Engine Room Podcast #20 – Brett Wright – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, my name is Andrew Rocks. And welcome to another Engine Room Podcast. Today we’re going to straddle the divide between the engine room of a small business and the solution to an entire industry. I’ve got a gentleman here, he’s very passionate about not just solving his own practices problems, but the way in which you can sort of across the board solve problems for other practitioners, which indeed, then solves problems such as the chronic under insurance, and our industry. And certainly further ado, I’d like to welcome to the podcast, Brett Wright.

Brett Wright
Thanks for having me, Rocksy, appreciate it.

Andrew Rocks
And Brett we spoke off off air a few minutes ago and you know, your stories, you’ve been doing this while and I was very, very impressed with with sort of your application and aptitude but maybe give us a bit of a feel for you know, why sort of your backstory, I know that your dad’s in the game, and you’ve been a partner of yours for many years, but, but maybe how you’ve got into pure play life insurance, why you stayed? And you know a bit more about yourself.

Brett Wright
Great. Thanks, Rocksy. Yeah, so I’ve practically born into advice. So dad started our advice business in 1997, the year I was born. So when I when I left school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I did other things for a couple of years. And it was the income protection policy that my dad bought me from 18th birthday that I eventually claimed on that had me thinking maybe it’s time I joined the family business. So that was in 2006. Yeah, got got inserted in sorry.

Andrew Rocks
Tell me a bit more about that. So first of all, yourself and your dad shared that the great year of 1987 which I believe is Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet album. But you were early days you you’ve got a policy for income protection. And what what job were you doing that you injured yourself?

Brett Wright
So yeah, I was the driver for the policy was I was wearing surf boats. So that’s my sport, Surf Lifesaving and rolling surf boats, plenty of jokes that you can make about how they pick a bowtie. You know, throw a brick in the one that doesn’t duck is the one that gets the gig. Yes, but I was Yeah, I did. After I left school I managed the McDonald’s for for a year. So that’s where I, you know, worked at in high school as well. And then I started managing a couple of booths juicers and, and I invented a piece of equipment for Boost Juice as well and sold that to every store around the country and fantastic. Yeah. And it was due to the surf boats. That’s where dad said if you injure yourself and not paying for it for the rest of your working life. So here’s an income protection policy. And it’s jamming, isn’t it? He loves me. And yeah, was it training one day, I was just on a on a paddleboard and took a wave there shouldn’t have been fell down the face of it and snaps my metacarpals in half and broke my hand. So thanks to that income protection policy, I claimed the accident benefit, I wasn’t able to make juices or Boost Juice. And it was during that time, while I was waiting for my hand to heal that I started getting interested in in income protection and what life insurance doesn’t. Yeah, that’s what age we that was when I was 20.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, it’s a really early days. And you know, that that particular events probably fast tracked your your entry into the life insurance and so, so after you’ve got out of boost us having made the thing that my kids probably buy a Slurpee or something like that, I’d like to know, thank you for the amount of money that’s gone into their business over the years. You’ve then gone and sat down with your father and said, well, that thing that you just did that worked out that’s like magic that I get paid for an accident cover. More people should have that. Is that what was going through your mind?

Brett Wright
Yeah, like I’d always had an understanding of what the business was about. So your dad was always pretty good at that claim stories. And then, you know, letting us know of what the business did. We had a we had a really good upbringing, where our

Andrew Rocks
we’re about to leave what part of the country southern Shire?

Brett Wright
Sydney? Yeah, so 30 minutes south of CBD. Yeah, so he had a home office. And so we’d see dad before he went to school, we, you know, when the bus came in after school, we’d run into the office and, and see that as well. And so there’s always something going on. I always had a pretty good general idea of, of what he did, but it wasn’t until it, you know, really, until I claims that I really understood the value of what we do. So

Andrew Rocks
and so what was your first role in that business? Obviously, it wasn’t handwriting, but what was your actual first role within the business is business funding and planning or BFP? For sure.

Brett Wright
Yeah, so yeah, I started in admin. So yeah, started in admin. You know, we had a paper based office so it was a massive room with a wall of files for our have, you know, sort of four or 500 clients and, and it was a pain in the butt every time you had to work on a file or the phone rang and you’d have to go to the room and grab the file and away you go and then go put it back and then the next task and so yeah, that was in admin chief photocopy officer.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, no worries. And when I look at the business today, there’s there, it’s not your normal sort of crafted life insurance business, it looks like you’re very focused on on the business side of it, is that correct? And it was that evolved?

Brett Wright
It’s evolved over time. Yeah. So when I’ve joined the business, Dad, we did everything we did in investments, we did super, we did insurance. And that was, you know, that was what we did. But what we really excelled at and really enjoyed doing was insurance work. So yeah, after after, starting in the, in the admin space, and that’s where we converted the office to an electronic office and, you know, sort of pioneered that in the practice space. And, and, yeah, that’s, and then my interest in advice, you know, ticked up and I just specialized in insurance. And then and then not long after that we made the decision for the business to risk only Well, what

Andrew Rocks
year was that? The drop? The the wealth creation, or wealth wealth side?

Brett Wright
Would have been 2014 2015. Yeah, from memory,

Andrew Rocks
whether the JSE? We did, yeah. And you’ve managed to power through it. And then you’ve, because there’s a theme that we’re getting when we’re talking to practices about specialization? So apart from it being less complicated, what commercial drivers did you have in wanting to specialize in life where you’re getting referrals from other professionals that were or what was it that drove you?

Brett Wright
Yeah, you’re the, you know, the foundation of financial planning is often risk advice. And, and an easy, like, it’s an easier referral for life insurance for an accountant or a mortgage broker, or a GI broker. Whereas for investments, it can be a lot harder. So. So the the referrals might the driver of us going, you know, risk only it was just, that’s what we really love doing. And it’s what we’re passionate about. And, you know, faux fur was sort of kicking off in 2014. And we just didn’t enjoy doing investments and super anymore. So, yeah,

Andrew Rocks
and you you’ve grown up inside the business, you’re a parent yourself, potentially, could be a multi generational business, although, you know, what we’re going to get to, as far as what you’re looking to roll out in the technology solutions side, might fast track you into a bit more of a tech business, which you which is what you’ve got, what went back in 2014? Where the driver of the business steal referrals from existing clients, or did you get like, because off air, you mentioned that those are an accounting solution that you you looked at doing you, you’ve been a solutions person? Can I ask where you’re frustrated engineer? Is that? Is that what it was? I mean, you did mention that the brick thrown at you concept, but But you know, from in your childhood, was there very much an analytical bent to the way you thought about things.

Brett Wright
I just get frustrated by problems that aren’t solved. That’s basically what it is. So there’s probably a hint of my wife would say perfectionism in there as well. Like, yeah, like, I’m an analytical person. Yeah, I’d want problem solved. And I think, yeah, yes, in the life insurance space, you know, in those early days around 2012 had success and I wanted to grow a solution to, to, you know, work with more referral partners and grow the business. So that’s why we developed that technology SMSF life insurance reviews, and, you know, when the CSAC changed, so did the the life insurance compliance as part of investment strategies for for self managed super funds. So

Andrew Rocks
with so, you sold that as a kind of a solution on a b2b to other accounting firms? That’s right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And how did that did that funnel business into your mothership? firm or what was the outcome?

Brett Wright
Yes. So with that, we always Yeah, so we opened it up as a platform. So not for the purpose of, you know, finally business to us, but it was any advisor could use it to work with their accounting partners to do it. So yeah, it was a it was a SAS play. Yeah. So yeah, it was a good product, and it worked well. And a couple of years later, we expanded that into it pivoted and expanded that into KPM, which made that functionality so life insurance, integrating life insurance and advice and renewals and review offers into accounting mortgage broking and general insurance broking businesses as well,

Andrew Rocks
which absolutely complimentary, you know, so. So you mentioned that you’ve any other looking you’re like solving problems. So what was the biggest problem in the life insurance sort of like in Skype, and hopefully part of your answer is something to do with the engine room of the advice practices. So, so what you tell me what the biggest problem was that you identified, and maybe give us an entree into parts of the solution that you’re looking to offer everyone?

Brett Wright
Yeah. So I think the biggest problems are obviously cost to serve. So, you know, all the listeners will understand the the time and the cost, so cost to

Andrew Rocks
serve an existing client or cost to serve, or to bring on a client or everything,

Brett Wright
everything. Yeah, both. So if we put a blanket over it as cost to serve, its complexity associated with needing to use multiple systems to do life insurance advice, and provide ongoing services. And then you’ve got that compliance as well, you know, since LF came in, so, you know, compliance ramped up, revenues dropped. And we’ve got this situation where, you know, providing life insurance advice to most Australians, economically unviable at the moment, and most advisors are targeting high premium needs.

Andrew Rocks
We, before the before this podcast, you mentioned that in historically with your practice, you’ve done in a significant life insurance premiums, I think you mentioned you’ve done $100,000 premiums, etc. And they’re all the ones that you want. And however, you also mentioned that there was a Deloitte Survey, just recently mentioning the reduction in people insured, what was the numbers again?

Brett Wright
Yeah, off off the top of my head. So the thing is, over the last four or five years, the number of lives insurance reduced by 25%, I think it is so from sort of that for me, and I’d marked a three minute mark.

Andrew Rocks
So and that’s Well, I mean, that that’s pretty well documented in the history. I mean, no one really understands how they’re gonna fix it. However, you know, you’ve got a homegrown approach to doing that. Whilst I’m also into having sort of chat about your backstory there. What was your what were your license with, incidentally, with your life insurance business?

Brett Wright
So yeah, we started with financial services partners. So that’s who we’re, we’re licensed with, and then they merge, they got they merged in under IWF, which then got merged in with M three. And now we’re the Australian unity.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, right. Okay. So you’ve found your way into that corner of business. Okay. I call I’ve interviewed quite a few people in Australian unity, they seem to be relatively happy. Shout out to the Australian unity. Business. We are happy. Yeah. So tell me then, in 2012 years, the self managed Superfund business? And at what stage? Did you get a feeling that you’re onto something as far as solving the problems for other life insurance practitioners, and maybe get an entree into the solution that you’re looking to roll out as we speak?

Brett Wright
Great. Yeah. So the the SMSF life insurance reviews platform. When we pivoted that into K PRM. And really started working with, you know, a couple of ASX listed companies and helping them drive their their referral partner relationships and growth that way. That’s when we knew that’s when we knew we’re onto something.

Andrew Rocks
Well did a blow up, like Did it work really well above expectations, it didn’t

Brett Wright
work too well, to the point where they’d be getting hundreds of referrals from their referral networks, but not being able to service them because of that cost to serve the complexity and the compliance risks. So

Andrew Rocks
So you’ve opened up one of the sort of pinch points, and which is wonderful, right? It’s always good to get that but you’ve then had a problem at the next stage.

Brett Wright
That’s right. Yeah. meeting the demand. Yep. So yeah, there’s no shortage of man, Tibet of demand for risk advice. But yeah, it’s how do we actually get through the risk advice process and and the ongoing service piece with renewals and reviews and alterations as well? That is the bottleneck for practices at the moment, the bottlenecks of their growth. And that’s where, you know, those businesses using our KPM platform, we’re having those issues, I was having those issues in my business post li F as well, because remuneration dropped and compliance doubled or quadrupled. And regarding roll, yeah, if I’ve got 30 years to run into retirement in this industry, we need to create an industry solution.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, it was a perfect storm. And for those for those who are new to the game, the LRF sort of framework reduced the Commission’s to 60% for upfront, down from what everyone was typically taking around 80% on a hybrid, and it was that extra 20%, which really was probably the wriggle room if you were slightly inefficient, but now there’s nowhere to hide. Is there in the engine room for life insurance businesses?

Brett Wright
No, no, there’s not and and you might think going from 80 to 60 year old that’s not that significant, but the actual work around the compliance piece, so the advice process and the documentation and SOA started blowing the learning out and so when when you cut that revenue, and you add the complexity in the advice process with the clients that, you know, becomes unviable. And most of them, you know, that’s where we’ve seen a lot of advisors say, I’m just not going to offer life insurance advice anymore. Or I’m not going to see new clients and just service my existing clients. And, you know, it’s quite, it’s quite alarming, you know, the out of the 16,000 advisors in the industry, I think it’s 1700, right, 75% of the industry’s new business. And I think you know, the quote, an advisor ratings report from earlier this year, there’s 150, risk specialists left

Andrew Rocks
as well, we can actually put them all here in my office, we could we could, that’d be a wild party, be honest, that you can cut that young guy, we’ve had this conversation before. Okay, so with them, tell me then this solution that I’m very excited to hear about my background, is running a business that had life insurance components, and also servicing a lot of other clients through a through a back office and sort of a business partner. In the Philippines, we just see that it appeared that life insurance engineers were just left behind compared to all the money that was going into making wealth management and wealth practices more efficient. What was what was the stimulation for you kicking the business off, and maybe give us a bit of an overview?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so the the stimulation or the you know why we founded it was just immense frustration, frustrated by how complex and expensive it’ll become for consumers to access the advice that they need and the products that they need. And then equally as frustrated by how risky and time consuming and unprofitable it become for advisors, and licensees and insurers to help people protect their families, their incomes, their businesses, as well. So that’s where, you know, we just went right, and how are we going to fix this industry issue? No industry stakeholder can solve the problems on their own. So that’s where we started. That’s where we formed together the lifeblood working group.

Andrew Rocks
So So life bid, the this is what everyone’s talking about. I’ve had people on this podcast, telling me I have to speak to you guys, because it isn’t doom and gloom. And you know, what, at the end of the, the tunnel is alight, and, you know, for years, they thought it was just an oncoming train. But they’re potentially saying that with life be that could actually be the end of the tunnel. So tell me about life bid their stakeholders involved. And brutal question to start with? Why did the insurers just sort this out?

Brett Wright
What it takes? Yeah, as I mentioned before, it’s not just an insurer problem. It’s a licensee issue. It’s an advisory issue. It’s a regulator issue. It’s a government issue. Yeah, no single stakeholder consultant that owns on the on their own, we all need to work together. So that’s why we put together the working group for life bit. So we’ve got six or nine, retail life insurance supporting us, we’ve got a critical mass of licensees supporting us as well who represent self employed, employed and self licensed businesses as well. And then we’ve also got our advocacy partners as well. There too, so.

Andrew Rocks
And when you got together on this working group, you know, you brought a lot of a lot of history of your own individual practice that you’ve had for many years that your father still is involved in. What did you find that was the similarities of frustrations with yourself and other practices? And what did you discover through that process?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so we’ve all got the same frustrations that it was all around, we’re needing to use multiple different systems that often don’t talk to each other. So we’ve got, you know, having to rekey data and the inefficiency that comes from that, and the margin of error that comes from that. We’ve got, you know, 50 Page statements advices that are generated in Word documents. We’ve got a client experience that doesn’t live up to 2023 expectations. What do

Andrew Rocks
you think it is, I mean, take me through what a 2023 consumer wants for their life insurance experience,

Brett Wright
was not a 20 to 40, page factfinder and a 50 pages. So I that’s for sure. I think they they want the Netflix experience. So they, you know, they want to, they want to talk to their advisor, they want to work their advisor, but they want it to be done efficiently and digitally, as well. So that’s, I think that’s the next iteration. At that moment, as advisors were picking up our clients driving them down to Blockbuster to get a VHS. And then we’re doing that each year, at renewal time, when really they want that Netflix experience where they can do what they need to do on on any device and then get on with it. And so

Andrew Rocks
and so in relation to life bed, maybe give us an idea of of how it solves or how it’s purporting to solve the problems of onboarding a client and, and from discussion earlier, it’s got to do with connectivity. So because you’re part of an ecosystem, and you mentioned six of nine of the life insurance, and look, I’ll probably chat later about that. I mean, if you’re a life insurer, and you’re You’re listening to this he is someone who is desperately wanting to keep you in business in Australia, and you’ve just lost a million customers. So, you know, maybe I can be that guy, you bought a car? I’m more than happy to do that a bit. Yeah. What how? How are you solving those problems? Because it’s a big motherhood statement.

Brett Wright
Yeah. So I think, you know, we’re doing what it says on the tin fixing life insurance advice. How we’re doing that is we are developing an end to end platform for advisors to use to manage their clients life insurance needs, and upfront and on an ongoing basis as well. So

Andrew Rocks
So does that sit alongside the current tech stack? You know, if I’m talking to other sort of GMs, and CIOs and they’ll rattle off their their tech stack, and it could be anything from midwinter vice logic or ex plans? does it sit alongside? Or is it or is it does it? Does it complement them? Or is it doesn’t replace part of that process?

Brett Wright
So if you’re a specialist, what were what were the end goal for life, but is it you’d be able to use last bit to do your referrals, your advice, your renewals, your reviews, your alterations, your claims, tasks, and workflow management. So we want to, we want to take away the need for all the current need for advisors to use multiple, often siloed systems and put that into one system. If you’re a holistic planner, or sit alongside complementary to tech stack, and so that you can get your clients life insurance needs looked after really quickly in life, and then use your other systems for investments and super and retirement planning and all that sort of stuff.

Andrew Rocks
What’s an example give me a couple of examples of our life been removed some of the friction? Yep.

Brett Wright
Okay. So, you know, typically, it’s pretty well documented that the average new business process takes 10 to 15 hours for you to help tell the client what basic life insurance needs. And in one end to end in one end to end process, we’re cutting that time and cost to serve up to 90%. So education is educating the client about what covers are relevant to them, the scope in and the type of device that they want, whether it’s comprehensive or goals based, or this one, some options, right through to the fact finding the needs analysis, pre assessments, researching comparisons, strategy, soon to be the SOA which is soon to be gone. But you know, that fit for purpose advice, document done digitally, all the way through to implementing the cover as well. And

Andrew Rocks
a big part of that. A big Sorry to interrupt a big part of it sounds like you really had to get everyone involved. So how hard was it? I mean, you had some track record, right? You did done this before. And you’ve got some some lineage in in the life insurance industry, but how was it? How hard was it to get like minded peers, who I’m looking on your website, you’ve got the US brokers life, Australian uni Centerpointe, Fortnum, Syncron, NBS as foundation vice partners, so getting them, and also getting all the insurers on at once. Because if you didn’t have the whole myriad of stakeholders then wouldn’t have worked. So personally, how much personal effort and combination of threatened Begg did you have to do to get this going?

Brett Wright
It wasn’t really threatened Vega it was just, it was just a alignment of right. Well, we need to fix advice. We need to fix life insurance advice, that’s going to benefit consumers that will benefit advisors that will benefit licensees or benefit insurers. And then how are we going to work together as an industry working group as an as it and as an industry project to make the solution happen? So you know, we all we all have different interpretations of what life insurance advice looks like, but how do we come up with a platform and a solution that cuts the time and costs to make risk advice economically viable for for, you know, most, if not all Australians. And do that in a way that everybody can compete on a fair and level playing field as well, because at the end of the day, licensees compete against each other insurers compete against each other as well. And yeah, so that’s so I think the group came together on a common ground of we need to fix life insurance advice for the benefit of consumers and the wider industry. And and that’s where we’ve come that’s where that’s that’s how we got everybody together. It was it was a huge effort. It wasn’t vegan threat, but it was a huge effort aligning everybody’s interests.

Andrew Rocks
I mean, the figures of I think you mentioned 150, or 170, life insurance specialists in Australia In Australia is just just mean those people could easily have just shut up shop and just said, Well, we’ve got this oligopoly, they’re probably going to make money if they’re big enough anyway. But I think it’s the nature of financial services and wanting to help not just their clients but each other, that they’ve jumped on this, these to enable, in particular those those businesses that do life insurance as well as their as their as their wealth because I really think that they’re the most challenged when it comes to the profitability of that division within their business, because they lacked the scale and the operations even if, if it’s if it’s home grown, to be able to compete. ate? And how will life be then work in sort of a one or two person practice? What What will it bring to them as far as retention of clients? So you’ve got a book of business? Does there? Is there flows of information? It sounds like the insurers are on board to, to flow the data. Is that right?

Brett Wright
That’s right. Yeah. So the insurer is not just, you know, working with us on the new business process, but also the renewals and the review process. So if you think about, you know, having your list of renewals all in one spot, you’re not having to check multiple places to get your renewal lists, generating the renewal packs for you, so that you’re not having to spend that time getting data from portals and putting together schedules and, you know, revisiting Why do they have this cover, then, you know, life bill will manage the review of that renewal pack with the client and the advisor as well. And if they’d like to make any changes just streamline in that that alteration process as well

Andrew Rocks
feel like the company that’s gonna get hurt the most out of this is the company that provides the whole music for the life insurers, I think there’s going to be a massive run on that as much as as much as we’ve all got very accustomed to the literally six pieces of music that are on the the insurers, you know, eliminating that. Because the clients of the practice, they don’t care how much work you’ve got to do. They just quit. They want the Netflix experience, as you said, yeah, they want it to be seamless. And it’s actually utterly befuddling to the Australian public that it is so complicated. That’s right. Yeah. And it doesn’t doesn’t need to be. So in relation to, you know, your, your business you’ve had with your father for many, many years. Typical tech stack. So I mean, you never, you were just doing the normal vanilla sort of stuff, or what sort of tech did you use?

Brett Wright
Yes, yeah, that’s what licensees use as well. You know, the really high end technology of Word, Excel, Outlook, all that sort of stuff, too. So yeah, pretty typical for risk advice business. So yeah, it’s, and across all those things, they don’t talk to each other. And that creates massive inefficiency and compliance risk.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, it does. And it also, you know, increasingly, it’s hard to grow your business organically or in organically if you can’t match that all together. Now, you started you tech team, solving this problem in 2014. And there are lots of people in financial advice who are either working with businesses in tech, or whatnot. I’m actually interested in how do you put it together? So what’s the you know? Do you speak to stakeholders? First, you go and find a development company? Is it in house is an outhouse? What have you tried? And and what would you what are the cautionary tales? And what’s worked for you?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so to start off with, I have a software design background, I used software design at school. So you know, writing requirements and system design and things like that, you know, had a good understanding of finding developers as hard. So we initially, you know, worked with went down the agency route. And, you know, that had its benefits and also as challenges as well, you know, because they have a, they have a certain business model. And then once we started getting serious, that’s where that’s where we, you know, that’s when you hire your first full time developer. And then you hire the next developer, and then you hire a UI UX, and then then you grow the team from there. So yeah, so that’s the journey that we went on, was Yeah, starting out going? Well, this is a solution. This is a problem that we want to build a solution for. Going down the agency route. And then And then yeah, and then hiring our own team.

Andrew Rocks
I want to ask a few other questions, because you know, I’m really enthusiastic about the outcome of life bit. Yeah. But I also need to know a bit about the process and the people side of it as well, because for instance, you’ve then you’ve built this team out directly, and there’s a bunch of good looking people on your website. Are they all in this country? Are they remote? Are they Sydney based? Like how, like, how do you manage them? I’m curious, because I’m going to compare the notes of how how you would manage someone in financial services.

Brett Wright
Yeah. So they’re all in this country. They’re all in Sydney, and they all work for life. But so I live with one of them. So my wife, Cassandra, finance and project management. Say, yeah, so that’s, that’s an easy, that’s an easy box to tick for. Yeah, head of platform development lives, you know, five minutes from our office, right. And then another developer and our UI UX. They’re 25 minutes away from the office. And yeah, so we do a hybrid of work from home and then coming into the office and yeah, yeah, it’s different. Different Strokes, different folks. Some people just like working from home. Some people like working from the office for usual tech businesses, do you stand up and at the start of the day and the end of the day, and you got to work hard to build a good culture?

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, that’s right. And one of the headwinds of of any technology in Financial Services has been the continual regulatory change. And I had a guest actually drew drew burden he was in a little while ago. And he mentioned he rattled off 15 consecutive legislative changes in life insurance over a smart short period of time. Given that you’re throwing everything, the kitchen sink at life beat as being a solution for the industry. What’s your comments on where you think the regular regulatory changes at the moment? Are we done?

Brett Wright
I don’t think is, I don’t think it’ll get any harder. But I don’t think the tweaks have will stop. So I think everything’s will just continually get tweaked. So, you know, the SOA, for example, you know, the QA, I recommended the removal of it, the government’s looking at that, you know, to try and do something by the end of the year. But especially when it comes to life insurance advice, I don’t think you can get rid of an advice document, you do need that fit for purpose. And you do need to demonstrate that the clients making an informed decision. So

Andrew Rocks
because I mean, at the end of the day, and ensure, you know, over a relatively long or short period of time might be up for a large payment, and they really need to know that there was a sensible and professional paper trail for how people made that decision.

Brett Wright
That’s right, yeah. And then it comes down to as well, every, every client is different. And everybody assesses their value of cover and perception of what they need differently as well. So they naturally are always making trade offs around the costs of the cover the benefits that they’re getting. Yeah, and the risks of not taking the cover that they should have. So as advisors, to protect ourselves and to demonstrate, you know, the need to show the the trade off discussion and the journey that the clients been on to land on the cover that they that they that they end up taking out.

Andrew Rocks
And if I if I implement live betting, in my sort of multi discipline practice, once, how does how do I share that data with, with with the other parts of my financial services business?

Brett Wright
Yeah. So we’re, we’re building lifeblood to be open architecture. So there’ll be an open API. And, and yeah, we’re, we’re happy to talk to any other system. So yeah, so that’s, uh, you know, we’ll start off with the we’ll start off with the incumbents doing integrations with them. But yeah, open architecture, with our open API, and 90%

Andrew Rocks
savings. I mean, you mentioned before it takes 10 to 15 hours, I imagine the average, actually, I don’t mean, but you can tell me what’s the average life insurance premium Lord knows was three $4,000 a year, it’s about three grand. Yeah. And to reduce the cost to actually have to serve that down to to sort of two to three hours, should actually put us back on a path of breaching that that that insurance gap. That’s where I imagined and what’s been the opinion of the life insurance companies, because I was actually thinking, it’s, is there any other country in the world where this has happened as an example, and as you’ve been any other sort of tech solutions that you’ve looked to and gone? That looks pretty good? I wouldn’t mind sort of doing that in this country.

Brett Wright
The tech solution that I always reference, because if you look at other markets in life insurance, you know, like the UK went through the, you know, retail distribution reforms, you know, before we did and I think, you know, they’re still still, you know, grappling with the challenges of that in their market, you know, New Zealand’s a little bit behind us, but going through, you know, what we’re going through there, there’s been based on the regulation and the environment that we’re operating in, there has been no other solution that can handle the regulatory requirements in life insurance, to what to what we need it to be. So I didn’t Yeah, there’s no, you know, in our research site, we did do extensive research. So we’ll have this have we reinvented the wheel? Has it been done before and will not hasn’t. So in talking to insurers, and reinsurers, you know, that they’re pretty switched on and about what’s happening in other markets. And you know, there’s no other solution in the market like life, but essentially so. But the other piece of software that I’ve always references zero, so if you think about what accounting was before Xero came along, it was, you know, desktop systems, manual and clunky processes, heaps of paper shuffling and then Xero came along and put it all in the cloud. And you know, accountants didn’t go out of business. They thrived.

Andrew Rocks
I might love zero loves you. I’ve had accounting businesses and, and just the way in which then talks to other cool things. Yeah, that’s the that’s the golden part.

Brett Wright
That’s right. That’s right. And then so if you think about, you know, how zero transformed the accounting industry, that’s the transformation that we want for life insurance advice in the life insurance industry. So, you know, we’re using multiple systems that you know, are often siloed and, you know, advisors are still doing paper fact fines and sending emails and following up via phone calls and texts and things like that and you You got to try and mash it all into this compliance process. And, you know, the genesis of life it is let’s get it all into the cloud in one end to end the system and have an advisor LED technology driven process. So that that needs to be the future.

Andrew Rocks
But being in the cloud, you’re you’re also taking a bit of a cybersecurity box as well. Nothing’s perfect up there, or down there. I’m not sure where the cloud actually is. That’s, that’s a whole other podcast on that one. It’s a philosophical podcast, but yeah, it basically means that you’ve got less transfer of information, it’s all been quite, quite secure there. With with the future of life beat if we were having this conversation and, and you’re, you’ve actually put a stake in the ground, you’ve been building this yourself, you’ve got all the stakeholders in and I suppose now’s the time to gauge the interest for the people you’re looking to help. And when I say that, that’s the advice community ensembles all about the positive evolution of financial advice and and sometimes when you’re doing something, and you think it’s awesome, it’s you need to actually get that gauge and, and ultimately, you’ve got to just do it now. You’re looking to democratize the ownership of life Pete, I believe, one of the first steps in doing that’s going to be the ability for anyone but but you know, I suppose specifically, ideally, life business operators, people who are listening here on the engine room, you’re doing a crowd fund, which, which incidentally, ensemble also didn’t and it was really galvanized our people. Is that Is that something that you strategy of yours? Or what made you do that?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so people always said geez, are a bit touristy for this, but we’ve always wanted to deliver life but as a as an industry utility, so something that all stakeholders can access and benefit from and, and use to compete on a fair and level playing field. And yeah, we we do have, we’ve had some some advice businesses and advisors investors as Cornerstone investors in life, but and we want to open that up to the wider advisor. And last, since a community to have that opportunity to be owners and beneficiaries of what we’re doing.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, I think we should probably, so we might check that in, in part of the podcast, get a bit of a feel for that, from memory that’s happening in the next probably one or two weeks or three weeks, by the time this drops in early October. So we’ll put some details there. And you know, I wish you all the best and Ensemble did exactly the same thing. And the whole premise for that was that we wanted to get people we wanted our story to begin begin with the people we wanted to help, which was the advisors. Advice community and, and I’m hoping that that’s that’s exactly the same with with yourself. It is yeah, yeah. And with with actually starting a tech firm, how when did you make the transition from full time in life bitten and, and as opposed to sort of operating and running your your day to day life insurance company?

Brett Wright
Yeah, so it was 2021 Yeah. So that was when the lifeblood working group formed. And that was when essentially I went straight in full time in life didn’t so I we still have our advice business, but we have advisors helping us run that. So you know, shout out to those guys. Thank you for for assisting there. So. But yeah, the whole focus said 99% of my time is spent on life. But

Yeah, the cornerstone investors. Yeah, yep. Yep.

Andrew Rocks
And Brett, look, thanks. Thanks for that. Um, what I’m also pretty keen on hearing about is you’re in this privileged position where you’ve actually had a bit of a look at, at the engine rooms of practices out there, specifically life insurance practices. And I’d like to know, your insights onto the different models of businesses who, who are doing life insurance in Australia be good to, and maybe just your thoughts on on the future of those those models?

Brett Wright
Yeah, I think, yeah, it’s quite diverse. So we’ve, you know, we’ve got the larger players, the big sort of corporatized risk specialists, and they, you know, they know their craft and, and they’ve really big on on jayvees, and referral partnerships, and that’s working really well with them. And that could be jayvees, with financial planning firms, it could be accounting firms, it could be general insurance brokerages and things like that. So they’re, they’re going really well, but again, they, they, they need the they need the solutions that life is building as well to really drive their growth and, and increase their capacity and capability. There’s the other end of the market where you have, you know, financial planning businesses or even risk specialist businesses as well, where they’re sort of struggling a bit with that complexity and uncertainty and in the in the economics of risk advice, and they’re a bit stagnant at the moment that you know, want to grow looking to grow, want to create some value in their business, but I’m not quite sure how and that’s who we’re helping to help looking to help as well. And then there’s some other exciting businesses that we’ve seen in the market as well that have taken a new fresh approach to targeting younger alive. So you know, they do a mix of fee for service and commission and commission as well. And, and they’re doing really quite well and growing rapidly, too. So. And then there’s the other businesses that have stepped away from life insurance advice that we want to get back into the market

Andrew Rocks
today ones with sort of a dormant business that would love to be activated. Is that right?

Brett Wright
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s it’s really important, you know, we can’t you know, life insurance is a pool of money and currently the pool shrinking in terms of lives insured, we need, you know, more advisors to really drive the growth of the pool and get more younger lives insured because we’ve got an aging pool of insurance as well,

Andrew Rocks
which is an actuaries nightmare. That’s right. So interesting, you say that so, if, if if you can get an efficiency play of, you know, 90% reduction. And I’m out there and I’ve got a business that turns over, you know, $1.2 million. I’ve got two advisors. And, you know, 20% of my businesses life insurance. And right now and from anecdotal and from speaking to a lot of practices, generally, it’s very reactionary, they’ll only do it if they basically get asked to do it, you’re probably going to assist those small business owners as a percentage, more than these big corporates. Would you agree?

Brett Wright
Yeah, I think I think everybody will, everybody will benefit from life bit, but you know, where the real upside for the industry in the, in the, in the, you know, the growth potential comes from is the ability for, you know, the suburban practices to reach the unadvised cohort. You know, you’ve got mums and dads out there that aren’t getting the advice that they need, because the premiums that they’re paying aren’t enough to cover the cost of the advice. So yeah, that’s where the largest upside will come for the for the industry is getting, getting the smaller medium businesses back into risk advice or focusing on it, it could even be an investment, you know, super specialist business that employs a risk specialist. You know, they only do it if they have to at the moment, but they want to grow that side of the business, and they employ that risk specialist. And it’s really exciting. We’re starting to see commentary from licensees saying, you know, risk advice is the next growth frontier for their advisors as well. And, and, you know, some of the licensees that we’ve been talking to, they’ve been running, you know, scorecards on practices, and the ones that do risk advice, well, you know, are often have doubled the revenue and seemingly more profitability compared to those that don’t do risk advice or don’t, you know, don’t see it as a key key component of their offering.

Andrew Rocks
And you mentioned there’s a capital raise of in a crowd fund coming up, and I think that’s only days away. There’ll be details attached here. So when does that close out? Third of October, okay. And look, just playing devil’s advocate, whenever we’re asking people to look into investing and whatnot, I’d like to ask some questions about sort of the governance of the business. Yeah. So with with the people involved, have you got a board or an advisory board?

Brett Wright
Yeah. So. So with our working group, we’re supported by our Platinum ensures that Zurich and onepath. That’s MLC and tal. So, Zurich, onepath, MLC Intel. Yep. And then gold ensures that PPS mutual on neoss life as well. So our group of our group of insurers are the ones that said, Yeah, we need to fix this problem, really want to support advice. And that’s great. So each of those insurance has a seat on our board of advice as well. A curious look

Andrew Rocks
at your website is they’ve gone public as well. So this is not a we hope it goes well. This is they’re they’re staking their reputation on that as well.

Brett Wright
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, well, the industry needs it to go well. So. And then with, in addition to that, we have Austbrokers, Australian unity centerpoint, Alliance, Fortnum, and MBs. And insurance and also Syncron, as well, as the licensees that have been working with us to make sure that you know, by cutting the time and costs up to 90%, you got to do things a bit differently to make sure that, you know, our journeys for new business and renewals are compliant and things like that, and, and when we meet that meet the needs of their advisors, so they, they also have a seat on our board of advice, too. So they’re part of the project and the project governance. And that’s a really important thing as well, because they represent, you know, a couple of 1000 employed self employed and self licensed advisors across the market as well.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, and they’re also got a vested interest in doing that. And, you know, to all those people who were listening to the podcast and for all those people on the ensemble platform, I regularly see Questions and Answers about life insurance and and, you know, a lot of people got into this industry and life insurance was a big part of it. And it’s kind of drifted commercially drifted to the side. So anything that can be done to get that back on the horse, so to speak, is well worth it. And probably what I was just thinking out loud, probably need to get you to have a bit more detail. Maybe we’ve we’ve ensemble that you’re chatting to the people who talk tech and a bit of bit more on how you do things, and we might look at doing that. But why I invited you today is that the backstory is great you were you were born literally born into it. You’ve seen you know the general life business overall business, you then they’ve made the decision with your father to get specialized in life insurance, you then got specialized in business insurance, you pile aid into servicing self managed Superfund and inquiries and building the front of the funnel you then realize that caused a problem and and you’ve been following the bouncing ball and I think that following continuing to follow this and your career and your success is going to be worth the squeeze. So with that in mind, I’d like to thank you for being on the engine room and wish you all the success.

Brett Wright
Thanks Rocksy. Appreciate it. Thank you