Why collaboration is the x-factor to productivity   

The industry runs the risk of being a niche industry rather than a profession if it can only provide advice to the high net worth segment due to the amount it costs to provide advice.

Collaboration was identified as the game changer for the industry to create the breakthrough required to scale technology solutions and innovation and to meet the unmet advice needs of more Australians.

This requires thinking at an industry level how tech solutions fit into the whole advice process.

“The incremental saving of an efficiency from adopting one piece in one area layers burden on other areas because it doesn’t connect,” said Peter Worn, Co-founder and Managing Director, Finura Group.  

According to Entwistle, lack of investment in the technology infrastructure required by a professional industry such as advice, is a major obstacle to scaling an industry wide solution. 

“There’s a history of not paying for technology. We’ve trained the industry to accept that this is provided to you.” 

Building choices through enhanced capacity

If measuring productivity is based on implemented advice and number of clients per adviser, finding ways to enhance the delivery of more advice to more Australians is about greater capacity. 

“If you create the bandwidth to be more productive, you then create the headspace to actually see more clients because you have more time,” said Neil Younger, Managing Director and CEO Entireti. “Most of our businesses want to grow and they’re mostly doing that by M&A, but they would love to be able to service a different segment of the market profitably.” 

Producing greater capacity through enhanced productivity generates opportunities for advisers and their businesses, freeing them up to make choices on how they use the benefits which may not necessarily be business growth and serving more clients.

Productivity is about creating choices, an output which Slipstream Chief Executive Sharon McClafferty said gives advisers the power to decide as small business owners, how they want to utilise their extra capacity. 

“We help them achieve whatever their version of success is, so in terms of productivity, its defined by the owner of the business.” 

Capacity and change make room for choice

Freeing up capacity will not mean the same thing to all advisers, but it does create choice. The group agreed for some advisers, more capacity could provide an opportunity to improve their lifestyle, or to increase the time they spend with clients.

But scaling productivity also requires implementing change which is another central challenge in the evolution of productivity, and again, not all advisers are on the same journey.

“I was in a room with 60 independent financial advisers and only one had turned on Copilot inside Microsoft,” said Peter Worn, Co-Founder and Managing Director Finura Group. “That validates for me that our small business owners are not getting enough information to help them actually implement.”