respect, because it’s a very quick and simple way for them to upskill for them to provide an outcome to a client. And it’s also very, very engaging with the client. It’s a technology based tool, which clients like to use, it looks, it looks pretty, if it works really well, and clients, clients really enjoy it. So there’s, there’s a lot of value there. In the middle tier, we get advisors who are going, I think this is something that I should be involved in. I’m increasingly hearing about it, but I know very, very little about it, and I unsure as to whether any of my clients want it. Now, those advisors we can work with on exploring the different ways that they might want to position things, the types of clients they might want to position, the platform with, and certain ways of introducing both, you know, that very first outreach, and that very first time of introducing the concept, so then very much kind of hand holding as they walk through the first couple of times with clients to get them comfortable, both client and advisor. And so that that works really well. And then we also get advisors who just don’t believe it’s don’t believe it’s a thing. They feel that they genuinely don’t have any clients who would be interested in talking about sustainability. And sometimes that is absolutely correct. The challenge we often give to those advisors is have you asked the question and they say, Well, no, but no client has told me that they wanted and then I you know, we go along the lines of well, which client has ever told you they want insurance? And it’s that same thing you know, unless you ask a client and understand where this sits with them, you’re never going to get a response from a client. And you’re never going to get in trouble for asking a question. If the client turns around says, No, I don’t want to talk about sustainability, I think it’s a load of rubbish, you’ve learned something about that client. And if you share the same opinion, as an advisor, you will build a deeper bond. There is no negative outcome there. And that that’s the journey that we go through with those advisors. And typically how that then kind of start to materialize in those kind of practices. The more senior advisor, who probably has clients who may not be interested in this area, will actually then start talking to the more junior advisors in the business who were dealing with the younger clientele, maybe the next generation in the family, and starting to see the concepts at that kind of lower level. And really kind of, I guess, setting up for the future of when those those clients become the primary client for the practice.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah. And it look, it’s an interesting positioning. And asking is so important, we’ve sort of gone through this journey with, we’re in the midst of finalizing a project for a client portal or Secure Client Portal. And, and I get asked about this, you know, at events and on stage and all but you know, there’s a whole, there’s loads of people who won’t do it into the older clients, it’s no way they they’ll do it. And we make these sweeping assumptions. And when we’ve called out to our clients, for beta testers, previously, we got, you know, somebody in their 80s, we got a whole lot in their 70s, we got it. Now, the reason that was the case is we position this, sometime previously, we were doing a whole lot of spam and cyber security sessions in our webinars for clients, we were constantly talking about the risks. And so it pre positioned them for why this was a good idea. So I think, you know, we’ve got to give people context, and we’ve got to give them an opportunity to settle with something. And then when you introduce it, just ask, and I think the numbers will be much higher than any of us expect. You know, I think there’d be far more people that at the very least that would be curious. Oh, well, I’ll do that questionnaire, I’d be interested to see what can I make out of that? You know.

Tom Culver
And I think that’s, that’s exactly, you know, the data tells us that there are going to be far more people interested than we might pre pre suppose, you know, depending on what you’re looking at, you know, there’s research that comes out of RIA, which is usually fantastic, though, puts a number around 90% of the advice population want to talk about sustainability. Other data points show that, for example, you know, about 60 to 65% of clients feel that they’re underserved in their existing advice relationship, and they put lack of sustainable engagement on sustainability as a top reason for that. And then there’s other research to show that probably 20% of clients are actually actively looking for sustainability solutions, but they go outside of their advice relationship and do it through the internet, because they don’t feel like they’re being served in in this space. So the number or as an average probably sits around the kind of 20 to 25% of every client base would want to talk about this. And so you know, for an advisor, that’s going to sit somewhere between kind of, you know, eight and 30 clients, depending on the size of the client base. So it’s meaningful. And obviously, in some cases, it’s going to be from Ohio, we’ve got some advisors who have kind of 50 or 60 of their clients using our platform. And interesting to your point on demographics, we we have no overriding demographics and in our client data, so we’re almost exactly even between male and female clients, which I think is also another assumption people make that this is maybe a female issue, rather than kind of a holistic issue. You know, I think our data shows that that is completely incorrect. We’re also we have no overweighting in any of the regions. So we have almost even exposure across the country, whether that be coastal areas, rural areas, mining areas, northern southern hot, cold, as being as clients wanting to engage in this space. And then the last thing is age. So it’s an interesting one, actually, and I think this is probably more typical to advice, the necessary sustainability. But the what we see from our clients is it’s kind of like a barbell effect. So a lot of older clients want to talk about this. And a lot of younger clients want to talk about this, the clients in the middle who are head down, trying to pay off their debt, trying to get their kids through school have the bare minimum amount of time to do anything in their lives. They’re the ones who are less less driven by this. But we do see that kind of across the age spectrum, but kind of more weight to that those kind of older and younger ends, which which I think people misunderstand people think well, that was a point in their 70s then I’m gonna want to talk about this I think what we find is absolutely a client in their 70s wants to talk about this because they have time and knowledge, access to information and technology, and they’ve probably been driven by their kids to have this conversation.

Peita Diamantidis
And and very aware of leaving a legacy for their grandkids. Like they become very aware of that. It’s, it’s all about what’s going to be left behind. And this is another way that they can have an impact on that. And I think, you know, right now is I think the first time that many people will have been viscerally aware of what’s going to happen in the future. I think it’s becoming this real thing, whereas I think it was on there saying that, but really do I believe it? Like, even if somebody was supportive, I think in the back of their mind might have been, but I mean, it can’t be that bad can you know, whereas I think everybody’s becoming really aware of the fact that whole islands will disappear, you know, in short, or like, there’s these really, sort of visceral realization, I think, for grandparents is like, oh, wait a minute, you know, I need to start making decisions, because my grandkids are going to be dealing with this.

Tom Culver
Absolutely. And we would definitely see that. And I think, you know, data from the US just came out in the last 10 days or so. So this isn’t an Australian relevant necessarily, but, you know, related to very similar kind of country and style, is that across the generations, but admittedly, mostly led by kind of millennial down to Gen Z, for the first time ever, there is active data to show that these clients are willing to sacrifice a return to get a more sustainable outcome. And again, that I mean, that’s a huge shift, because that’s always been an assumption in the past that nobody would ever want to do that in their right mind. But actually, what we’re seeing is that people who are heavily engaged in this space are less conscious of return to ensure that they’ve got values. Now, of course, they still want to get an equal return, and most of the time, they will give an equal or better return. Yeah, it’s not actually the question here. But I think the question here is the motivator. And how seriously are people actually taking this excitement? That’s the kind of data that points to the fact that people are taking this very, very seriously and taking a very, very long term view on this. Because it is a legacy issue as much as anything else.

Peita Diamantidis
And look, it’s an inch, I think, it’s also requires us to sort of face the constructs that we’ve just gone along with, then and not and I didn’t say that in a judgmental way at all. I just, I mean, I fall firmly in its I’ve got an actuarial degree, have worked in corporate finance, and m&a. I’ve worked on the trading floor, right. So I’ve been a party of this sort of environment for a long time. And, and, you know, there’s things you don’t question and growth is one of them, you know, so we talk about all but you’re trying to doesn’t have enough growth. Now, if you’re worried about the planet, then not having growth might sound okay. Do you mean like, it’s like, well, wait a minute, population growth is probably underpinning almost all of this stuff, like rapid population growth has been this sort of, you know, impact and virus on the planet. So I think there’s, there’s some, you know, evolution of our own understanding of where all that’s coming from that requires us to sort of almost second guess, or rethink some of these foundation things that we all just sort of operate within. And that’s where, like you say, people start going, Well, hold on, maybe I do need to accept something that’s not quite as aggressive. In that sense. Maybe we returned because the other bits important to me, you know, and yeah, and so I think, you know, having a tool that helps them assess that is really, really, really valuable. Let’s talk about the the team members scene and advice practice. So clearly an advisor is going to be you know, that they follow this into the practice and advisor is engaging with the tool. Are there other resources in the team that you then find are in and out of the tool paraplanners Presumably, might utilize the tool as well, who else gets involved in the process?

Tom Culver
Yeah, so again, it really depends on on who and how we’re engaging. So as an example, we’ve worked with some fantastic groups. So we have got a partnership with Count financial, which allows all of their advisors to access our platform, we’ve just launched a very similar partnership with Spark financial, which again, allows all of their advisors to access our platform. And they’re approaching it for for slightly different reasons. But ultimately, underpinning it is their desire to ensure they’ve got the best solutions for their clients and the current technology solutions for their clients, while also driving towards the kind of their own kind of impacts and business agendas protect, particularly in Sparks case. You know, they’ve just moved to a profit for purpose model and sustainability and having that pillar around ethics and sustainability is incredibly important for them. So were their provider to help their advisors do that. The reason why I bring that up is because that’s one of the ways in which we engage, which kind of reflects on who kind of has access to the platform. So in those kind of group or dealer group arrangements, it’s often actually at a research level and a product level. So I get researchers coming in using our platform using it to help on some of the model portfolios or some of the solutions, but also ensuring that they are capable of supporting their advisors, should the advisors have any questions that then scales all the way down through to advisor and advisor using it directly with their clients, that then power planners and other kind of research and support staff accessing the platform as well. So because it’s the entire advice process, it really does stream from discovery and conversation to analytics and research to actually producing an SLA. And so you’re pretty much gonna get everyone across the business involved in it.

Peita Diamantidis
And it would be a wonderful exercise, actually, I could see, I mean, we’re, you know, for our business, we’re always looking things to, you know, engage with the team on their own personal development on on something that’s either about their well being or, or something that sort of extends them as an individual and, and so to do this assessment for the team, as individuals could be fantastic, and what a great conversation prompter where they can then talk about what the result was for them and, and why and what their history is, I think that’s a, that’s a really, really interesting and deep connection, you could start to be building between your team members, you know, that something a bit more meaningful than, gee, I’ve bought stocks once, you know, I mean, there’s the sort of Kevin that exists between, you know, advisors and support. And I think this could be one of those things that really crosses bridges that gap, because it’s just, it’s your personal experience, right. It’s just where you come from.

Tom Culver
Absolutely. And, you know, in general, but a bit of a sweeping statement, but you know, the Power Plan is in the support teams within a practice of the younger generation. And they’re the ones who really get motivated by by this, in particular, and seeing it be part of the processing clients being gauged by it and seeing the changes that then get made throughout the kind of the processes and the way that the business engages with clients is really, really powerful. You know, we’ve had that feedback directly from a lot of those younger people with involved in the business of, you know, how excited they are that, you know, what they believe, personally, is now being kind of reflected in the practice and how clients are being engaged.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. So let’s talk about that client engagement piece. So what what I liked, you know, I took a look, and, you know, the values assessment process, this is really visual, you know, it’s using language that clients are going to understand, you know, that’s me, or that’s not me, you know, I love this sort of stuff, when we’re just, we write things as if a human being would say them, you know, Heavens to Murgatroyd. It’s not that common in financial services, right. But I’m curious, is there any assistance, you also give to practices on that early engagement piece or introducing it to their client base marketing, you know, or any sort of content that can sort of help with introducing this into the practice and its clients?

Tom Culver
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we do have a full resource library for advisors. And that that stems from everything, too, we have templated emails, which they can’t, which advisors can use to kind of go around introduce this to clients, we have templated scripts. So they can think about how they might want to engage in and kind of verbally introduce this with clients. We have information that details what everything on our platform essentially mean. So you know, when we say, you know, a category around a working mother friendly, for example, what does that actually mean? So in the platform, you you can, you can tap a little button, and it will explain it all. And when we explain it, again, we take this kind of very agnostic approach. And so we always try and include an argument for this and an argument against it. So the client can make their decision. But an advisor needs to know what it is. And so we provide all these resources so that they’re prepared and ready to go, should they get any questions? The most important thing that we do actually, with advisors is, is we as part of our engagement, every advisor gets a free onboarding session. And then we also do a walkthrough with them with their first client. So they’re not just left to kind of go and do it themselves. We make sure that we’re there with them to get them comfortable, of course, you know, we provide excellent support to make sure if there are any questions, there’s anything coming through from clients, that they can reach out to us. And in some instances, we took we spoken to clients directly on behalf of advisors, you know, if there’s just a gap there, and the knowledge or gap there and the level of comfort, and you know, so we are a business, we’re not just a technology business, we’re really there to kind of help the adviser and help take their clients on that journey.

Peita Diamantidis
Perfect. And in terms of then, you know, these sort of describe this as as a standalone sort of tool that’s part of the risk profiling process. does it integrate at all yet? Is there any plans for it to integrate with other tools that advisors might be using?

Tom Culver
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we are fully integrated with x plan at the moment. The most obvious in the market and so essentially means is we can share data between platforms which you know, for an advisor Some things that’s very easy, they can pull in client data, they can pull in Portfolio data and they can pull in their APL data. And again, that’s a really, really important point to touch on is that advisors can work within their universe and their environment, not to just out. So we provide research on hundreds of 1000s of different investments. But we actually allow the advisor to boil it down to kind of what what this and what has been agreed, which is a very useful thing. We’re also in the process of integrating with hub 24. So that will be up relatively soon. And then we have a whole program of kind of other integrations coming down the track. We don’t need to be integrated, the way we build a platform is a client can use it without any integration. We started with x prime being the major player, but yes, grad gradually kind of doing the other things as we go.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, fair enough. And I guess there’s a question actually, this just occurred to me. So this what we’ve been talking about is heavily into the the first time the client does this sort of process. So they’ve been introduced to the concept and they’re engaging. Are there ways in which this can be part of a review process and other advisors doing that, where they’re sort of re reassessing or rechecking? You know, portfolios against those values, even getting the client to, to check that those values are still current for them? Is that how you’d propose that they engage with the tool?

Tom Culver
Absolutely, I’m in it, once it’s been done once we expect it to be done between client and advisor and clients, more importantly, expect it to be done between client and advisor on pretty much every engagement. So anytime we’re doing an annual review, or whether it be a quarterly review, this conversation has been had just to reassess that the alignment is the same. But it’s also you know, customers values do change as they gain knowledge and understanding in a particular area. And so they need the opportunity to be able to bring this to the floor. Yeah, one thing that we are working on, which a few advisors have asked us for is actually an alert system. So we’re in the process of building this now. So if in between a review something changes, say in an investment portfolio that now may have previously aligned, but now misaligned, or vice versa, will now should be able to alert the adviser to what that changes. And so they can communicate directly with their client. Okay, that’s something that will be out before the end of this year, as a kind of a big drive forward to kind of keep that ongoing awareness and engagement between client and advisor.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic. So talking about the advisors, you’ve already got in there, and you’ve got clearly quite a number of them already using the tool, then is there anything you’ve seen them? Use that you’ve just surprised you how they’ve implemented it, or that that worked really well? Or conversely, anything in there? That’s a bit quiet, people sort of haven’t discovered and you think it’s really got some gold that they should be taking advantage of?

Tom Culver
Yeah, great, great question. I mean, the thing that advisors love is that is the profiling piece. I mean, as you said, it’s highly engaging, simple to use, it’s there for their clients, and it drives a huge amount of client value. In that engagement, that’s definitely the number one piece, the area that advisors also love is our comparison tool. So we’ve built this system, which works in very similar way to say an insurance comparison tool. So you can align things up side by side, so you can see what everything looks like. But the way that our platform works, and another kind of fundamental underpinning of our platform is that when you’re in a client view, everything on the platform relates to that client and their profile. So every time you create a set of comparisons, it is just for that client. So you’re not comparing things agnostically Or without opinion, it’s actually to that client. And so each client is going to be different. And so that ability to go, you know, maybe we have Portfolio A or Portfolio B that sit them side by side, let’s see exactly where the alignment or misalignment is. Let’s use that as part of our research. And importantly, let’s actually can use that in our compliance filing our audit trail or some of that decision making. So So advisors really, really liked that. I think one thing that is underused is our insights portal. So within the platform, we actually, we are able to track every single decision or outcome that is made between client advisor. Now obviously, this is a Nahmanides. So we’re not sharing names for an advisor or client, but they will see trends. So for example, are the majority of clients leaning towards particular areas around environments, the real real drivers for them, versus maybe trying to step away or step away from kind of more social orientated issues, just very broad examples. What that means is it allows the adviser to see the trends of their client base respond to the trends of their client base, use that both for marketing, but also potentially, how they think about constructing their management solutions in the future. So if 90% of their clients don’t want exposure to a particular area, there’s a really big red flag there to go. Get this out of the portfolio. Tell everyone about it and tell them why. And so we think that’s really powerful. We understand why advisors probably aren’t quite there yet. Everybody’s very early on this journey. But I think in the years to come, it’s that kind of information and that kind of data that is going to become increasingly important to how advisors and practices run and manage with their clients.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s, it’s a great concept, I love the idea of, of having that information for even content, you know, for social media or for content, because when we’re trying to interact on these sort of things, it can become a bit, I’ll literatury or do you mean, like, it can come across potential well used bow shout, do this. Whereas to just give insights, like you say, to just go, Hey, what we’re seeing is, this is a great way to start a conversation. Like it just is something to debate, you know,

Tom Culver
and it could be different, you know, what to say, practice be, you know, one in Sydney, one in Melbourne, for example, they’re gonna see different trends, I’m being able to provide very bespoke solutions to your clients in your area is incredibly important. And, you know, it’s one data point of many, but it’s a really powerful one.

Peita Diamantidis
And what I like to is, is what you’re getting is real data points not assumed. So we all make all these assumptions. We were talking about them before about using tech or not, or, or investing this way or not, you know, but this is real data. This is what they are responding to. And so, you know, that’s so valuable. You know what I mean? Absolutely, right. And as we go further, I can just see advisors like, well, this is great, but I need you guys to ask more questions, because I want to know other things about like one of the

Tom Culver
that’s a very interesting point, I mean, that the question does get posed to us often I’m going, you know, we’ve started with sustainability values. But, you know, I think we’re probably moving to a future where it’s values everything, right? Yeah, you know, every decision is being made one way or another on a kind of a set of predefined values. And if you can understand what those are for a client, you can almost work out where they need to go and what they want to do. And that’s not just sustainability, it’s everything. We will be heading in that in that way. And that in the future, for sure.

Peita Diamantidis
I mean, the the one that springs to mind, for me is the whole intergenerational wealth transfer, you know, there’s going to be, we’re all going to be need to be asking better questions about what they want to happen down the track, you know, where, how they want this money to be handled? Like any all of those sorts of things, yes, you know, can be part of the normal factfinding process, but people’s approach to that can be something you can draw out through tools, you know, you can draw these things out and let you then bring it up. And I think that, that’s what I like about things like this is it can be a starting point, it prompts the conversation, and then you get the deep discussion after that, you know, and that’s what the advisors need to capture it, what else they say, because of the feedback you give them on a tool like this. You know, it’s it’s, it’s that deep, that granular stuff, that’s fantastic. So what else is on the development part path? And is there any, you know, wonderful blue sky stuff way down the track?

Tom Culver
There’s, there’s some blue sky stuff coming out, maybe not the place to talk about it right now don’t want to give too much out to the competition. In all seriousness, we were doing a couple of things at the moment. So we’re constantly improving and rethinking kind of some of the categories that we deal with. So for example, we’re just launching one that is energy transition. And so it’s to help advisors and clients deal with this idea of going well, you know, particularly in Australia energy is, you know, a hot topic, particularly around sustainability. And there’s, you know, a section of fund managers and clients and advisors who want to support energy solutions that are heading towards and who’ve made a commitment to transition. So we’re building a category that does a better job of recognizing that we’re using market leading data providers and independent industry bodies to help build out data criteria around that. But again, bring it into this really kind of systematic, friendly way that a client can go, oh, yeah, that’s me, I get that. That’s, that’s what I want to bring that in, and then kind of help improve some of the portfolio solutions. We’re also just releasing the kind of first steps of our AI capability as everybody’s surprise surprise that we are we are relying on you know, some of the fantastic stuff that’s come out of these concepts around chat GBT and large language models, and essentially built our own version of that that’s contained within our environment. So it’s safe from a data perspective. That, that does a couple of things. It overcomes this kind of problem in sustainability and ESG data in that. It is typically stationary for a year until there’s annual reporting. It’s not very good at capturing live events. So things that happen on a daily weekly monthly basis that could be relevant to to an advisor account. When they make their decisions, we’re also now able to give much, much better reasoning as to why a company or a holding might be flagged to a particular issue. You know, so if a company A has been flagged to issues around child labor, what does that actually mean? When was this flagged? Why was this flagged? And how is that now being dealt with. And so again, we’re providing much more clarity and granularity into why things are being flagged, and the information that can then be shared back to the client. And you know, so it could just be that a company was flagged, say, in 2017, Apple being a really interesting one, right? It’s in most tech based portfolios these days. If a client says they don’t want exposure to labor, it’s going to get flagged because there isn’t exposure. But what we are now able to provide is the exact details of when the registered exposure comes from, but exactly what Apple have done since then to fix those problems and what they’re doing ongoing to fix those problems. So again, it comes down to a level of transparency and a conversation to incline an advisor to go well, actually, you know, what, I’m pretty happy. They’re headed in the right direction. I acknowledge I appreciate the transparency. But let’s move forward.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And I mean, you could argue that, I mean, so you know, startups and all these new businesses that are going to come and compete with some of these players are fantastic. So absolutely. Funds moving that way is great. But How exciting would it be if some of the biggest players actually shifted their game significantly? Like that’s actually going to have a bigger impact, right? If you’re big miners, if you’re these people actually, like you say transition, like moved, where their focus was, I mean, that’s the, you know, that’s when we party in the street in terms of, of impact on the on that issue. And so, I like the idea of almost rewarding that by being a bit more granular about looking at when they got flagged, and for what

Tom Culver
I mean, there’s a whole nother hour long podcast, exactly this conversation. But yeah, ultimately, that that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s one of our missions as business internally is that one of the key reasons why we want to deal with advisors is because they are an intermediary, or a conduit to a huge amount of global wealth, if we can engage advisors at a global level. And so we are about to launch into the US, for example, and we’ll launch into other North American and European markets at some point next year, collecting this information, and this actionable data from advisors across the world becomes the point at which we can then influence these very, very large corporations. Unfortunately, we’re still in a world where money talks. And so we need to be able to drive that and show the data of how that’s talking to drive change. But that’s kind of our internal mission, our goal of where we want to see the future. Yeah, and I think we’ll get there, I’m confident.

Peita Diamantidis
And what a what a fascinating, I mean, I’d love to catch up, then down the track and take a look at well, hey, you know, you’ve got the political environments for different countries and what they’re willing to do or not willing to do, versus the public. And what you guys are going to have is the public’s representation, like this is how they’re feeling. And this is what they’re willing to do. And so to look at that country by country and compare it almost to their political agendas, that sort of view, their view is they’re leading the charge. But is that really where the charges lead? No, maybe it is, where the money is, and where people are willing to direct it. So it’d be a fascinating look, you know, to match those up in different jurisdictions globally.

Tom Culver
100%, especially between Europe and the US, for example, right, for another day.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. Now, is there anything we’ve missed? Have we have we missed any features or any elements of the tool?

Tom Culver
I don’t think so. I think we’ve covered a huge amount today. I mean, all I would say is that, you know, particularly for those, those delegates that I’ve mentioned, between counts, and spark, you know, there are benefits with joining up, including there are discount codes for both of those groups. So if you contact us directly, we’ll let you know what those codes are. But also anyone listening to this podcast, if you sign up to the platform and use the code ensemble 10, you’ll get a 10% discount to the subscription fee on the platform. But of course, all the other services are there as they would be you get full access and full support. But you know, we just want to say thanks. Thanks for listening and being part of the ensemble team as we are. And yes, get get get on board and we can we can help them work with

Peita Diamantidis
you. Yeah, get informed. All right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about our CO advisor, then the website link is in the show notes, Episode show notes so you can find it there. We’ve also popped in Tom’s LinkedIn details. He might not be the person that needs to directly talk to you directly, but I’m sure he’ll point you in the right direction. Should you reach out to him. When he sees LinkedIn, I guess maybe without the apps on your phone, maybe it’ll take a little longer and kudos to you for doing that. Thank you so much, Tom for joining us here today on the show and really sharing how I can advisor can help us begin our and our clients journey towards sustainable investing. Thank you so much for your time.

Tom Culver
Fantastic, thank you so much for having me, it was great.

Peita Diamantidis
Okie dokie, so you are a current user of Ico advisor, I think there’d be lots of listeners that will be really interested in how you found it, how you’ve implemented it, and maybe how you use has evolved over time. So please share your insights on the ensemble community platform, we’d all love to hear your take, I think we’re all at various stages on this journey. But I think over time, there’ll be far more practices that fold in this type of discussion and understanding for their clients than not. And it’s just a matter of the way in which we do that, whether it’s more organic, or whether we put some structures in place. And so I think this is a great way to sort of get a sense of what your options might be. As for, you know, my thoughts, there’s a couple of things that stood out for me, I think, you know, so Tom mentioned in passing about, you know, older advisors, therefore, talking to younger, younger advisors, I think the concept of reverse mentoring is really powerful for some of these, some of these things or projects that we end up implementing, it can be not just a valuable transition, you know, transfer of insight and information, but it’s also particularly empowering to younger staff members to be recognized for their lens there experience or their insights or their take on what the you know, the Australian public might be interested in. So I think using this as an opportunity to set up some of that reverse mentoring, I think is a fantastic thing to do. Even getting them to point to places that they get their information, who are they following? Who are they interested in? Why do they believe that, you know, that sort of thing, I think can give us all context for when we have these conversations with our clients. The other thing that stood out, I think, is, look, you know, to date, there’s been an evolution of tools and ways to engage clients on these topics. And what’s interesting is probably, you know, we’ve all taken it very, I mean, understandably, very seriously, but I think what happens then is it can feel a bit like a chore for a client in terms of the experience. And so I think, you know, having the question come up, like you say, like Tom was saying is part of, you know, a risk profile questionnaire, these are sort of things that you you have value and want to dig into deeper, and then sort of almost, you know, telling the client, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to dive in deeper, there’s, you know, a profiling tool we’re going to use to help us do that, you know, think of it a bit like, you know, which Harry Potter character are, you were just trying to, you know, get some get an idea of your particular values, what you think is important, you know, to identify, you know, are you slithering, or are you Ravenclaw? Right, so, I think there’s a way to help clients understand that, like, Tom was saying, This isn’t right or wrong, this is about just where to use it, you know, what’s your unique characteristics? So I think, I think we could make this a bit more fun than it may be, you know, for for many of our clients. And so, you know, there’s, there’s ways that we could sort of introduce this, it could even be interesting, sharing some of the takes for the staff and where they come from on these issues with the clients. There might be blog posts, or other things that we could all do that would help clients get closer to us and our own beliefs on these issues. Now, as you know, there’s only one skill we need to become Vanek advisors. And that’s ever curiosity, right. So to help build that habit, today’s curiosity corner website that I’d love you to take a look at is McCrindle, this is mccrindle.com. Today you McCrindle is MC CRI ndle. Now, you may have actually seen Mr. McCrindle himself the present at a conference and he would have been talking about demographic trends or things like that. And so that’s what the business McCrindle does is it’s it’s demographic data insights into the different age groups and trends in the workplace or in consumer land, all that sort of thing. Now, the reason that I would point you towards their website right now in particular, but generally it’s something that I do follow is they’ve just recently released their generations defined report. And basically, this takes a fresh look at each of the key generations out there and what trends that McCrindle have drawn out of their surveys they do with the consumers and what you know what trends they’re seeing, what they’re interested in, where they get their information, even what learning styles they broadly have, how it differs between them and their parents and other generations. So it’s really, I mean, it is pigeon holing. Right. So, and I think, you know, they’d accept that this is it’s certainly putting labels, but I think it can be very useful when we’re embarking on some Don’t think like considering sustainable investing, then to understand the different ways the different groups might approach this, and where they’ll be getting their information from what style of learning will they respond to. So you know, the things like, so I’m taking a look at a report here, and it’s got this one pager that sort of side by side lines up the generations, you know, Gen X, you know, might take advice from, and they’re talking advice in a broader sense than just financial advice, but my taking advice from will be influenced by practitioners. So these are the people out there doing it, right, we fall firmly into that category, whereas Gen Y, it’s more likely to be their peers, you know, in Gen Zed, it’s like, it’d be formed forums, chat forums, right. So they’re on there, and they’re all chatting to each other. So understanding that and understanding what that means about how they’re going to engage, then when an expert when they do, I think can be really useful. So, you know, I sort of I’ve, I follow these guys, and always, you know, opt in to get those insights. Some of it will be well, of course, moments, and some will be like, ooh, really, you know, so I’d encourage you to check it out. Particularly the generations defined report, but there’s a whole lot of other resources and tools that they’ve got on their website, some of it relates to the working generation, some relates to education, how that’s going to work. Some of it’s about the future consumer, there’s all sorts of tools there. And a whole lot of fun wants to if there’s something you want to engage differently with your client base, they’ve got the baby names report for 2023. Right. So there’s just a whole lot of interesting information, infographics, all sorts of things that I think either could inform the way we each engage with the public or be something fun, we could share with the public as an insight as part of our content. So check it out. mccrindle.com.au. And, you know, let me know if there’s something that was a real standout for you or something you found exciting about that content. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week. It is a little bit of a long one. Hopefully, that was a valuable chat with Tom there, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you’ll get your advice, tech fix automagically sent to you each Friday. And if look, you know, were willing to I think this is episode 54. or there abouts. If you’re now at the point where it’s like tech overwhelm, and you’re starting to wonder if you need to actually streamline the tech you got rather than add more apps to the business, then can I just encourage you to to nudge your dealer group to reach out to me as I’ve been actually doing more sessions and workshops or conferences recently around this sort of paradox of advice, tech abundance, versus its potential drawbacks and how in fact, some advice tech minimalism might work for you. You know, what are the habits you can put in place that can really keep your advice, process humming, but make sure that you’re taking advantage of the technology you do have. So if you’re curious about that, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. That’s forward slash Peita M D PEITA, M D, and we can certainly have a chat and then I’m happy to then chat to whoever might be the conference organizer for your particular group. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember, advice explores: Stay curious