Engine Room Podcast #13 – Ben Donald and Sian Shaw – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, welcome to the Engine Room podcast. My name is Andrew Rocks, and you’re in for a real treat. Today, I’ve got the dynamic duo from Austbrokers life with me. They’re going to regale you about where their business is today and where they see it’s going to be in the future. So without any further ado, we’ve got Ben Donald. And we’ve got Sian Shaw with us today. And what I always like doing is just lifting lid on how the hell you got here. So Sian maybe start with yourself. How did you manage to get to where you were running the practice, or the business of us brokers life? And then a subsequent question might arise how the hell you work with Ben Donald? Well, let’s start with you.

Sian Shaw
Hi, everyone. Thanks for the question Rocks. Look, I started, I guess in the industry with mercantile mutual back in the day, and did the what I feel is obligatory call center years through a few different insurance gives you a pretty solid backing as far as dealing with clients and those flashing lights and unrealistic timeframes.

Andrew Rocks
It’s got a bit of Guantanamo Bay vibe about it, to be brutally honest.

Sian Shaw
Absolutely, we just have to take a spoon off the shelf, so we could go to the bathroom. So it was an interesting experience, to say the least. From there, I sort of took a quick little step across to the dark side and jumped into the financial advisor space. And after one small blip, I met up with the Austbrokers Financial Solutions team at that time and actually started in 2006. The day the business started in North Sydney when a few companies came together. So from there, I walked in as in, it was actually quite an account executive because of the GI focus at the time, and have hung around long enough that I am now the head of advice, delivery and fortunate enough to work with Ben and manage an amazing team of people, which really can’t call it management.

Andrew Rocks
And throughout that that career, which you’ve summarized very well, what were was there any other key milestones, so even once you started, because basically you started in a startup, but of a big firm, in any sort of key milestones or any mistakes that were made that you’ve learnt from?

Sian Shaw
Ah, that’s a that’s a big one. Definitely lots to have learned from. I guess for me, there have been some really rock solid rules. One that actually started way back in the call center, and I’ve tried to impart to everybody is it’s okay to tell someone you don’t know the answer, and go and find it. And I think that ensures that you’re never set up for failure and also helps you because you’re dealing with experts and each space and finding the right answers from the right people.

Andrew Rocks
Awesome, awesome. And your partner in crime, Ben, or you’ve, you’ve sort of stumbled into this, when I say stumbled. You’re about to regale us. And I’d like to know where you’ve come from, to manage to have a company allow you to operate.

Ben Donald
Yeah. Thanks, man. It’s always a lovely introduction. I guess. I’m the last person that hasn’t been fired. So just by natural attrition. I, I started with us brokers, I think 11 years ago now. And like most people, I think like most financial advisors, I sort of fell into the industry. My, my sister, Sarah gave me a job when I was in my second year of uni, worked as the assistant for a full financial planner in Brisbane, then moved down to Melbourne, I think, and I still I still shut up thinking about my very first client appointment. I absolutely stuffed it up. And I’m really sorry, I don’t remember their names. But to those clients, I’m really, really sorry. It was a really horrible experience for both of us. But since then, moved into risk specialist, going back maybe 13 years ago, joined us brokers as a junior advisor, and as I say, I think moved into the head of advice. And then more recently, I think about two years ago as the managing director.

Andrew Rocks
And was life insurance always your passion. I mean, apart from those first clients that if they’re listening, they’re already consulting their legal team. So but what’s life insurance because you’re not you’re not an old guy now. So that’s wasn’t the wasn’t naturally the most sexy part of the whole ecosystem of financial services or is it?

Ben Donald
Great segue. I remember I remember my first group presentation as a full financial planner, I was talking to a I was in a lower socio economic area of Melbourne and I was told Looking to a number of individuals just after the GFC had hit, and I was talking to them about their superannuation, I can imagine they weren’t that pleased, especially when I show up, you know, still covered in zits in a suit that was probably my dad. So it was a bit too big for me, and tried to explain them to them what was happening with markets. So that was a good baptism of fire. But as I moved through, sort of, I guess, support any advice, what was good about life insurance is that you have complete control of it. So superannuation you’re the best of the markets, tax strategies, absolutely wonderful consolidation, all that sort of thing is, is really good. But again, if you come into a bad year, a lot of clients won’t be as happy as compared to if you have a good year. And I found that life insurance is, in my mind, it’s really, really key because all you got to have is one client who’s not had insurance, and the wrong things happened. And you realize the value of what you do all day, every day. So I’m really proud to be in this industry, I think we do an absolutely wonderful job. And I’m a massive advocate and happy to talk to everybody about it all the time.

Andrew Rocks
And Shawn, when when you when you got into the business, were you saying that you’re initially in general insurance and made your way across to life? And did you share the same sort of passion that Ben does for, for covering people and making sure that they’re all protected?

Sian Shaw
No, sorry, it was actually a joke, because Austbrokers as a whole as a GI business. And for some reason, they decided to use the same terminology for the support staff that sat within the lifespace got it, generally speaking, because I didn’t understand a lot of what we were doing. I actually started with mercantile mutual in the risk call center. So it was just always the thing that I knew best, I always really enjoyed being able to help people within that space. And when you see people that don’t have insurance, and the way things don’t go all that well. And then also where you pay see people who don’t have support and the claim space from an advisor or an advising practice, it can go really badly as well. So

Andrew Rocks
and so that formulated you, you sort of so I get that. So you would have been taking calls quite often people who were about to claim or on claim, but they had no sort of professional advice. Is that right?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. I think I got that on Christmas Day because they didn’t finish back in back in the days, the call centers went right through so I remember getting one on Christmas Day where someone’s husband had passed away. Sort of thought they probably could have waited for diode toe, but they needed to get on with that straightaway. So yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Rocks
So and that I suppose you know, the whole ethos of ensemble is the positive evolution of financial advice, but the word advice is in there and so being advised and I think the the listener who’s listening to this is probably doesn’t need to be preached to because they were all for it. But you know, if we can just keep promoting how being advice is just chalk and cheese from being an advisor. And with that in mind, maybe back then in relation to icebreakers life, it is not unusual, sort of structured business and for everyone out there may be given a bit of a feel for sort of when it started, and the role that your your division which is headed by yourself, fulfills within that ecosystem.

Ben Donald
Yeah, sure. So Austbrokers is part of a publicly listed entity called the a UB group, their market cap, I think it’s about $2 billion dollars or so. But us brokers as a, I guess, the sub sub branch or that or the subset of a UB, they largely a general insurance brokerage, there’s about 50, or there abouts independent firms throughout the country. And they all have various niches. So you know, there’s a team in Wagga that operate on a geography specialists, there’s quite a few teams in Sydney that specialize in industry. So for example, I spoke as aviation, you know, the bulk of their clients, a helicopter operator operators, trade credit, just as trade credit, their credit and read just as construction. But by and large, there’s if there’s a risk in Australia related to general insurance, Most brokers can manage it. And I guess where the Austbrokers life came from, was the public entity or the or the larger group, understanding that risk management didn’t just extend to the chair, but also the person in it. And that’s where I guess most brokers life comes from is you want to make sure that you’re doing everything you can from the client. And it’s just a natural extension from the general insurance conversation.

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. The helicopter doesn’t fly without the person

Ben Donald
flying, correct? Yeah, well, we’re used to this little sidebar here, we just insure and we still do insure quite a few helicopter mustering pilots and I don’t know how we got it. But at the time, going back six years ago, we used to get standard rates on life insurance for blokes that were flying 20 meters above the ground that speeds I can’t think of yeah,

Andrew Rocks
I’ve got a mate. Josh not gonna say your surname, but he had, he said to helicopter crashes in his career as mustering so probably uninsurable, which is why I’m not. So yeah, the look Thank you very much for sharing a bit about that that background and, and in the way in which sort of the philosophy that was very much just repeating is that that someone there is always someone who sits behind the piece of equipment or, or whatnot, and they need to be insured as well. And that that plays very much to, to your ethos surrounding making sure that you want to make sure that that person is covered, and you can control the outcomes. Okay, so we’re in relation to how you’ve managed to build this business. I wouldn’t mind just getting a feel for what you’ve said, wonderful. And having, you know, a $2 billion business with 50 branches and having a no doubt quite a large business needs to have a large engine. So, John, in relation to the the engine room, how do you structure? So maybe start with how many acres do you have? Is it a centralized service? So your pods? Or how have you arranged it to make sense of quite a big opportunity?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. Look, as with any business, there’s lots of growth, development and change. So we have adjusted our structure a few times, based on numbers on the team. Now, at the moment, we have about 10 advisors, about the same number of support staff. And we also have some key additional members of the team. Most importantly, or, as importantly, as everyone else, sorry, is our national claims manager who takes a whole lot of work away from both the support team and the advisors in that space. Now, we work in a pod structure currently, so each advisor has a direct support. And we work in a very structured way, currently using threads and processes through the X planning systems. So that is, yeah,

Andrew Rocks
well, and also, I actually was lucky enough to be in your office only about two or three weeks ago. And, and you were just finishing a session on the amount of claims that you’d paid out. So maybe if you could tell this just the scale of your business. So we’d like to know, you know, what’s the number of clients what sort of Premier in but then also finished with the money you’ve actually given out.

Ben Donald
So as part of their structure, right, when you when you consolidate, you realize that you can achieve some greater efficiencies. And one of those areas that we found was with a direct claims manager. Now, there aren’t many businesses around the country that have a claims manager. And I guess the return on on him, I guess, employing that person has been absolutely monstrous. So Paul Langdale was an advisor for 20 odd years. And when when we bought the business that he was a part of, he was really proud to have this big certificate from one path that I think talked about at the time, 6.4 million or 10 point 4 million worth of claims, we’ll just say 10 points, we’ll make it up. But the natural progression for him as an advisor was that he found the most joy in engaging with clients and insurers to make sure that the right outcome was achieved. So Paul has been integral to the team. He works with all of us now. Some of our advisors choose to take a front foot with a lot of claims and have Paul do all basically the legwork in the background. And other advisors are just happy to sort of handle it straight to him. So Paul, at any one stage is dealing with between 90 and 100 claims. Yeah, we’ve had a massive spike on that in with COVID. And mental health claims, unsurprisingly. But the last financial year, I think we did 37 million in claims and this financial year. I know we’re two days out still, but we’re tracking to finish at about $26 million worth of claims out to clients.

Andrew Rocks
Well, first of all, thank you. Yeah, it’s it’s, you know, like, it’s, it’s, I’m sure that there’s $27 million worth of appreciation from from dependents, and also the people that have needed that to get through where they’re at at the moment. And so what does that make as far as the size of the business that you’ve got? What is the annual premium? So and also, I’ve just picked up your specific life insurance? pureplay? Correct. Yeah. 100% and 2%. And what is it mainly you’ve got a back book, or what’s, what’s the size of the business? No, so

Ben Donald
we have about 50 million in premium. And that’s across sort of, I guess, our book, because we made about 10 purchases over the last five years. It’s quite a quite an amalgamation of different demographics, different geographies, all that sort of thing, because it’s reflected in the US brokers group. But each year, I think this financial year, were aiming for 3 million in new business premium. And it’s just it’s just really enjoyable. So we’ve got really good strong relationships with the insurers and we’re able to leverage that on claims on new business outcomes. And all our advisors can split their time between managing the renewal book with a very schmuck process in the background, looking at the new business process, which I’m sure Shannon will talk about, how we get advice out to clients, and and if they choose to taking heavier part of the claims process.

Andrew Rocks
So she And what Ben just said is you’re hoping to do $3 million worth of new business as far as annual premium, which over 10 advisors give or takes 300,000 each. And that might be something along the lines of, of, you know, 20 to 30 or 40 new clients. How does it work? What part does the there’s the risk specialist do? What part does the the operations team do? How do you how do you get the workout?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. So the STAT is to ensure that advisors can do as much client facing work as possible, obviously, that might be over the phone or zoom. But generally speaking, we want to keep the advisors advising, engaging with clients and doing what they can. So the support team worked extremely closely with the advisors. When do they cut in? So when did they start? So our support teams start as soon as the advisor meets with the client. So effectively, they may know prior to the meeting, if they don’t, they’ll know as soon as the meetings over, they’re introduced straightaway. So they’re always a second set of hands to catch them if they have any questions and need to go from there. And then the support team just ensure the entire process runs smoothly. We’ve got all A’s across the business without audits this year. So everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to do with a really robust, solid system that runs behind them.

Andrew Rocks
And, look, it’s been several years now since the life insurance reforms have come in and commissions have have come down. And many people have said that they’ve come down to a rate that makes it reasonably difficult for people who do life insurance as a, as a as an also do in their business. With the backdrop of those that they’re quite strict framework, which I believe is 60% of the annual premium initially, and and a an ongoing amount there. What how do you guys run? Like, what’s the key efficiency in the placing of the business? Is it the advisors role? Is it where you are doing the underwriting? Are you just picking good insurance partners to work with what’s or is it all of the probably a

Sian Shaw
mix of all of those, one of the really important components we have is a pre assessment for the advisors to go through prior to any case coming across for advice to be created. So that just ensures that we’re not wasting any time with applications getting into ensure that won’t be accepted or that are not going to end up exactly as the client expects, their advice creation process were generally expecting within two days that an SOA should be created and with the advisor for delivery to the client. And therefore that makes the new business process extremely efficient and fast. The steps within the process really structured and strong, which leaves no one with any questions about what they’re supposed to do within their role, and how they’re able to deliver. So there are relationships between our entire team are really strong. And that means that it all works really well together. And later on,

Andrew Rocks
we’re going to talk about your team. But that two day turnaround is probably going to probably shock a few people, it positively shocked them. But is that because you’ve done the pre assessment? Is that because you did the pre assessment upfront and then and then you can kind of craft the advice based on that knowledge.

Sian Shaw
So the SLA delivery is based on the entire file being completely checked prior to going across for delivery. So

Andrew Rocks
And what about the renewals? So you’ve got $50 million worth of business that has to roll over every year? What sort of involvement and maybe Ben, if you could answer this one? What involvement if any, do your referring partners being the GI have with with the renewal process?

Ben Donald
Yeah, we did a little test a couple of years ago, where because we’ve made so many purchases, what we needed to do was just get a broader understanding of what our clients thought about us as a business, and our referral partners. So we got our team to make 1000 random phone calls. And the sole goal of those phone calls was just to do a litmus test to see what the clients thought about us. Really pleased to report that we had one negative feedback and one person who just sort of said, Why are you calling so in my bind that that’s okay, as well. So I’m going to one out of 1000, who didn’t really want to hear from us. So that was really good to prove to us that our clients liked us appreciated us appreciate what we do. And then for the review book, every every advisors got their own portfolio of clients that they engage with. And we’ve just done a basic demographic of you know, ABCD, depending on a few few characteristics of that client, and it’s just any, what’s the word of PE are tearing of service level. So every ABC clients getting a phone call, but every single client is obviously getting their renewal letter. And when we engage with the GI broker, what we found is and I I’d say this to every financial planner who’s listening Um, where you can partner with other specialists, because if you’ve got a business that you trust, and you know, the guys that run it, and you know, the brokers or the accountants or the financial planners, whatever it may be, if that client is connected to you, and then that client is so much more likely to hang around with you. And what we’ve found, you know, it doesn’t happen all the time. But when when a client’s not happy, or is thinking about leaving, often we’ll get a call from the general insurance brokers say, hey, you know, this particular clients not happy, you need to give them a buzz and sorted out and vice versa. So it’s strengthened strengths that strengthens the relationship with the client both ways.

Andrew Rocks
So what you’ve articulated there is, although your pure play life insurance, the more the more positive partnerships you can put around the client, you’re going to get that feedback, you’re gonna get that feedback, you’re gonna have those positive outcomes.

Ben Donald
Yeah. And I think one of the messaging that we’re trying to get our guys to understand, and it’s getting through now pretty well, and I want everybody to understand as well is that the more services that you can offer a client, you’re not trying to sell anything, you’re just trying to help them. So we recently engaged with Lydian mortgage broking and, and one of the wonderful things that they can do is basically just call up a client go ask a couple of questions about when was the last time your your mortgage was reviewed? You know, there’s been a couple of rate increases here and there. And so it’s just a value add service that we want to bring to our clients that the only thing that happens is it strengthens the relationship. That’s great.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, my background, historically, is I had a I had a multi disciplined practice where we did life insurance, financial planning and mortgage broking. But which by the way, you can still definitely do and lots of great quality practices do do that. But I’m just seeing this evolution of sort of specialist individuals and working together. Now. If I sort of like wanted to place myself inside your business, you’ve got advisors, in all around Australia is what you’ve mentioned. But Sydney is your head office. Is that right? Yeah.

Sian Shaw
Correct. So we had advisors around the country, and they work predominantly from the our referral partners. So the Australian network, they work from their offices directly. So they’re sitting there with the referral,

Andrew Rocks
what percentage of the time are they in the the brokers offices,

Sian Shaw
some of them four days a week. And then alternatively, because they have multiple businesses to go to one, one day or two days a week.

Andrew Rocks
And we were talking off beforehand, and you mentioned that, that you’ve just you’re just restructuring sort of some of the if we call it a pod system, or whatever the language is going to be. But if I’m an AR who works for you, God forbid. What’s my team look like? So I’m there I’ve been charged with keeping a book of business on the books. I’ve also been charged with X number of new dollars. I’ve got a I’ve got it, do I have an associate advisor a paraplanner? Like what how do you arrange per per AR?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. So you have a direct support and a CSM. So we call them client service managers. Effectively, because of the advice we produce, they would be called paraplanners. I guess in in other realms, they put together the advice documents, so that is done in house. And obviously we’re directly liaison with the adviser as and when required. In addition to that we have an amazing team over in the Philippines who provide backup support to everybody and follow through with any sort of tasks that don’t need to be actioned by the CSM. So freeing them up with more time to work directly with the advisor.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, so your hours are supported. Absolutely. Because one of the one of the, you know, in before you before you write the life insurance, you have to actually go through people’s lives and, and sit down with them. And whether it’s a whiteboard or in front of them, and it’s a fair bit of energy to get to that point. So, so not having to worry as much about the execution of what you said, is really positive. And, and I’ll come to your team and your people in a section coming up. And we’ll talk about how you built the global team and why and, and, and that that’s going to work well. Now, your tech stack. I got an email from you and you said, tech spaghetti is what so many maybe it’s tech spaghetti where you’re at What do you dislike eating spaghetti? Or what

Ben Donald
is my that common because I’m a little bit heavier than I was before. COVID. But thanks, Mike.

Andrew Rocks
Actually, can we go back to you wearing your dad’s suit? Because I don’t think that’s gonna happen

Ben Donald
so Tech Tech spaghetti, I think that’s a better way. I don’t know any business that’s just running one tech solution. We’ve all got to now be you know, I think every financial company in the world is probably running off Microsoft Excel 1997 We do that we’ve got Microsoft Word, you know, x plan, Outlook, the whole thing and so we’re we’re flicking from one piece of software to another. But we’ve got high hopes coming into the future where there’s there’s a piece of tech that is coming out very shortly called Lightspeed and we’re waiting with that with bated breath because when that comes along, we should go out go to be able to what is it we currently manage about five 600 Sorry, five to 6 million with a premium per advisor. We should get Add that to over 10 million per advisor with a with a decent piece of technology.

Andrew Rocks
Okay, we’re gonna do a timeout here, right? Because some, you can’t just, you can’t just throw a claim like that in the middle minute 20 out of our podcast. So life bid, we’ll put links on it. So maybe give a little bit of a plug to what life busy is. And if it’s going to be that profound, it should be something that other people who profess to be life insurance specialists are looking at.

Ben Donald
Yeah, I think there are quite a few people that are sitting there on the waiting list, I’ve been told that the numbers sitting above 2000. And it’s just one of the pieces of tech where they’re they’re focused on getting everybody’s alignment first. So stakeholders, you know, everybody from the reinsurer the insurer, licensee advisor, and regulator and making sure that everybody’s along the journey, that is reducing the cost to serve at all points life insurance,

Sian Shaw
and practice manager to

Andrew Rocks
a fantastic so So look, we’re gonna put life bid in in the in the notes will give a bit of a bit of a shout out to them there. And, you know, if you rush now you’ll be to 1000s and one in the in the queue. But I believe they know, they’re not as far as the Taylor Swift tickets, or maybe maybe equivalent. So I also like to talk about when I’m painting the picture, you know, the clients, and you guys are practitioners are one part of the UK system. But there’s another part as well, you’ve got to deal with life insurance. So maybe I’d love to hear your philosophy, because you’ve got such a big business, okay, for people out there. What’s your philosophy? And how do you work with them? Are they are they your friend or your foe? Are they your business partners? How do you view them? And I’m sure a lot of them are listening.

Ben Donald
Yeah, so really love everybody. Thanks everyone. There’s there’s always the carrot and the stick approach. But more than anything, we just use the carrot the entire time. Everybody’s got to remember that these guys are all professionals. They’ve all got their own jobs, their own pressures, and all that sort of thing. And when it comes down to it, you got to remember that the insurers are trying to do the right thing by clients and by advisers. So I would encourage every advisor who’s maybe raised their voice to a BDM or an underwriter, maybe think about the way that you’re engaging with them, because the other person on the phone is is a person and I can tell you this, if you go out of your way to do something nice to them, that will have a massive return later on. So big free tip for everybody. If you’re a financial planner or risk advisor, by your underwriter or be at the end of the year, take a BDM out but focus on your underwriter and the guys in the in the team. So you know tell I think Heidi’s Heidi Sciver is it does a great job running her team and sort of the guys of Zurich and a few other groups.

Andrew Rocks
And and John back to your your complete Genesis in this story. You were one of those people at the other end of the phone and and that probably that approach probably would have endeared you to far more advisors.

Sian Shaw
Look, absolutely. And I think that’s probably why it’s something I’ve been so strong on since since day one. Being really balanced in your approach with the insurer is so very important. They their data pay claims they want to pay claims they that’s what they’ve added, do. They want to write your business if they can, but they don’t want to mess up the book. So you know, there’s there’s a whole lot of things involved, and taking the time to listen and understand and work with them is really important. We are really focused on making sure everyone in our team does the same thing. So they coached I guess, on how to ensure those conversations are positive and constructive at every point. Yeah, and they do an extremely good job with that they’ve got really solid relationships across the board

Andrew Rocks
with treated with respect and humility. They become part of your team. Right. Absolutely. So Ben with the with your business, it’s a publicly listed firm, it’s serious. We spoke off air earlier. And I think you you actually showed me that when a policy that you had, I think it was a 1970s or 60s policies, I think.

Ben Donald
So we were talking about the founding of the company, and one of the portfolios that we we brought along with this policy started in 1961. And what was the sum assured of 5000 pounds?

Andrew Rocks
And that was a whole lot. Was it a whole life? Yeah, correct. Mutual

Ben Donald
mutual life and citizens? I think we changed the Australian dollar in 1968. So we’ve got a few policies going, going back pre that.

Andrew Rocks
So given that you’ve got such lineage there. How are you licensed and what made you make that choice? Yeah.

Ben Donald
So the license is an interesting piece at the moment. I know there’s a lot of movement. We were with a group for awhile since before I joined and we made the decision to move across to Australian unity, maybe nine months ago. So as part of that, I effectively looked at the entire market and some of the key points that I was looking for was obviously a commercial outcome. And to be honest, at a business of our size, it was sort of six to one half dozen, because everybody was willing to have an individual rate for us.

Andrew Rocks
They were attracted by chance.

Ben Donald
Absolutely nothing to do with. And then yeah, so the commercial outcomes, but I was I was looking for a stability. So with all the mergers and acquisitions, there’s been massive increases and massive decreases in advisor numbers and, and through experience, we know that when there’s m&a activity, ordinarily, that leads to I guess, challenges in the licensee and the service that you get from them. So when we eventually landed on the group Australia annuity, one of the one of the biggest points that that we were wanting to go there for was, because we’re really passionate about life insurance. And it’s really easy to be corny about it. But we genuinely believe in giving people advice and giving advice to as many Australians and helping them and I guess Australian unity, very much aligned with our core values along those. So there are a real well being company. And they’re, they believe in it so much that the report that they have produced annually that talks about well being has actually been adopted by the World Health Organization, wow. ECD. So it’s, it’s a really standout sort of organization. So nice and stable, good commercial outcome, and align perfectly with us now. So commercially, like I said, for pricing, it worked really, really well. But what was really advantageous for a group like ours, we’ve made it clear that we’re a risk specialist. And so we wanted to find an opportunity to grow. And Australian unity historically has been a financial planning heavy licensee. And so at the first conference that we held sort of 887 months ago, we were given the opportunity to present and what came out of that was a number of the financial planning groups that were inside Australian unity actually wanting to come and partner with us. So those conversations have continued, we’ve been referred multiple clients, and there are now actually financial planners in there that are looking to sell their risk portfolios to us, because we’re a safe pair of hands. We’ve we already deal with sort of, you know, 30, I think General Insurance partners, multiple financial planners, multiple accountants, and we’ve got really good systems in place, that means there’s no cross pollination of those clients. We’ve got the strength, the relationship with the insurers, all the sorts of things that a, another professional wants to know that their clients are going to be looked after well,

Andrew Rocks
and if I think about the sort of financial planner, authorised representative, who sort of is thinking about their career, where they are at the moment, you’ve already got these partnerships in place. So running your own business can be tough, especially when you’ve got to be everything with with Sharon, in involved in running the back office and, and been involved in assisting bringing in partnerships and whatnot, you’re really creating an ecosystem, you’re almost building a Formula One team, and you’re just after some drivers, you know, and, and maybe we will talk about, you know, you definitely are after some drivers, you’ve got lots of lots of opportunities. And, and I think you mentioned before, are you looking for some more people in, in Sydney, in the Sydney office, you will talk about that at the end. But, but but having that already built, you can’t underestimate the impact of that with your business. Now, what I also wanted to mention was the people, okay, so you’ve built this structure? Okay, we’ve had a bit of an idea about sort of, you know, the tech spaghetti, you’ve given us some nuggets of gold with with the new the new tech coming through. I always like to ask this question, why do people join you? Why do they stay? And why will they grow against the backdrop that both of you have been with this business some time? And also, you’ve got quite a few people being with this business sometimes. So why did they join? Why did they stay? Or why did they grow?

Sian Shaw
Okay, so a lot of our team have definitely the support team have been with us for over five years. And they many of them have come referred from each other or from people have been connected into us, which has, I guess, meant that they fit in with our culture and the positive environment that we are. We’ve had a lot of people come in who really had no idea about the industry when they walked in the door. So they’ve done a significant amount of solid training and growth and, and development, which has been absolutely amazing. And internally,

Andrew Rocks
how do you structure your training just to jump in there?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. So I guess always the tell masterclass is a really good starting point for anyone coming into life insurance, so we drop everyone in there. We also ensure that they have access to any insurer presentations and PD days because that’s always a really good space to learn and grow. We provide on the job training, direct training. We also given the importance of excel in the business world we are we’ve even sent them off, sent some of the team off on Excel training sessions, which we you know will continue to happen, because no matter what you say, we still seem to need Excel. So always open and available. So the team all know that if they see any training pop up, or there’s anything they want to learn or grow on, they can get involved.

Ben Donald
And so just jumping point jumping in sorry, on that, on that training component, all of our clients, service managers, there’s a standing offer in our business that if anybody wants to become an advisor, we will fund their education into the industry? Drop the mic?

Sian Shaw
Surely they don’t.

Ben Donald
So I think then they’d have to work closely with me. So.

Andrew Rocks
So when we talk about recruitment of advisors, over the course of doing the engine room, what I’ve discovered is that people, business owners, and general managers and practice managers have worked out that putting a bit more effort into the recruiting process does pay dividends? So what’s the recruitment process that you do for your for your AI? And, you know, what’s different about it? And what do you like about it?

Ben Donald
Yeah, I think we’ve really adopted the philosophy of fire fast, hire slow. And so with our recruitment, we like to have potential team team members be interviewed by quite a few of our staff, just so that they did, the person coming into the business gets a better understanding of how our team works, get some of the different personalities. And also so we get a variety of opinions. Culture is, is really, really key. And I think that’s why, you know, when somebody joins our group, they end up staying for quite a while. And so getting a broad understanding of that individual, making sure that they get a really, really strong understanding of our businesses is key.

Andrew Rocks
So what’s your culture? You both mentioned it? Okay, so so maybe summarize, what would you say, in terms of the type of cultures culture is the way we do things around here? So what’s the way you guys do things, Randy? So I guess

Ben Donald
we all work hard. We support each other. And we have fun while we do it, is is what it comes down to.

Andrew Rocks
Let’s talk about fun. It’s I always, I always liked this question. So yeah, how do you guys celebrate success? You know, what’s, what’s the definition of fun? If I’m in the Austin pokers life business,

Sian Shaw
it was leaving Ben locks in a panic room last week. The staff function.

Ben Donald
There’s a lot of panic. We had we had all the team come into Sydney for two days, a couple of weeks ago. And it was a good mix of sitting down having some of the insurance come in and have a chat to us, our licensee to have a chat to us talk about what our what a year that was the goals that we have. And then doing what we love to do most which is just unwinding and get to know each other a little bit that one of the one of the challenges of our business is that we’re also geographically diverse. We’ve got guys that operate from a one man band in South Australia. We’ve got I think, a couple of people up in Brisbane, another one in the Gold Coast, Lismore, Sydney, Canberra, Geelong, Melbourne and a few other places I don’t think I can remember. But it’s

Andrew Rocks
Shout out to the people he’s forgotten in his

Ben Donald
shot if you can help me out. Yeah, there we go. Okay. Your mother busier apparently as Mary bridge, it’s a great little place. Now that we all look after each other. A good example recently, well, not recently, but when the Lismore floods happened, we’re just straight away on the phone talking about local guy Todd, making sure he was okay seeing if we could do anything to help. And I guess talking about the culture, what we offer what we said to him, he’s a volunteer firefighter in the area as we said, Make take whatever time off you want, don’t worry about leave or anything like that will look after you just do the right thing and help out your local community. And it’s something we encourage all our staff to do.

Andrew Rocks
And which is awesome, by the way, and just just looping back on on how you get your peers to be involved in the recruitment process. So take me through that. And have there been many instances where there’s been disagreement.

Ben Donald
So to the team in Sydney, Rose started with us. I don’t know how long ago, maybe five or something years ago, she went to the UK for a year just as young people do. They, they, they go off. And then what was lovely is when she came back to Australia, we offered the role and we’re really glad to have her back. So it’s a wonderful sort of confirmation that our culture is good because somebody that goes away to the UK and London decides no working with us brokers is way better than London. So that’s great. But then what she recommended was one of our best mates come join the company. And Ash has been working with us ever since coming on board. So for us, because the culture and making sure everybody gets along well is so important. What we’ve done internally is got a little recruitment bonus involved. So if a staff member recommends another staff member, there’s a little cash incentive there for them.

Andrew Rocks
Oh, beautiful. Well, it’s good. And they’ve got they’re got a real kind of vested interest in making sure that that that works. And they’re culturally aligned as well, you know, so. And do you use psych tests? And, and a lot of people do, but some people mixed, so maybe just give us your feedback?

Ben Donald
Look, I’ve never scored really well on them. So I don’t like them very much. That’s a reflection of me, I think

Andrew Rocks
this is not your therapy session.

Ben Donald
We need longer than 45 minutes.

Andrew Rocks
And I need I need a binding legal agreement.

Ben Donald
Now. So we have done psych tests in the past. One of the one of the funny points recently is we were talking to Angela Lu, one of our staff in Sydney. And never I don’t think she’d ever realized we used Stryver I can’t remember what they’re called now. But anyway, they were a good, good hunting ground for us to find junior staff coming into into the company. And so we did a psych test with ang through Strieber. And it ended up being that her score wasn’t that great on the psych test. But ever since she’s been with the company, we’ve we’ve absolutely loved her. So a little bit hit and miss on the psych tests. But yeah, and as a weapon we love her.

Andrew Rocks
And well, there you go. So shout out to the, I suppose not a shout of the strike desperate like this, but well that and now we’re talking about people, and it’s good to have fun, but sometimes you’ve got to make sure they’re accountable. So how do you how do you organize sort of reviews? And what’s your cadence for doing that with your team?

Sian Shaw
So reviews we do on a half yearly basis, we jump in and look at how they’re performed. There’s a big component that relates back to the direct relationship with their advisor and how they’re delivering because there are multiple reasons why, you know, numbers on a on a spreadsheet don’t necessarily tell the entire story. So we’re it’s very important to keep the engagement holistic, and constructive. So we

Andrew Rocks
So, so

Ben Donald
it’s gonna jump in quickly. There’s a there’s a piece of tech that we use as well. Well, I encourage everybody to have a quick look at called Office vibe. And it’s a weekly check in with all staff that effectively just asked relatively random questions. And from those questions, they pull together scores on things like collaboration with peers, autonomy, engagement with the manager, all that sort of thing. And so we see that on a weekly basis. And when we see a drop, we drill down into why that might be. So as much as we have the formal half yearly reviews, I think review and feedback is best done on the spot and constantly. And that’s the system that we’ve got in place to help us with that at the moment. No,

Andrew Rocks
I love office five, I used it at my practice. And the thing about it is, is that if you just ask someone the question on their six monthly, you’re gonna get a bullshit, right? But office five, I believe comes out relatively regularly. And so, you know, if you are a sociopath, and you want to lie once, maybe twice, three, but once you get about four, or five, or six or seven, you’re gonna actually get the truth. So yeah, there’s

Ben Donald
a good function in there as well, that allows allows team members, sorry to come back with autonomous, anonymous questions. And the feedback on that is always been pretty good. Because you know, what can we do to make the office better? Or we can introduce baby goats, which is always positive. And judging by the laugh I know who put that one. Yeah.

Andrew Rocks
So yeah, that works really well. And when you mentioned you, you have families and we we’ve before this, and you’re talking about the concept of structured spontaneity, but in essence, surely your business has a set of critical numbers that you share with your team on a pretty regular basis. And they’re part of your DNA. So with that in mind, Ben, what what are what is what are your critical numbers and and how do you cascade them through the team?

Ben Donald
So I start off with the bigger ones. So every month we’ve got a report in from Paul about what the claims have done. That’s not necessarily about individual performance. But it’s just a good sort of reminder to everybody about why we do what we do. And then on a weekly basis, we have an email come in, that talks about new business production. And that’s effectively got just some nice, pretty flowcharts on there that you can have a glance at. And then it’s got an attachment to that you can drill down and you can have a look at basically every single client that you’ve got in the advice process from first referral through to policy completed through the year, so

Andrew Rocks
And is that an individual level? Can everyone see everyone else’s activity? Yeah, it’s 100%.

Ben Donald
Transparent, so everybody can see everything. And I think that’s the better way to do it.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, what creates competitive tension, and and also identifies, even within peers. If one of your friends needs a bit of a hand, or alternatively, they’ve done some awesome things, and maybe can impart some wisdom.

Ben Donald
Yeah. So we’ve got two gun advisors in Queensland, Michael Dennis and Michael fuller. And they work together really well. And there’s always a little, a little bit between the two of them about who’s gonna perform better than the other,

Andrew Rocks
Michael, I

Ben Donald
imagine. Yeah, correct. Michael kills it every time. And, yeah, so what we do with that is, is we also encourage those guys and the other advisors to talk through a little story once a month about a difficult case, they had some sort of learning where something went wrong, an example that effectively would allow other people to learn from them.

Andrew Rocks
And you’ve been across many states, starting with Adelaide, which is your favorite one. So when COVID happened, and everyone had to do work from home or hybrid work, probably for you, having managed people not in the four walls of your Sydney HQ, was okay. But going forward, what do you see sort of as brokers? Is it? Is it as a hybrid workplace where people work from home? Or are they working in their specific geographic locations? And do you see that staying the same?

Sian Shaw
Yeah, look, absolutely, our COVID was actually really good for us, because it forced us to find zoom. And actually having start having team meetings via zoom, which was absolutely amazing,

Andrew Rocks
the pigeons got tired that

Sian Shaw
we used to get these little email updates, where there were these little videos that Ben was in which were amazing.

Andrew Rocks
We’re gonna include a couple of copies of those videos as part of this,

Sian Shaw
I think we still got a whole library, so I’ll be able to send it across. So for Sydney time, obviously, there was a bit more of an impact because everyone was in the office together. At that time, now, we have gone very much to a hybrid going forward. So people are able to work more or less where they choose to, we have had some people who thought working from home was amazing, but have decided that it’s much nicer to be back in the office. Even full time again, also new starters. We’ve we’ve got a recent new starter Jason who’s absolutely killing it. And he is looking, hopefully to become an advisor in the next few years. So that is one support person that may actually go to work more closely with Ben. But he has been 100% in the office and obviously new starters, it’s good to have them in there and sort of pick up a bit of the vibe.

Andrew Rocks
And I think like many practices that COVID really opened our minds to what can be done. And in fact, my first meeting of UPA was was as part of your global team in the Philippines at virtual business partners. And I think, I think that was some initiative that you put in place during COVID. And maybe I might have been a function of not being able to find people or whatnot. But But what was what was your rationale? Was it was it that or, or Yeah, because it was it was right in the middle of COVID.

Ben Donald
Yeah, the the Melbourne lockdowns was what sort of drove I think a bit of the outcome, because we’re talking to John, who’s down there. And I know Victoria, obviously did it harder than the rest of the country. Well, actually, you’re right. But getting everybody on a zoom twice a week for an hour was absolutely brilliant. So what we did is Tuesday, 11am. Everybody catch up, face to face or video to video. And we talked about business items. And then Thursday, we did the same thing at 11am. But generally, it was just a chat on the Thursday. And then we started doing the little trivia sessions on a Friday night where I think Rose was pulling trivia together and most of us were failing really badly. So she had to made it a lot easier.

Andrew Rocks
So and was that right now? Are you doing? Are you doing daily huddles with your team with your operations team? Or how do you how do you you run them given that you’re not only in different states, you’re in different countries? What what’s the what’s the cadence?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. So look, we are actually about to start the huddle. So a lot of our updates are sort of flowing through in July. So we had to tell you in July, how they start going, but definitely the amazing five people we have with ABP they do have a daily huddle with Angela, who’s the legend that we’re speaking about earlier in the day. business and make sure they’re all long on track and clear about what their day and weight looks like.

Ben Donald
But guess just just generally with with managing the team is you give everybody the right goals, the right tools, you don’t really need to manage anymore, the best thing we do with our advisors is just get out of their way. And it’s the same thing with their support. So, inside a pod, I would expect an advisor and support to call each other almost constantly during the day, we’ve got our little our teams chat. So they’re always back and forth, asking questions, making sure they get everything across. Some of our advisors will call other advisors asking questions about pre assessments, that sort of thing to try and get an idea. Every now and then we’ll get an email from one individual out to every staff member asking for help on a certain item, if anybody’s got experience and the daily huddles, it’s, yeah, it’s more down to the sort of twice a week for us is how we’ve done it historically.

Andrew Rocks
And I’ve, I’ve seen a quote that we were chatting about earlier, and and you mentioned, never be afraid to say, I don’t know, but I’ll come back to you clients are just people. So what was the inspiration behind that?

Ben Donald
It just just the honesty of the statement, it’s where we find our staff have previously got in trouble or where I personally have got in trouble with clients is, if I try and fumble my way through an answer, when really, it’d be much easier to just say, I’m sorry, I don’t know, or I don’t have access to the information at the moment, just let me call you back. And we encourage all our staff to have the same sort of thing internally as well. So if an advisor is calling for an answer, the the support time, the support team, for example, understand that it’s much better to say just give me half an hour, and I’ll come back to you.

Andrew Rocks
And we’re talking people in culture, and we spoke about how you recruit people into your business. But you’ve done something like five or six acquisitions the last couple of years? How do you absorb the people in those businesses, those people that have built their their life insurance business into your team? And is it is it sort of a one size fits all or is every case different?

Sian Shaw
Generally speaking with kid gloves for a little bit. So we obviously a very understanding of where people have come from, and very understanding that not everyone’s going to fit into the culture or be the right people to be in that space. So obviously, we do everything we can particularly with advisors to provide additional support. Because often the reason advisors choose to sell the business and come in come into our team is because they want the additional back office support. They want the process that works behind them. So they can just do the advising. So they stay most of the time they stay in flourish. Is that the plan? Many? Yes, absolutely.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. So if I was to sort of ask you a question about you know, if people are listening, if people are listening, good, God is just not the it’s the engine room podcast, of course, they’re listening. But you’re you’re very open to not only taking on a eyes, but you’re very open to, to working with them to to absorb their business and then let them flourish.

Ben Donald
Is that correct? Yeah, 100%, we have, we have a lot of experience of that over the last five years, and the experience is just getting I think better and better. For more and more people that come on board. We’re in conversations with a few people in Melbourne at the moment who is one jump, we’re looking at business model of maybe 500,000 Worth recurring and potentially looking at a JV model. And there’s two other advisors actually, in Victoria also, who are effectively looking to sell their practice and become employees and just work off of salary. So the the world’s your oyster, to be honest, we’ve got a really strong, dedicated risk specialist back office team. And we can scale up as quickly as we need to.

Andrew Rocks
And what I always like asking is that, you know, you’ve both been in the industry more than 10 years, but maybe get a little bit of an idea, Shaun of your vision of where the practice manager or the general manager fits in a business today, as opposed to what it potentially was years ago, and where you see that sort of going forward?

Sian Shaw
Absolutely. Well, obviously 10 years ago was often the, you know, office, people running around doing the bidding of the MD, know, really constructive way forward or process

Andrew Rocks
demonic, five genomics or something like that, yes, go on,

Sian Shaw
then walk in and drop a bomb and walk away again. Now, obviously, a practice manager is extremely important as as growth in the businesses are required to keep a team on track to keep processes humming. And it can only need to extend from there, especially as the industry continues to change. And we need to keep pulling in all these updates to how we do advice and what’s required.

Andrew Rocks
So when I think about ensembles, sort of what they’re all about now, and this is all about dispelling myths is that when we Started ensemble, it was all about financial advisors helping each other. But in reality, an advisor is nothing without their team. You know, they have whiteboard specialists, without their team, right? So, so I would urge that, you know, if you’re listening to this, and you’re thinking of getting into, and you’re maybe in the back office, to lean on the resources that people have got, because this is a genuine career, this is not just a You’re someone’s assistant anymore. This is a career that that your CEO, your CEO, your GM, whichever way you want to call it a very important in running the business, they’re very important in the profitability in the business, which cascades to the stakeholders. Profitability is also means that you can pay for better escape rooms. So but it makes the world go round in, you know, obviously a positive environment. So, Ben with in relation to the vision of the future, I’m going to ask you specifically in relation to the hyper specialization of the industry. So you guys are life insurance specialists? Is it true that you’ve got referrals from other financial pundits?

Ben Donald
Yeah. So that was one of the strengths of us going into a one of the ideas of us going to Australian uni is that we’re, we’re dealing with I think, 20 practices within Australian sorry, seven practices within Australian unity, who were referring clients to us and three at the moment who are looking to sell their portfolio of clients to us. But more than that, and this is something, again, we’re happy to share our intellectual property on this sort of thing. So within Australian unity, there’s a couple of guys that have maybe 30% of their revenue coming from risk, and they’re not quite sure how to run it better. So we’re actually going down, both Shawn and I to sit with the general manager of the business and the owner of the business and talk through how we might improve their processes and systems because ultimately, the more that we can help everybody, the better off the industry is going to be like, we have so few risk specialists and so few financial planners that I don’t think we’re in competition with each other when we need to be working together to make a better outcome for all the stakeholders.

Andrew Rocks
I actually don’t know the data, but it bears you know, 12 or 13,000 authorised representatives, and I wonder, what do you have any idea of how many would be risk specialists? Yeah, well,

Ben Donald
they said, I think 1500 risk specialists exist. And I think it was Zurich that were telling me that 159 advisors wrote 25% of new business last year, which is a stunningly low number. And I guess, speaks to the point of specialization. I’m glad to report that we have three of those 159, which is which is great. So we’ve just got the scale to be able to keep growing.

Andrew Rocks
Well, that’s good. And look, I think, I think our industry has been in a tunnel I put I think the light is no longer an oncoming train. I think it might be the end of the tunnel and hopefully fingers and toes crossed. Well, look, I’d like to thank Shana was your first podcast today, a big shout out a big shout out and and benfit for joining us in the engine room. My objective when I was doing the engine room is to find different types of businesses, but more importantly, how they then fit in together to create the positive outcomes for clients. Because clients are a stakeholder and the general public’s a stakeholder. I often wish that more people with the general public would listen to the professionalism and the passion that we have as practitioners for their outcomes. And I’m sure over time as as more and more positive stories come out. That’ll be the case. So with that in mind, I’d love to thank you both for being on the engine room podcast. Thanks, Roxy. And if anyone wants to reach out to you, there’ll be stuff in the links. We’re going to get some nuggets of gold there as well. And for that anymore. Have a great time. See you guys. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.