Hans Egger

AstuteWheel Managing Director, Hans Egger, says the goal when AstuteWheel was first launched in 2012 was to deliver an online program that makes advice practices become more efficient and compliant in their business, so that they can focus on having deeper, more valuable relationships with their clients.

‘To meet this objective, we set out to streamline and automate as many financial planning functions as possible,’ he says. ‘We were also careful to design our processes and tools with the end client in mind. We still apply this thinking today, as we continue to enhance the program to meet the ever-changing needs of advisers and their clients.’

AstuteWheel 4.0 features a secure client portal, enhanced client relationship management (CRM) functionality and practice management/business improvement tools and, from July 2023, direct Xplan integration.

The Client Portal

Prospects and clients provide their information through a portal which is protected by two-factor authentication and the latest cybersecurity protocols.

‘The client portal is an engaging and secure way to communicate with clients and prepare for meetings,’ Mr Egger says. ‘Advisers can quickly create a task list for their prospects and clients to complete questionnaires in their personalised portal. Clients can also access the portal to view an ever-expanding picture of their financial position with useful charts and other valuable visuals making the process interactive and fun.’

CRM functionality

‘CRM requirements are changing as advisers transition to smaller client bases requiring higher touch, value added services and compliance tracking,’ Mr Egger says.

To that end, AstuteWheel 4.0 provides practices with:

• A dashboard screen which enables advisers to track all client advice activity daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.
• Task management which ensures all team members understand what’s required of them for each client activity.
• Compliance tracking of annual or ongoing fee arrangements, FDS commitments and KYC compliance requirements.
• Tailored document and file note templates to suit individual advice practices.
• Ability to track time spent on clients and compare to revenue received.

Practice management and business improvement tools AstuteWheel 4.0 tools include:

• Online questionnaires which include financial health check, mini factfind, goals, values, life areas, estate planning, budgeting, reverse factfind and more
• The goals tool which guides client discussions to make goals SMART and actionable. Goals are then tracked and revised at review meetings
• The scoping tool is embedded in the explanation of the financial planning process, allowing advisers to educate clients on the scope and value of the advice. Fee discussions are much easier when the client understands how much work is being done for them and the benefits they can expect

Direct Xplan integration

From July 2023, Xplan integration will be available directly from AstuteWheel’s database using the Iress open API capability, allowing advisers to combine the powerful client engagement tools of AstuteWheel with Xplan’s back of office functionality.

‘The secret sauce of AstuteWheel is that it has, for some time now, enabled the delivery of compliant repeatable processes that provide a time and date stamped audit trail while simultaneously helping advisers focus on client engagement,’ Mr Egger says.

‘Our goal is to continue to meet the technology challenge, so that advisers can be more efficient and compliant in their businesses and therefore, most importantly, have deeper and more valuable relationships with their clients.’

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Hans Egger

AstuteWheel has launched its latest fintech solution, Astute Insurance Planner, which enables advisers to provide better risk advice more efficiently.

The solution, which reduces the time taken to prepare risk advice to about an hour integrates three FinTech software systems to provide one seamless solution.

It includes an online mini fact-find and risk needs analysis calculator, created by AstuteWheel; a risk research and quoting tool, which is an integrated OmniLife App; and a Workflow, Statement of Advice wizard and CRM provided in Seido. Seido is an integration hub designed by YTML to solve the connectivity challenges advice businesses face when delivering advice.

Hans Egger, Managing Director of AstuteWheel, said, “It can sometimes take advisers up to three weeks between meeting with a client, preparing the SOA and presenting the advice. We created a solution to take advantage of system, process and integration efficiencies to drastically reduce the time and effort required.”

Mr Egger said there is no value in completing a fact find with the client in the meeting. “We have found that clients are happy to provide this information and complete our mini fact find online before the meeting.”

The data supplied prior to the meeting can pre-populate the risk needs analysis calculator and feed into a CRM via an API if required. “The first meeting can then be an informative and educational session where the adviser and the client work together to determine the types and levels of insurance required,” Mr Egger said. “This is where the adviser adds value.”

Using Astute’s risk needs analysis calculator, the adviser leads the discussion by asking questions and the client decides if they want the insurance to cover certain areas or not. The client also decides on the amount they want covered. “Our process ensures that the insurance amounts are understood by the client and are determined by them in the needs analysis process.”

Mr Egger said the future of insurance advice lies in the client being educated and owning the decisions they make around their insurances. “The solution allows clients to see, in real time, the difference their insurance will make and how it comes together to protect their wealth and interests,” he said.

The solution also helps with compliance and enhances transparency. “Our solution keeps comprehensive file notes capturing the decisions made by the client and the insurance amounts that they determined,” Mr Egger said. “The integrated OmniLife risk research and quoting tool app shows side-by-side comparisons for new product options and alternatives for replacing insurances if required. The client can then see it and approve it immediately or request amendments.”

In terms of changing regulation and legislation, Mr Egger said the solution will adapt to ensure advisers are keeping up with changes. “The solution can be adapted very quickly to regulatory changes and legislation, and can implement any changes in bulk for clients. It’s also really reducing the cost of providing advice and giving advisers more time to focus on strategy, not paperwork.”

The integration with Omnilfe and YTML’s Seido has been very successful and AstuteWheel is now looking forward to integrating with more CRMs.

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Creating social media accounts is just the beginning: Astute.

Social media marketing may be helping consumers find and research financial advisers but in the age of digital media, an online presence is just a ticket to the game, according to Hans Egger, director of Astute Wealth Advice, creators of the AstuteWheel.

“The good news is that if an adviser has executed the right social media strategies via Twitter and Google Adwords, for example, and has maximised SEO to improve rankings, then the adviser’s LinkedIn Profile, website, business and social Facebook pages, Twitter and blog should all appear on the first page of a consumer search,” Mr Egger says. “The bad news is that unless each of these touch points is engaging, consumers may simply move on – without the adviser ever even being aware they dropped on by.”

Each time consumers ‘touch’ the adviser, the adviser’s process or the advice business they make decisions about whether or not to proceed, according to Mr Egger. “If the adviser’s blog, tweets, website or social media accounts don’t resonate with people then they can very easily move on – and often do,” he says.

Mr Egger said that ideally, an adviser website should start a journey full of touch points that lead to moments of truth. “It should start as an education process that tells consumers not only what the financial adviser does but whether or not that particular adviser can help them,” he says. “If the answer is yes, the website should also contain a clear call to action that puts the consumer in contact with the adviser and starts the process.”

Consumers, he says, either consciously or sub-consciously, want answers to the following questions before actually making contact with an adviser:

• What is my experience with this financial planning practice going to be like?
• Will I like you?
• Will it be an easy process?
• How much value can you add to my financial situation initially, and ongoing?
• Can I find answers to all these questions before I make actual contact with you so that I can make a decision about whether or not to engage you?

“All adviser touch points present an opportunity for advisers to not only answer these questions but also to engage the potential client in the financial planning process and start preparing them for the first meeting,” Mr Egger said. “Websites, for example, can now include tools such as a welcome video, a five-minute health check and education about what financial planning actually is, to help them to start understanding their own specific financial advice needs.”

Websites can also be used to capture basic consumer data, according to Mr Egger. “Technology can now very efficiently help consumers provide answers to simple ‘fact find’ type questions like, age, date-of-birth, details of dependants, birth dates, financial position, etc., in preparation for the first adviser/client meeting,” he says. “That creates great efficiencies for the adviser – and the more efficient an advice business becomes, the better the outcomes are likely to be for clients.”

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Hans Egger

Many advisers may be living in fear of sending out a fee disclosure statement (FDS) to their client base over the next 12 months, as required by the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms, because they believe they will lose their currently disengaged, but valuable, clients.

“Disengaged clients probably represent between 10 and 30% of an adviser’s client base,” says financial planner and Astute Wealth Advice director, Hans Egger. “Many advisers believe that when these clients realise what they are being charged, they will fail to see value and advisers will run the real risk of losing them as clients.  And as most advice businesses only make 10-30% net profit, they simply can’t afford to lose them.”

Compounding this problem is the fact that many advice businesses have been necessarily distracted with implementing the changes required by the new FoFA regulation.

“It’s taken a huge amount of time and energy for the advice industry to get its head around the reforms,” Mr Egger says, “but no matter what changes the new Government makes, consumer-focussed regulation is here to stay. And as advisers, that means we absolutely have to deliver value, we have to do the work our clients are paying us for – whether they are engaged or not. So it’s time to stop FoFA’ing around and get ahead of the game.”

Mr Egger is therefore urging advisers to start re-engaging with disengaged clients as soon as possible. “In this environment, we have to be proactive in order to remain profitable,” he says. “We have to demonstrate the value of our services well before sending the FDS. Leave it too long and it will simply be too late.”

The challenge, however, is how to engage the disengaged. “There’s no denying that trying to win over these clients is going to be difficult. We therefore have to make sure our approach is direct, simple and all about the client.”

Last year Mr Egger developed the Astute Wealth – Client Engagement Platform, better known as the AstuteWheel (www.astutewheel.com.au) to overcome these kinds of client engagement problems. Launched with the support of industry marketing specialist and business partner, Michael Topper, the AstuteWheel includes a standardised suite of innovative marketing, pre-engagement and education tools, as well as over 20 strategy modelling calculators, video emails, five-minute financial health checks, mini fact finds and a plain English presentation What is financial planning?. Together these tools help advisers explain the value of advice to clients.

“The five-minute financial health check is a self-assessment questionnaire which reveals how financially healthy clients are across the six key areas of financial planning: income, investments, debt management, risk, retirement and estate planning,” Mr Egger says. “It helps clients recognise which areas need addressing and how urgently they need to be addressed.”

Information resulting from the completed questionnaire is delivered to the adviser electronically who can then appropriately prepare for the review interview.

Mr Egger recently put the health check to the test with disengaged clients in his own business. “I sent the video email to a group of disengaged clients I have in my practice. Despite the annual offer of a review I had not seen these clients for many years,” he says. “Since sending the video, 10 per cent of them contacted me. They all came in for a review and they have all since signed on to an ongoing service agreement.”

Clients can disengage for a number of reasons, according to Mr Egger. “It may be that they are part of a book of clients you bought but never met. They might have moved interstate or overseas and found it difficult to visit your office, or they might simply not understand all you can do for them. The AstuteWheel helps overcome these challenges because clients can interact with it in their own time and place.”

Mr Egger says with the AstuteWheel advisers can demonstrate greater value and make clients more willing to sign up to long-term ongoing service agreements, ultimately making the FDS irrelevant. “It simply helps create stickier, happier, long-term clients and therefore more profitable, long-term businesses,” he says.

Since launch on 1 June 2012, more than 270 financial advisers across 90 financial advice practices representing over 30 different dealer groups have subscribed to the AstuteWheel.

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Speaking at the launch of the Astute Wealth Advice -­ Client Engagement Platform, Mr Egger said, “Let’s face it, most people do not find financial planning sexy. It can sometimes be a bewildering and confusing process, leaving clients and prospective clients feeling overwhelmed.
 
“If we want people to more than just accept that they need a financial plan; if we want them to fully engage with the process on both an initial and ongoing basis, then we need a process and tools which are designed from the client’s perspective. We believe that the Astute Client Engagement Platform fits the bill.”
 
The Platform, developed by Mr Egger, a financial planner with 14 years’ experience and rolled out with the support of industry marketing specialist and business partner, Michael Topper, is an online program that both engages and educates the client, starting before the client and planner have even met.
 
“Prospective clients complete a five-­‐minute health check and about you questionnaire online, the results of which are delivered to the planner prior to the first meeting,” Mr Egger said. “Needs have already been highlighted, by the prospect themselves, and it’s a much softer first experience than a 20-­‐plus page fact find.”
 
Having already gathered a lot of information via the online tools, the planner is then free to focus on establishing a relationship with the client and engaging them in the process via the Astute Wheel which includes a standardised suite of innovative tools and calculators. 
 
The Astute Wheel visual illustrates the six areas of financial advice which helps planners explain the financial planning process to clients in plain English.
 
“The Astute Wheel and the suite of tools allow planners to very quickly and very simply explain the power of their financial planning services in a way which is, thanks to the information the planner has received via the online tools, already being tailored to the prospective client’s unique circumstances and needs,” Mr Egger said. “It also offers planners a very effective pricing mechanism.”  

More than 100 financial planners across 40 financial planning practices have paid to use a beta version of the Platform since December 2011 and Astute is now in discussions with several licensees to role the Platform out to their planners.

“The feedback we have received to date has been overwhelmingly positive and our insurance calculator is already being coined by industry experts as the best in Australia,” Mr Egger said.

Mr Egger said feedback also indicates that financial planning businesses enjoy the corporatised approach the Platform lends to the client engagement process.

“We believe that employing consistent processes and methodologies, from first contact through to ongoing review, will drive business efficiencies and improve compliance,” Mr Egger said.  “Having a clearly articulated value proposition, and a review process which clients understand and value, will help financial planning practices thrive under the FoFA environment.”

The Astute Wealth Advice -­‐   Client Engagement Platform (www.astutewheel.com.au) is already affectionately being referred to by users as the “Astute Wheel”.

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