Episode two of the myprosperity @ home series see’s Chris Ridd sit down with Tim Munroe of Change Accountants and Advisers to discuss how Tim’s coping managing his wealth management business, as well as what technology he’s had to adopt to survive and the initiate he ran that ended up being a huge success.

Like most advice based businesses in these times, Tim had to quickly transition Change Accountants and Advisers to a working remotely and digitally situation following the lockdown restrictions imposed in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak. Being the type of person who likes to be on the forefront of technology, this wasn’t a huge hurdle for Tim and his staff as they adopted digital platforms to help coordinate internal communication and meetings. Traditionally face-to-face meetings were king at Change when working with clients, but now Zoom has stepped in to facilitate all client meetings. 

AI powered technology is also helping Tim maintain visibility over his staff’s morale whilst they work from home. Tim simply sends out a pulse each day for this staff to fill out and using AI driven technology, insights can be pulled out of that information, giving a window into how staff are feeling and what feedback they may have.

When asked about the challenges his clients have faced over the last 8 weeks, Tim goes on to explain that he has two client groups at the moment. One group will continue with the status quo, behavining in similar ways to how they normally invest as they haven’t been directly impacted largely by this event. The other group are those who had investments in heavily impacted industries like hospitality or retail, and are feeling the impacts of this event quiet harshly. The approach Tim has taken to advicing these clients is using a term he coins ‘practicaly positivity’, meaning that clients need to take the easy, practically steps they can now to secure their wealth as much as possible, rather than waiting and holding on. 

Tim also took another proactive approach when giving advice. Tim noticed that there was an information gap for accountants amid the fallout of COVID-19, and that a pack focused on business continuity for accountants could be potential hit. “We’ve always promoted at ChangeGPS collaboration, not competition. Let’s share ideas and let’s help each other so the average person is better of, to help Australia.”. Tim successfully packaged this advice into a document that’s been downloaded over 2,000 times and ran a webinar that was attended by hundreds of accountants from across Australia. 

You can watch the full episode here.