Hey all, just putting in my two cents.
I haven't actually looked too much into the acqui details as I'm free carried in the oppies and was prepared to hold them to see what the next few announcements contained, a little lazy, but I've finally gotten to looking into it all now.
I work in financial planning, actually started off as a Paraplanner many years ago, so have a deep understanding of what they're talking about. Here are some points I wanted to make.
1. Someone says they're worried about outsourcing. But if they can get skilled workers doing SoA's for peanuts vs people who earn minimum $50k a year in Oz writing these things, a weak AUD have little impact given the earnings disparity. Senior Paraplanners in Oz can earn over $100k in some practices. You can't tell me there won't be significant savings from getting a guy to do it in India or Philippines.
2. Writing SoA's is a very process driven (bored the crap outta me), one that can easily be learned with time so I don't have any doubt that it can be outsourced to people overseas, who obviously still need to have the relevant qualifications, ie. RG146.
3. I think they're picking the right space, in between complete automation (robo-advice) and what it currently is, which is very heavy on unnecessary information that wastes time due to additional processing and also leading to more human error. The industry is looking more to robo-advice to try and mitigate any risks of error or bad advice, but there are so many variables and what is the best advice is rarely clear (especially HNW clients). This is where a mixture of the two is required to automate the entering of client details etc and pre-populating fields of SoAs to minimise error and reduce handling time as well, but there still needs to be human interaction within the advice, as the best interest duty of advisers cannot be automated, and there will always need to be alterations to SoAs etc to suit a client.
4. Many file audits by compliance teams require them to go through troves of paper, sometimes looking for something the adviser wrote on a file note or post it. I've heard of a case wherer a client sued an adviser for bad advice, only for the adviser to be let off because of one bit of writing on a piece of paper that justified his advice. So automating the data entry and having everything easily accessible will improve efficiency for everyone involved in the audit process.
That's the main points of what I've gathered from my brief read. I haven't focused too much on the cloud aspect or the structures of the business. Only looking at how it could disrupt the FP industry. From my point of view, it definitely has a shot with first mover, and if it succeeds or does relatively well, I'm sure there could be T/O opportunities from the big 4, as I can assure you, everyone is looking for an answer to all these questions. Happy to hang on to my freebies
(20min delay)