Jacqui Henderson: 00:00 Advice process. So if you look at the traditional advice process, it has a lot of friction within that process, a lot of inefficiencies. And who’s paying for those inefficiencies? Well, the consumer is because as we get more and more regulatory reform and layers that get factored in as costs, we’re only going to see the cost of advice continue to increase. So the only way that we can really move forward as a sustainable industry is to take the cost and take the friction out of the advice process and make it far more efficient than what it is.
Fraser Jack: 00:37 Hello and welcome to the 100th episode of the Goals Based Advice Podcast where we have conversations with pioneers of the new world of financial advice. I’m your host Fraser Jack, I want to thank you so much for coming on this journey with us. I’d also like to thank a supporting partner Advice Intelligence for powering this podcast. If you’re enjoying this podcast then please help me spread the word and share the experience with your colleagues. In this episode, I chat with founder and CEO of Advice Intelligent, Jacqui Henderson. Jacqui lives and breathes goals-based advice and she’s just published a white paper on the topic and shares with us some of the details and what we could expect to get out of it.
We also discuss the new world advice process and how clients can now co-create the advice with their clients. We talk about goals under advice and the three areas of goals-based advice. If you’d like to view the goals based advice, white paper, you can go to adviceintelligence.com, click on resources and find the white paper section. Let’s hit play on my chat with Jacqui. Welcome to the 100th show, Jacqui.
Jacqui Henderson: 01:47 Thank you. Thanks for letting me be the 100th episode.
Fraser Jack: 01:53 I can’t believe, it’s been 100, well.
Jacqui Henderson: 01:54 It’s taken only 100 episodes to interview me, but anyway.
Fraser Jack: 01:59 Well, there you go. Tell us about yourself.
Jacqui Henderson: 02:01 Okay, Fraser. Well, my name is Jacqui Henderson. I’m the CEO and founder of Advice Intelligence. We’re a leader in goals-based advice technology and what we’re here to do is simplify the advice process and make goals-based advice more accessible to all Australians.
Fraser Jack: 02:18 Fantastic. Why did you decide to do that?
Jacqui Henderson: 02:21 Why? Well, I looked at the industry and having had experience in wealth management and then previous experience in telco and IT industries and the way innovation has been applied to do different industries. I really wanted to see how innovation could be applied to the financial services space, the financial planning in particular. So I embarked on a journey of building technology that really looked at the consumers’ needs around financial advice and have that consumer centric lens around what consumers want to experience when they go and see a financial advisor. And also the role that technology is playing in all of that. I mean, if you look at all consumers, 98% of them have a smartphone and they do most of their decision making activity on a smartphone. So we need to design advice the way consumers want to consume it and interact with it.
Fraser Jack: 03:21 So you embarked on this relatively small journey with a nice and simple journey to create-
Jacqui Henderson: 03:28 So simple.
Fraser Jack: 03:29 ... to create the goals-based advice platform and through the idea that you didn’t have one.
Jacqui Henderson: 03:35 Exactly. So our business, there was nothing. We were big in goals-based advice, but just had no tools, no software that actually helped the client to go through a discovery process first of all and then go through the whole advice journey and linking advice strategies specific to particular goals or particular investments to particular goals that clients wanted to achieve. So we wanted to have the conversation around not outperforming the market, but around what are the outcomes that you want to achieve in throughout your life. So if that sending your kids to private school, buying an investment property, buying your first home, retiring happy, all of those things are what consumers want. So we wanted to have an advice experience that actually fitted in with that. So there was just no technology that existed that supported that experience.
Fraser Jack: 04:34 So as I mentioned before, not exactly an easy journey to embark on. How’s it been and how did you start it?
Jacqui Henderson: 04:43 Well, it’s had its trials and tribulations as any business and startup. But the journey hasn’t exactly been an easy one. I mean, you embark on building this technology, you think it might take a year, 18 months and you’re three years down the track or four years down the track and sort of tens of millions of dollars spent. But you don’t expect that the journey was as challenging as it has been. Developing technology is not the easiest thing and it does take time and especially when you’re doing something that’s never been done anywhere in the world. So it’s really difficult to find the type of people that you need to building the team was really, really important. And finding the skills and the free thinking that was needed to think completely outside the box at all times.
So every feature, we didn’t want to just be another [RSX 00:05:50] plan, we wanted to be something completely different. And we needed fresh thinking, we needed a blank piece of paper and we needed really, really, really smart people to really design the platform, the architecture, the amount of innovation that has gone into this technology has been phenomenal on every layer. So even down to like the language that it’s built in. So it hasn’t been an easy journey, let’s put it that way.
Fraser Jack: 06:26 No, well, I think there’s no startup business that ever came across a really easy journey. But there was a lot of getting people in the right seats and finding people that are willing to back you and finding the people that are willing to come along on the journey. Certainly not a solo thing.
Jacqui Henderson: 06:45 No, this has not been a solo thing. It’s been a vision that I’ve had for some time, but it’s taken some extremely smart people to be behind me in making this happen. So my team is amazing, so just could not have done any of it without them. So they’ve been instrumental in the entire journey. So [crosstalk 00:07:11].
Fraser Jack: 07:12 What does goals-based advice mean to you?
Jacqui Henderson: 07:14 So goals-based advice means to me, if you look at it, there’s three parts to goals-based advice. So if you look at it in its holistic context, you’ve got the goals conversation. So we’ve got 70% of people don’t know what their goals are. So how do you have a conversation around someone’s goals if they don’t know what they are? So that was really important element is how to actually instill a journey or an experience, give the consumer an experience that helps them identify what’s important to them. So we’ve designed a bit of a cool tool which uses augmented reality to really help clients to determine what is important to them throughout their life journey and put that into an order of priority. And then basically then putting some financial facts and then go into the rest of the journey of the advice process.
So we went into that whole goals conversation to be an experience that a consumer can go through in the comfort of their own home or do it with the financial advisor. So advisors also having those soft skills because humans and human behavior is pretty important when it comes to being a financial advisor and really understanding human behavior is very, very important in the role of the financial life coach. That’s essentially what a financial advisor is. So we wanted to provide the soft skills to advisors that help them have those conversations with the clients. So goals conversation is very important conversation to start with clients. The second part is goals modeling. So if we look at goals and modeling, we wanted modeling to be a multidimensional experience that sat behind the customer facing experience.
So we wanted to be able to model the client’s life journey, do all those financial projections because they’re pretty fundamental in the advice conversation, And being able to financially project the client’s financial circumstances, but also their goals and how goal achievability is pretty much the outcome in the entire conversation. So we wanted to model tax law, superannuation law, economic scenarios, their cash flow, their net wealth, their investments, everything, but tie it back to the most important thing, which is their outcome and the probability that they will actually achieve that outcome. So when we look at modeling, we wanted to have that focused around goals. Then the third part is goals based investing. So this is looking at risk in a different way. So also goals in a different way where we can actually bucket goals.
So you can tie particularly investments to an individual goal or a bucket of goals and then look at the risk. So we look at financial capital as well as human capital. We look at the risk tolerance and that risk capacity, which is that financial capital and human capital element. So we do much more robust risk profiling in that goals-based investing scenario with the client.
Fraser Jack: 10:56 It’s been a lot of talk over many years around risk profiling and how it’s sort of this thing that was created out of compliance departments with objective to prove that you know your client. Then these profiles were created with no real rigor or research or academic research. Then we’re now seeing everybody sort of trying to work out how can we do this in a better way?
Jacqui Henderson: 11:20 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for us, we want to understand a lot of the elements around the goal. So the time horizon for a goal, which plays an element in the investments that are got to underpin that particular goal, the amount, also the human capital. So like their income, the income volatility, the amount of years that they have until their retirement, they’re all factors that play out that need to be modeled. So it’s part of how you [inaudible 00:11:52] risks. It was that a lot of that is missing out of the existing.
Fraser Jack: 11:57 It certainly is, but with a standard questionnaire that somebody comes in and answers, they’re going to go, “Oh, I’m going to give you the answer, which I think that you might want to hear. I’m just going to say stuff that I think, I feel like I should be saying.” But as you mentioned, all the other things, there’s certain things that we already know about them that can go into this. And the certain things that we can get out of them in the way of how do you gamify this experience or create a way where the questionnaire or the questions are actually more interactive and more enjoyable.
Jacqui Henderson: 12:28 Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s why we’ve designed it into sort of playing with key leavers. So being able to sit with your client and like play with all the leavers. So play with that goal priority play with the time horizon, play with what funding is going to source that particular goal or the underlying investment for that goal. So yeah, it’s being able to play with the different leavers in front of the client.
Fraser Jack: 12:55 And a lot of the stuff that you talk about these days is around the old world and new world. We talked, I’ve had many conversations about model portfolio theory and those sorts of things when it comes to the investing piece. Talk to me about old world, new world.
Jacqui Henderson: 13:14 Okay. So old world is the traditional advice process. So if you look at the traditional advice process, it has a lot of friction within that process, a lot of inefficiencies. And who’s paying for those inefficiencies? Well, the consumer is because as we get more and more regulatory reform and layers that get factored in as costs, we’re only going to see the cost of advice continue to increase. So the only way that we can really move forward as a sustainable industry is to take the cost and take the friction out of the advice process and make it far more efficient than what it is. So I talk about the old world advice process being this old world where you’ve got power plannings and massive costs. It’s a massive friction within the advice process. You’ve got all the compliance layers. So advice suitability parameters that sit around the different advice strategies that that’s proactive rather than reactive when it’s hitting a statement of advice. So that sort of like the old world, what I refer to as old world. In the new world-
Fraser Jack: 14:24 I mean I think about the old world. I also think about the fact that the client’s not involved co-creating the advice with the client. The advisor is going off to a back room getting created in this mysterious way and then it comes back to the clients says, “Tah-dah, we did this thing and now you have to do these strategies.” This was not that inclusive behavior taking place when it comes to the old world.
Jacqui Henderson: 14:50 That’s exactly right. So in this new world, it’s purely a co-creation experience. So the whole advisor client conversation and the client being able to build their wealth journey with their advisor as an actual experience because they... We’ve done so much extensive research on consumers and what they want from their advice experience and this is a really big part, they want to be able to do with their advisor. They don’t want to be kept in the dark. They want to be informed. They want to be engaged. They want to be educated. So if you look at the smart phones, everyone has one. All they have to do is Google. You’ve got Dr. Google and that’s what advisors are competing against is Dr. Google. So consumers already have a lot more wealth of information at their fingertips. So advisors really have to provide value in the journey, in the experience that they’re providing. So yeah, being able to do that whole co-creation experience and make the consumer part of the process so that they feel that they’re part of the experience.
Fraser Jack: 16:03 Yeah. To me when I’m thinking about new and I also think about the idea that we know a lot more about how humans behave and behavioral finance piece. And yet we’re still pushing down this old road of talking about just their investment or talking like rather than actually engaging them and having them part of the process, when I feel like we can do that, but we’re not doing it in the old world.
Jacqui Henderson: 16:27 Oh, not at all. Then in the old world, you’re basically having a conversation with the client. You’re white balding, a whole bunch of strategies, you’re speaking in a language that the consumer doesn’t understand. Knowing that the consumer has a 70% chance of being visual and they need things visually displayed. So they’re not going to get concepts, you’re like speaking another language to a consumer. So Being able to actually show that visually in a language that they understand, have key call outs, key information, visually demonstrated and showing, you’re going to capture more of the wider audience. So there’s definitely a miscommunication in terms of the language, the advice is delivered in today with consumers and the way consumers generally just interact in their different learning styles. So behavior is a massive part of this.
Fraser Jack: 17:27 Yeah. Now, I’d like to talk about the idea of goals under advice rather than funds under advice in the new world and how is that possible?
Jacqui Henderson: 17:35 I definitely big champion of goals under advice. So I really look forward in the future another Royal Commission years down the track and all advisors being able to say, “Yeah, we were able to achieve 200 out of 300 goals for our clients.” So having that goals under advice type conversation is really important for a licensee to be able to just stand up in that without Royal Commission scenario and say, “Yeah, this is how many goals I help my clients to achieve.” Not necessarily out performing the market because no consumer cares about outperforming the market by percentage, they care about you actually delivering on the outcomes.
Fraser Jack: 18:24 I’m going to introduce a white paper in a minute because we’re going to talk about some of the stuff we put together in the white paper. But this is part of a resource library that you’ve been working on for some time as well around... Well, we often hear the conversation around goals-based advice, “Oh yes, everybody really does goals-based advice. I don’t need to worry about it and the idea around...” There’s some misconceptions around what it is and how it works and what the level of details required around goals-based advice around that in the marketplace.
Jacqui Henderson: 18:58 So I mean yeah, it’s not necessarily a new thing. Goals-based advice has been around forever. I mean, we were doing it in our practice years and years ago. The problem is there were no tools that helped you to actually deliver goals-based advice, to deliver an underpin strategies to client goals and then track them over time. So it’s the whole tracking element, being able to track goals that have particular savings account attached to it or particular investments attached to it. There was no technology that delivered this. So we were the founders of this sort of technology and being able to do this.
Fraser Jack: 19:40 Yeah. Fair enough. Now, let’s talk about the white paper. Why did you decide to write this white paper?
Jacqui Henderson: 19:46 So the white paper is really just an education piece around goals-based advice, but it’s also a lot around the brains neuroscience. So if we look at the brain in the whole human element. So these are the people that you’re dealing with every day as clients. They’re human beings. They have thoughts, feelings, intelligence. And all of those things influence their decisions, they influence their behavior, they influence their relationship towards money. So behavior is [inaudible 00:20:29] fundamental thing. If you’re trying to help your clients to achieve a particular goal and there’s a particular behavior that is a barrier for them achieving that goal, that needs to be identified and brought to the surface. Then to be able to actually talk about it with your client and create new neural pathways to change behaviors so that you don’t have past experiences or traumas around money that might be playing out and why your client isn’t achieving their goals.
Fraser Jack: 21:03 Was pretty much when you say past experiences and traumas, that’s pretty much every client though, right? Isn’t it?
Jacqui Henderson: 21:09 It is. It’s every person on this planet, exactly.
Fraser Jack: 21:13 So there’s a big piece of this white paper that talks about the neuroscience and how it works and how we as consumers and humans work in an everyday environment when it comes to setting goals. And when it comes to tracking goals or keep remaining focused on goals and whether we want to be attracted towards the goal and away from the goal.
Jacqui Henderson: 21:33 Yeah. So there’s many human elements that play a factor in that. So just understanding a person’s motivation system is pretty important. So a consumer that might be, they might have their back against the wall and that’s their motivation. Whereas you’ve got people that are always moving towards their goals, they’re proactive, they’re motivated. You’ve got different types of people and their motivation system is pretty important when you look at how they can achieve their goals and how they can overcome certain negative motivation system elements that can be overcome just simply by putting some simple strategies in place to help them create new and better behaviors.
Fraser Jack: 22:25 Yeah. This is an interesting thing, a point for advisors to think about the words that are used in, when you’re talking about a goal, whether they’re saying they want this or this driving towards this thing or they’re just trying to avoid something else, [crosstalk 00:22:37] they’re trying to avoid the opposite.
Jacqui Henderson: 22:38 That’s exactly right there. Their back is against the wall and that’s the only thing motivating them. But the thing is if their back was not against the wall, you could change their behaviors so they never get into that situation where they’re in so much debt that they can’t afford to get out of their situation.
Fraser Jack: 23:03 You have a section here on optimism around as well.
Jacqui Henderson: 23:07 Yeah. So if you look at optimism, optimism plays into like a person’s fixed and growth mindset. So if you look people either have a fixed mindset so they feel like they are quite constrained in what they can and cannot achieve in their life. So they may feel that they can’t actually achieve their goals. Whereas people with more of a growth mindset, they always see the glass half full, not always empty like a more pessimist attitude. So optimism is a massive part of being able to help your clients with their behavior and achieving their goals.
Fraser Jack: 23:50 And self control.
Jacqui Henderson: 23:51 Yeah. Self control. So this is having that self-control to stick to a plan towards achieving their goals because you may have a goal that’s the outcome, but you need a plan to get there. So self-control having high self-control so that you can stick to all the milestones and the plan in order to achieve that goal is pretty important.
Fraser Jack: 24:15 It’s a pretty big part that the advisor plays in the process to keeping the accountability buddy time.
Jacqui Henderson: 24:21 Exactly. So if you’ve got also within your plan you’ve got notifications telling you whether or not you’re on or off track, informing you along your plan that’s helping to create good behavior as well.
Fraser Jack: 24:37 One of the areas that’s in here that a lot of advisors struggle with is the area where consumers sort of always want to think about the now and it’s very difficult to think of that longterm, that time horizon.
Jacqui Henderson: 24:48 Oh, absolutely. So time horizon plays a really important part. So if you look at time horizon, a lot of people who have a longer term mindset actually have higher savings, higher retirement savings. They are better at paying their bills, have lower credit card debt. So there’s all these factors how mental time horizon correlates with really good money behaviors. So if you thinking short term all the time, it really restricts the brain in looking things beyond today because with any financial plan you’ve got to look longer term. Especially when, if you’re looking at investments, you’ve got to have that longer term time horizon. So when people have short term thinking, you’ve got to change them into thinking longer term. So that’s pretty important in financial planning.
Fraser Jack: 25:52 One of the subjects that I’ve had many, many chats on in exactly how sort of adults learn and remember information, how they have to then translate that information within their brains. For example, they’re auditory or they’re visual type of person or they’re kinesthetic, they actually have to translate the information that we’re giving them into a way that they can remember it. So part of this paper talks about their internal representation system or their internal learning system.
Jacqui Henderson: 26:20 Yeah, exactly. So like it says in the white paper, “Words have no power unless you know what they mean.” So unless a person who’s visual, they’re not going to understand in words, they’re going to understand in diagrams, videos. So we basically need to communicate advice, which is what we’ve been really pushing and advocating is, does a financial plan really have to be a statement of advice [inaudible 00:26:53] this piece of paper? It doesn’t. Consumers want a financial plan delivered as an app based experience that’s live, tracking, visual. It’s much easier for them to sort of connect and consume an app rather than an 80 page document that’s written in jargon doesn’t make sense. They put it in a drawer and never read it again.
So having advice that ties around the different learning styles of people is really important. That visual, auditory, kinesthetic, most people are visual, we don’t deliver advice in a visual way.
Fraser Jack: 26:20 Yeah. It’s about that understanding, isn’t it? The understanding of the information more so than just getting the information.
Jacqui Henderson: 27:39 Yeah. That’s been why we’ve had a Royal Commission because of misunderstanding, not understanding of the advice. That’s the goal problem that’s not being addressed. If you look at everything, the ASIC and FASEA and all of these regulatory and code of ethics, they’re still not addressing the core issue. These layers are not going to help the consumer to understand advise. It’s going to make it more and more distant and more and more disconnected.
Fraser Jack: 28:13 And part of this that I guess that leads us into the next section, which is really around empowering clients to be able to make those informed decisions and take ownership in those decisions.
Jacqui Henderson: 28:22 Absolutely. So enlightening people with financial education and helping them understand what’s actually possible. That’s how you empower them to play an important and active role in their financial and your future life. So empowering people is what they want. They want to be empowered. And if you look at the, I think there’s a chart in the white paper that actually was some Morningstar data. So it looks at the emotional wellbeing of income versus empowerment. So if you look people who are empowered, have higher savings, better income rather than people that are unempowered. So you can say that the way you can empower consumer is by educating and informing them along their wealth journey really has great outcomes for them achieving their goals.
Fraser Jack: 29:28 Yeah, and we’ve talked a lot about the neuroscience is that there’s a lot of sections on the neuroscience. But one of them with regards to setting goals that are really like is this idea of about once you’ve set the goal and then you’re focusing on the goal, you tend to see and that goal almost becomes everywhere.
Jacqui Henderson: 29:43 Absolutely. So an important function of the brain is what’s called the reticular activation system. So that is a natural filter in the human brain. So it filters out our vision, our hearing, our touch and our taste and our smell and all the things, all those inputs that are coming into our brain. So the RAS actually acts as a filter. And basically what it does is if say I had a goal and my goal was to buy a black range Rover. So my reticular activation system will filter out everything that I see visually. And all I will say everywhere I go, I’ll just say black range rovers. So it’s really interesting the way that RAS comes into play in you becoming really clear on what your goal is.
And another really important thing is that clarity of the goal. So the less clarity that you have around the goal, the less you’ll be able to achieve it. The more clarity you have, the higher the chance of achieving your goal because basically that then becomes your reality. It becomes what you see. It’s what you then put out there as, “That’s my goal. That’s what I want.” And you can see it.
Fraser Jack: 31:00 Then as you’re tracking, you start getting that certainty that goes with the clarity.
Jacqui Henderson: 31:04 Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Fraser Jack: 31:06 There’s a bit in here of course around the idea of how do you set goals and a bit of information on the SMART goal. I’m sure everyone sort of knows about that.
Jacqui Henderson: 31:13 Yeah. That’s pretty, make it specific, timeframe, prioritize it, measure it, identify any risk associated with it. So yeah, I think everyone’s pretty much across that SMART framework.
Fraser Jack: 31:26 Yes. I think so. But the thing about when you’re looking at goals-based advice is often it’s not just one goal, it’s not just one retirement goal. There’s sort of a multidimensional type calculations that have to take place when you’re looking at it. So how do you go through that in the white paper?
Jacqui Henderson: 31:43 So being able to do multidimensional modeling. So if you look at computation power, it’s really enhanced the way in which modeling can now no longer be linear. It can be really quite multidimensional. So being able to provide that true asset liability and cashflow calculations live in front of the customer, modeling not only that but also tax superannuation law, modeling goal achievability. It can now be a live customer facing experience. So we can take that whole modeling function which used to sit in the old world or in the hands of the power plan behind the scenes. This can now actually be part of a live customer facing experience where calculations and thousands and thousands of simulations and permutations have been done live in front of customer. So you can really show what is possible for that customer. So you can basically do multiple scenarios.
So you can [inaudible 00:32:48] want to do one scenario that looks at this. We have three goals that we traded off and we applied for different strategies then we did in scenario two. We didn’t have to trade off any goals. We applied these three strategies and you can see then that client option number two is going to give you the best outcome. So you’ve actually got these calculations sitting behind this customer experience that’s actually showing live to the customer, what’s going to give them the best outcome. And that is bringing the whole element of best interest duty into this customer facing experience.
Fraser Jack: 33:26 So you mean [inaudible 00:33:27] to demonstrate that that particular modeling put them in a better position.
Jacqui Henderson: 33:32 Exactly.
Fraser Jack: 33:34 Good. So the next area I guess that we should really touch on in this section in the white paper here is the idea around goals-based investing because that can be confusing for a lot of people as well. It’s sort of what is goals-based investing and how does that differ from saying normal investing?
Jacqui Henderson: 33:52 Yeah, well goals-based investing has been around for a bit. I mean there’s a lot of robo, which I hate that word robo. But there’s a lot of those goals-based investing, technologies in America. You’ve got Vanguard who have this. So basically it’s looking at the traditional approach to asset allocation where advisors in this old world would look at everything and look at risk as one thing. So you would take all of the client’s goals into a single bucket and match an asset allocation based on a single risk tolerance goal. So in my world, in the new world that is not very robust, so it’s really backward looking and it really looks at that expected performance and a benchmark that’s really historically looking backwards in retrospect.
So a lot of this industries is built on this traditional theory and we definitely see flaws in it and so does a lot of financial economists. So we wanted to introduce a much more robust way of delivering investments to consumers. So we wanted to look at it as either a single or a multi-goal approach where you can look at the specific purposes of the funds that are needed. So if there’s a number of goals, we need to look at what needs to fund those goals, what investments need to underpin them. So we can basically underpin particular investment for multiple goals or one investment for one goal and do it as this multi-sided dimensional approach. So basically it just simply considers the risk tolerance and the risk capacity for these either individual goals or a bucket of goals.
Fraser Jack: 35:59 Yeah. And it’s really about saying, “We’re not just here to go into a balanced or high growth or trying to outperform an index.” It’s really about linking every single one to a goal saying, “Where is this money for the goal coming from? Is it out of cashflow? Is it out of debt? Is it out of savings? Is it out of an investment? And if so, what’s the rate of return made on the investment? Or what’s the likelihood that the goal being achieved? Do I need to modify those goals?” All those things about the investing part sort of comes in. At the end there, we have to work out how you have to invest the money and it may not be as aggressive as you need to be or may not be as aggressive because the goal, we can’t afford for that goal not to happen.
Jacqui Henderson: 36:40 Exactly. So yeah, clients can use single or multiple investments to... Or cash flows or even debt to fund individual and multiple goals.
Fraser Jack: 36:51 There’s a section here on the evolution of the financial advisor, talks about what that may look like in the future. And I guess this is really the idea of just like you said before, a blank canvas, if you could skate to where the puck is going to be as the famous saying goes. Rather than just trying to make small incremental changes to what we’re doing now and expecting a completely different result.
Jacqui Henderson: 37:15 Yeah. Well, I definitely say the future of the advisor evolving, especially as you see like machine learning and all of those sorts of innovations play a role in financial planning. Especially like multi-dimensional modeling being now, sitting behind the advisor, supporting the advisor. So I really see a lot of the machines in the future being able to do a lot of that investment, quant, actuarial, accounting, investment management type role in the future. So the evolution of the advisor is really around the life coaching aspect and around client relationships. And because we’re not going to... let’s face it in reality, until machine learning replaces human consciousness and all those relationship elements that an advisor has with their clients, that human element that consumers still need because they need to validate their own thinking with the human. Until that is down the track, until that sort of machine learning and artificial intelligence technology evolves, we really see the role of the advisor needing to maintain that relationship.
Fraser Jack: 38:36 Yeah. Certainly, the systems and the calculators are going to make the advisor and give access to the advisor where they can look good, they can come up with strategies that can be optimizing strategies for the advisor to then go to the client and say, “Hey, look what look at these things we can do for you.”
Jacqui Henderson: 38:52 Exactly.
Fraser Jack: 38:53 And they’ll make them look good.
Jacqui Henderson: 38:54 Yeah. That’s what the machines are there to do, make you look good and that’s what we’re here to do. So we wanted to really support the advisors so that we can make them more efficient and make them look amazing in front of their consumer where the consumer thinks, “Wow, I really loved that experience. That advice experience that I had with that advisor, that was exactly what I want.”
Fraser Jack: 39:18 Yeah. How can people get hold of this white paper to have a read?
Jacqui Henderson: 39:22 Well, they can go to our website, so adviceintelligence.com and go to the white paper section and download it.
Fraser Jack: 39:32 Fantastic. So if you’re chatting to your friends at a barbecue or at a restaurant and they’re asking you about what they should look for in an advisor. What do you say?
Jacqui Henderson: 39:45 I would say using AI technology to provide them with an amazing experience.
Fraser Jack: 39:52 And apart from that, what would you say?
Jacqui Henderson: 39:55 Well, when looking for an advisor, I mean looking for someone that you feel comfortable with, that you want to have a longterm relationship and you want to go on a journey with them. It’s like anyone. My accountant has been my accountant for 15 years. I’ve been on a life journey with him. So I would say the same thing. Be with someone that you trust and want to do a life journey together.
Fraser Jack: 40:24 Yeah. Now advisors are going through a lot of change at the moment. There’s exams and there’s qualifications and there’s all sorts of other things coming in. What tips do you give to advisors and planners out there at the moment around what they can do in 2020?
Jacqui Henderson: 40:41 Okay. Well, I would say this, as I sort of did on a panel discussion that I did yesterday is with great change, there’s great opportunity. So as Jack Welsh put it, there is this massive opportunity to be capitalized on, to really leverage technology to deliver it in a far more efficient way, to deliver an advice experience that consumers are expecting. That like you can design an amazing advice experience for consumers. And it’s not all doom and gloom because there’s technology coming that is going to really help you to provide amazing advice experience. So don’t be focused on all the negative because there is some really positive aspects to come out of all this change.
Fraser Jack: 41:33 Fantastic. If you could go back in time and have a do over and give yourself some tips and advice, how far back would you go? Where’d you go to and what would you say to yourself?
Jacqui Henderson: 41:41 I don’t know if I’d change anything to be honest. Everything that I’ve experienced in life has given me lessons to stepping stones to be where I am today. So I probably wouldn’t really change too much. I mean, naivety, we always say plays an element in anything that you do sometimes. If you embark on... I think this is my third or whatever, start up. Well not that we’re a startup anymore, but I wouldn’t change anything to be honest.
Fraser Jack: 42:13 I love that naivety. You just go, “You know what? I’m going to do this.” Fantastic. So thanks very much. So if somebody wants to keep going with the conversation and keep chatting to you, how can they get hold of you?
Jacqui Henderson: 42:23 Absolutely. So they can contact me on my email address. It’s jacqui@adviceintelligence.com. So door’s always open. I always love talking to advisors, talking to the industry and just hearing feedback and speaking to people and also getting feedback on what we’re doing because we’ve really involved the advisor community in everything that we’ve done.
Fraser Jack: 42:50 Fantastic. Thank you Jacqui. Show number 100.
Jacqui Henderson: 42:52 Yes, the century.
Fraser Jack: 42:54 Done and dusted. Thank you very much.
Jacqui Henderson: 42:56 Here is to another hundred more next year.
Fraser Jack: 42:58 What a good idea. Let’s do that.
Jacqui Henderson: 43:00 And you’ve done an amazing job, Fraser, so well done on the podcast. It’s really helped a lot of thought leaders get their opinions and voice, some really challenging topics that have really sort of come to light over the last 12 months. So thanks for being that voice of the industry.
Fraser Jack: 43:19 Thank you. If you haven’t already, I’d love you to subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice and to continue the conversation head over to our social media channels. We’ll catch you next time.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription obtained through a third party. There is no claim to accuracy on the content provided in this document, and divergence from the audio file are to be expected. As a transcription, this is not a legal document in itself, and should not be considered binding to advice intelligence, but merely a convenience for reference.
