Tupicoffs started as an insurance company in 1970 and when Neil Kendall joined in 1986, he left after one year. But he remained in touch with the company and in 2002, when Neil was looking to start his own financial planning company, he decided to speak to Gary Tupicoff about launching a financial planning arm at Tupicoffs as they had a great client base. The agreement was that Neil would buy half the business, stop purely providing insurance, start providing financial planning services and obtain independence (self-licensed). It also meant moving away from one product provider to multiple product providers and truly providing the best option for each unique circumstance. 

Through hard work and perseverance, Neil managed to cut 8000 insurance-only policy holders to 500 engaged annual fee paying clients. “Our clients are actively involved and have multiple touchpoints with us throughout the year.” Majority of Tupicoffs client base is made up of 50-70 year old business owners and retired business owners with an average networth of $3 million and a healthy FUM of $3 billion. The challenge Neil faced was predominantly around obtaining data as there are multiple sources and multiple systems. “myprosperity was the only way we could bring all the data from different sources into one central place where we and the clients could understand their full, automatically updated financial position.”

When it came to introducing the new wealth portal and app to Tupicoff’s clients, Neil admits it was a mixed reaction and had to position the portal differently to communicate the value for each kind of client. “70% of our clients understood that this was a part of our service moving forward and were happy to have consolidated access to their information. 20% couldn’t see any value, as they believed we should just manage everything on their behalf and then 10% who were security conscious.”

With the 20% of clients who just wanted the firm to take care of their finances, Neil tweaked the conversation to say, “Not only will you get the information, so will we. Instead of us contacting you for bits of information, we obtain it directly with the portal.” This worked incredibly well; clients were then happy for Tupicoffs to have access to their data to add value to their services to them. The security conscious 10% manually upload data when needed, but still get all the other benefits of the app. Every client household has the Tupicoffs app downloaded on their ipad and smartphone.

Neil mentions that each of the 9 financial planners are responsible for introducing the Tupicoffs client portal and app to their clients. Each adviser can already add in various points of data then set up a zoom meeting to help them go through the remainder, which only takes 20 minutes. Neil mentions, “We have bigger clients with high net worths which brings more complexity, so they get a lot of value from being able to bring it all together and see a consolidated picture. Whereas typically they’ve got their super fund, their trust, their company, their personal wealth all over the place and they struggle to get an overall perspective. myprosperity has delivered a consolidated up to date view extremely well.”

Diverse data is key for Tupicoffs and because they are independent, they don’t believe clients should be pigeonholed into one investment portfolio. “If you are independent, you have an obligation to consider and recommend various investment portfolio options,” says Neil, “You also need to know how to manage that data appropriately and provide the proper service to your clients. myprosperity has enabled us to do that brilliantly along with all the other benefits the client portal provides.”

Ryan Watson was inspired to start his own wealth management firm, Tribeca, in December 2010 when he saw the amount of opportunity available in financial planning at the time. “Advice was reasonably narrow and product centric,” Watson reflects, “it was clear to me that the Australian consumer wanted more comprehensive holistic advice”. With this in mind, Tribeca’s brand promise, ‘My Good Life’, was made which aims to uncover the client’s short, medium and long-term goals and demonstrate value in each of these areas, for example by minimising tax, creating strong returns and monitoring cashflow with structure. 

Fast forward 11 years, Tribeca now looks after 800 families, has grown to 20 staff which includes 7 financial advisors and is about to hire another 2 advisers. Ryan sees an abundance of opportunity for financial planners, “Plenty of people want good advice and we have seen strong growth year on year,” he says. The main source of new client business comes from trusted introductions from an existing client, followed by referral partners such as accountants, solicitors, mortgage brokers and of course, marketing. Ryan states, “Our mission is to build a true financial wellbeing practice”.

Tribeca uses a Financial Planning wellbeing matrix that has a mix of traditional components of advice which help with outcomes such as security and freedom of choice. The team pride themselves on building strong trustworthy relationships with clients to ask the deeper questions that perhaps other firms struggle with.

With any new client meeting, the adviser will assess if there is qualitative and quantitative alignment and if so it will progress to the discovery meeting, where the Tribeca wealth portal is introduced for them to fill out the initial digital fact find within 48 hours. This is where the client journey starts because having information and linking up accounts is a solid foundation to servicing clients in an efficient manner. Throughout the journey there are touchpoints such as getting clients to sign a document, sending them a push notification, storing documents and goal tracking.

“We see the value in occupying that real estate on the client’s phone, hence we make sure every single household has the Tribeca app downloaded on their smartphone and tablet”. With existing clients, Ryan mentions the fully engaged advisers strategically introduced their clients to the portal and app over the course of the year. Tribeca sees the return on the investment in a client portal because all of their clients’ data is linked and it’s a vital part of their preparation for quarterly, half yearly and annual planning meetings with clients.

More so than ever, advisers are challenged by compliance pressures which make them more inefficient, so being armed with information and not having to ask clients every time is extremely valuable. Ryan and the team can also foresee opportunities so that they can add quantitative and qualitative value for their clients. “Having access to assets, liabilities, income and expenditure solved our problem. As we continue to move forward, client experience is key so any friction advisers can remove enhances the experience”.

Interested in your own branded wealth portal?

I had the pleasure to chat with Prashant Nagarajan from Finnacle about how he built his practice, his vision and ultimately leveraging technology to drive efficiencies and make advice accessible for his clients.

Prashant and Finnacle co-Founder Daniel Thompson started their journey together back in 2012 when they were both working for ANZ. As they climbed the corporate ladder and dealt with more complex clients, they realised that most of the people that were reaching out to them were over the age of 60 and wanting to know how their money could stretch for them to retire in two to three years. After four years of the same conversations day in day out, predominantly discussing retirement plans, Prashant felt his job was becoming quite mundane. “I felt my job was becoming a one-trick pony,” he reflected, “there was a clear pattern here, these people should have reached out to us 20 to 30 years ago!”

As Prashant started to think about the younger demographic of 30-year-olds, it was clear that price was a barrier. Interestingly, during the same time, Prashant was about to purchase his first property and found that the opinions of the mortgage brokers, real estate agents and his friends were all varied and confusing. He realised that this is exactly the same problem most 30-year-olds are having.

Prashant started researching and surveying what aspirations 25 to 45-year-olds had and it was predominantly in buying their first home or investment property. Prashant ended up leaving ANZ and joining a financial planning company to learn how to weave property and financial planning concepts together. After two years, in late 2017 Prashant started his new practice, Finnacle. “I had an intuition, it’s now or never”.

The first 12 months were challenging, as Prashant spent a lot of his time surveying the younger demographic in what they actually wanted. There was no concrete data on this previously, so it was not surprising that he uncovered 95% of 25 to 45-year-olds did not have a clear understanding of what financial planners do. Most of the surveys uncovered the pain points around purchasing an investment property or starting a family. No one at all mentioned super or insurances, all the traditional aspects of financial planning. The next challenge was to consider different price points and after much trial and error, Prashant found the sweet spot subscription fee model that works well for his business and the younger demographic.

In the first year of the business, Prashant used paid advertising via Facebook to target his audience. “We wanted to fail fast if it didn’t work, but luckily for us, it did bring in the lead generation,” says Prashant. After the first two years, he was able to switch off the paid advertising and grow his team to six. “The business has really grown in the last 12 months. Time is the initial investment that you need to make to see a return on investment”.

For Prashant, investing in technology like his branded wealth portal has really saved time and brought incredible efficiencies into his practice. “As soon as our clients sign off on the service agreement they are onboarded onto myprosperity and understand its a tool we are going to use with them on our journey together”. Prashant initially thought there may be some resistance from new clients to the portal, however, any concerns were easily answered and there is absolutely no pushback moving forward. “It’s all in your positioning and portraying trust with the client,” he says, adding, “The level of clarity and understanding that goes into a client is significantly higher and being able to have visibility of all of your finances and goals in one place is very powerful.” Prashant has had many clients provide positive feedback about his portal which has complimented his outstanding service and in turn has increased word of mouth referrals. “Having data at our fingertips means we can also be more proactive with clients.”

Reflecting on the last three years since Finnacle first began, Prashant mentions the biggest thing he has learnt is the division of labour and how much you should value your time. “As much as we can outsource back-office work, technology implemented properly can incrementally save you time and money,” he continues, “In particular, we could never deliver our services at our current price, without tools like myprosperity. In my opinion, most businesses will not be sustainable without technology. It’s a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’.”