Firm snapshot
Revenue: $1-5M
Clients: 2,000+
Staff: 21-40
Services: Investment, taxation, business advisory, superannuation, accountancy, lending services, risk & estate planning.
Tech Stack: myprosperity, Xplan, Supermate, MYOB AE, NetWealth, Macquarie Wrap, BT Wrap, Employment Hero
Top 3 areas of focus in your business? Increase Revenue; Increase Efficiencies; Improved Client Engagement

Sovereign Financial began using myprosperity in 2016 after a comprehensive technology search to identify a client portal platform that they could use within their advice business. Back when they started to use the platform, Director and Head of Wealth for Sovereign, Sarah Connolly, said that they were looking for technology to help with streamlining the way they worked with clients in order to help scale the business. A key objective was to enable advisers to manage larger numbers of clients.

“We wanted to increase revenue without increasing staff. We had heard through other advisers about myprosperity, and when we looked into it closely we realised that this was a platform that could not only help us to better engage with our clients but also manage how we collect much needed financial information and keep it up to date.”

Like many advisers who start out using myprosperity, understanding the change management required to deploy new technology was a critical lesson. Sarah admits that in the early stages of rolling out the platform, they treated the onboarding of each client as a product sale and focused on the benefits to the client.

“Yes, many clients see the benefit in using the wealth portal, particularly the peace of mind of knowing that everything is in one place, but we soon realised that this was actually a tool for us. Myprosperity is a platform that allows us to really know our clients and enables us to meet our obligation to provide informed advice.”

Amongst many benefits, Sarah has found the ability to gather insights into all assets and liabilities, not just those that are under management by Sovereign, as key to building a complete profile of clients that allows her and her advisers to easily prepare for client meetings.

Initially, Sovereign experienced reluctance from some clients in making the move to digital but we’re happy to see a 50% uptake in the first wave of rollout of the technology to their client base. “This is something you need to persist with. Many clients embrace the new digital led approach, but you always find some that resist and so you need to train them on the new way of engaging. It’s definitely worth the effort because the benefits to us in terms of efficiency gains are substantial.”

Onboarding of new clients is now completed in an initial 30-minute meeting, usually over Zoom, where the client portal and their entire personal balance sheet is completed on the spot.

“Clients love it when they can leave that meeting with everything set up properly and working on a mobile app. It certainly makes our lives easier as well.”

Sovereign is then able to keep client data updated with the use of a digital fact find which has been customised and branded for Sovereign and made available in the Advisor Portal for all their advisers to use with their clients.

“We have also just recently rolled out a digital Tax Checklist which our accountants love using.”

Like many other advisers, Covid-19 has certainly helped fast track adoption and in addition to completing digital forms, the uptake of digital signing has also seen a substantial increase across the entire client base.

Sovereign’s focus going forward is to identify referral opportunities amongst their tax client base, where they can offer other services provided within the wealth arm of the firm and according to Sarah, myprosperity is an integral part of this.

“Accountants are typically reluctant to raise new opportunities with clients. With the insights we have across the various client portfolios using myprosperity we are now able to run analytics across our whole client base to identify these new leads.”

As an example, Sovereign are able to review mortgages that may not have been looked at for three years or more and can execute a marketing campaign to generate leads for refinancing.

“If anything changes in our client’s financial world we are the first to know, and it means we can offer the right services at the right time.”

myprosperity and HUB24 have announced that from this week advisers who use the HUB24 platform and myprosperity for their clients will be able to use myprosperity’s integrated digital signature capability to sign HUB24 client documents.

This initiative will provide further support to advisers by leveraging digital capability which advisers have increasingly embraced during the COVID-19 pandemic, to facilitate more efficient client onboarding and streamline other processes which require a client signature.

The partnership will leverage HUB24’s open architecture approach and extend integration with myprosperity beyond investment data feeds to allow advisers to digitally sign HUB24 documents. Australian households are rapidly moving online with one recent McKinsey study suggesting clients’ use of digital solutions has progressed 5 years in 8 weeks during the pandemic, meaning digital solutions which enable advisers to collaborate online with their clients is becoming increasingly critical.

This is the first of several upcoming integration announcements between HUB24 and myprosperity, all aimed at helping advisers to thrive in a post COVID-19 world.

Jason Entwistle, Director of Strategic Development at HUB24 commented on the news, ‘Demand for digital solutions that enable the efficient delivery of advice has been growing for some time and accelerated as a result of the pandemic. We are pleased to be working with myprosperity to deliver effective digital solutions for advisers that support the advice process.’

The combination of HUB24’s award-winning platform and myprosperity’s market-leading whole of wealth client portal provides a powerful solution for advisers and their clients to stay connected and engaged with their investments.

‘We have seen an explosion in usage from both Advisers and their clients. Digital document signing, online custom fact finds, and app downloads are at record numbers highlighting the rapid change in how we are all doing business. We are thrilled to build on our long-standing partnership with HUB24 and look forward to further investing in features that will help our mutual partners thrive into the future,’ says Peter McCarthy Founder and Managing Director of myprosperity.

After an incredible turn out for our premiere webcast, Creating a purpose mindset, excitement levels have gone up a couple of extra notches planning for the next episode.

For now, let us recap the episode that aired on Thursday 5 November at 12 pm that was led by Ben Crowe, professional mentor and mindset coach to reigning AFL champions, Richmond Football team, and world tennis number one, Ash Barty. He shared some compelling insights into the human pysche around purpose, connection and vulnerability; those feelings that form your mindset. And the power of a purpose mindset.

“You might be an accountant, you might work in tax, you might be a financial planner, and that’s what you do but it’s not why you do it. That doesn’t define the depth of you.”

Crowe also talks about how humans are hard wired for connection, and his guess for the next revolution (which has historically been based on the human needs at the time) will be an “emotional health” revolution. Our need for connection translates into being part of a community with people around you to help and get help from. It helps to create intrinsic motivations that generally make for happier and more confident individuals, a clearer path to your ‘Why’.

Host, Chris Ridd – Former MD of Xero, and Director of myprosperity got the panelists, Eli Glotzer – Head of Accounting and Financial Services at Macquarie’s Banking and Financial Services Group, Bruce McFarlane – CEO of BlueRock and Stephen Jackel – CEO of myprosperity to comment on the importance of a whole of wealth community, and the need for a purpose mindset for firms. As an example, BlueRock has been one of the firms that have really succeeded during these challenging times because of their philosophies around community and empathy for their clients. Eli and Stephen also discussed the practices and technologies that are being adopted to help firms stand out from the crowd.

If you missed the episode, you can catch up on it here.

Join the WoWcrowd now and you’ll always be the first to watch future released episodes; discover the brilliant line up and theme for upcoming episodes; gain access to previous episodes and special insights reports; and be part of the Whole of Wealth conversation.

If you tuned in to our myprosperity@home series through the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, you would have heard first hand from the accountants and advisers we spoke with about how they were supporting clients in dealing with mental health issues. It stands to reason that advisers will be at the front line of this issue when economic pain is felt and it is often SMEs that cop the brunt of that pain.

Andrew Conway, CEO of IPA, has been a vocal proponent on this subject for some time. In fact, the IPA put out research back in November 2017 indicating 68 per cent of small businesses said that they are “significantly stressed,” and 69 per cent said that their small business is the primary reason for this stress. It’s fair to say that mental health issues amongst SMEs has been a long standing concern which has been exacerbated by the recent pandemic.

Other key players in the advice industry have also gotten behind this cause, for example Xero last month announced a partnership with Beyond Blue in Australia to develop a course that helps advisors understand different ways to care for the mental wellbeing of their clients and themselves. The four-part course covers everything from looking after yourself at home, checking on others to supporting small businesses day to day. It’s now available and free for Xero partners in Australia via Xero Central.

Back to the IPA Survey, 85 per cent of small businesses found engaging an accountant significantly reduced their stress levels. Andrew Conway also noted in a speech he delivered in 2018 that “early studies show that when a small business client engages with their accountant, 95 per cent of them feel a relief in their stress levels,” he said. “We also know that people will turn to their accountant for advice well beyond compliance and audit requirements; this is the power of trust that is divested to us, and one which we must respect and live up to,” he said. It is clear that the advice industry can make a huge impact on this important challenge facing the heart and soul of our economic engine, the SME sector.

So it was welcomed news to see that the government has announced an investment of $2.4M to help train accountants in dealing with mental health issues among their clients. It was reported in Accountants Daily this week that the Department of Innovation, Science, Energy and Resources (DISER) has awarded the IPA-Deakin SME Research Centre a $2.24 million grant for its Supporting Small Business Advisors for Better Mental Health project to train 5,000 accountants by 2022.

The grant will help fund the rollout of a sector-wide continuous professional development program for accountants and will be delivered by Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand (CA ANZ), CPA Australia and the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA).

Firm snapshot

Revenue: $10-20M

Clients: 500-1,000

Staff: 21-40

Services: Investment Management, Asset Allocation Services, Cash flow & Budgeting Management, Superannuation & Retirement Planning, Retirement Income Streams, Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF), Estate Planning & Asset Protection, Tax Planning, Accounting.

Tech stack: myprosperity, AdviserLogic, Xero Practice Manager, Class Super, Lonsec, Iress Knowledge Centre, MailChimp.

Top 5 areas of focus in your business? 1) Making the complex simple for clients and staff, 2) Delivering value with excellence 3) maintaining ethical and professional standards 4) running a lean and efficient practice 4) Using technology to provide an inclusive, lifetime accuracy and reliable client interface.

Much is written about how to grow your practice, how to scale using technology to provide personalised advice to more clients.

Not much is written about those who are happy with where they’re at. Exploring reasons not to grow but rather maintain their client base and the services they currently provide.

That’s what Integral Private Wealth’s Director, David Simon is doing. David has little interest in growing or expanding his practice. In fact, he is quite clear that he’s more interested in his existing clients and ensuring he is delivering clear value and earning the business from both his current and future generations of clients.

“Our clients have high expectations and our approach is to go very deep and detailed into their financial affairs and take a truly holistic view of our clients,” he said.

Boasting a pure advice play with a focus on high net worth clients, Simon is committed to turning his clients into “raving fans” with an unwavering focus on client outcomes. Any new clients have always been generated through word of mouth, but he admits that these days he is very selective about who he takes on due to the enormous amount of time he invests to really get to know a client.

“myprosperity has become a vital element in how we engage and get to truly understand our clients. It effectively takes our Statement of Advice (SOA), which is invariably filed away after signing, and makes it a live and transparent plan for our clients,” Simon said.

Implementing myprosperity several years ago, Simon says the platform helps his firm better understand the customer, serve their best interests and embrace a fee-for-service model.

Determined to build a commission free advice business, Integral Private Wealth was founded on three advice packages as a flat fee for service, two of which have myprosperity bundled as part of the service to the client.

One of the benefits Simon experienced when moving to myprosperity was the ability to have a single source of truth on the financial position of clients and having the platform automatically maintain the data via live feeds. This has led to some positive unintended consequences with increased efficiencies achieved in how advisers within the firm are able to prepare for client meetings.

“In the past it would take us 5 hours to gather all the data on a client in preparation for an annual review. For the clients on myprosperity the preparation has been eliminated. In fact, we often get comments from our clients that we know their financial situation better than they do which is exactly where you want to be as an adviser,” he said.

The future is bright for Simon and the team at Integral Private Wealth as they continue to embrace new innovations that are being made available in myprosperity. In particular, recent changes to the client wealth portal and the mobile app are making a difference.

“We recently undertook to have myprosperity build our own branded app and we are delighted with the client engagement that it has delivered. The customer interface is impeccably clean and easy to navigate which makes for a far better client experience and helps to reinforce our brand as a digitally progressive advice firm,” he said.