Shaun Green

Elemnta has released interim research results revealing a significantly deeper-than-first-estimated capacity crisis facing Australia’s financial advice sector.

The interim results reveal that data and implementation inefficiency are emerging as two of the largest structural barriers to advice accessibility, growth, and profitability in the sector, with the findings demonstrating advisers are spending far more time on non-advice work than the profession recognises.

Key interim findings

The following three insights help illustrate the sector’s growing capacity crisis. The figures are drawn from the interim findings of the Elemnta–Marshan Consulting 2025 Adviser Efficiency Analysis:

1. The 41% perception gap

Advice practices estimate that around 45% of their effort goes into non-advice operations, including time spent on implementation, compliance, and administration work. In reality, the figure is closer to 86% – revealing a 41% perception gap in how advisers allocate their time.

This 41% perception gap means advisers are spending almost double their estimated time. Such a blind spot is limiting practices to price their advice services accurately, or plan capacity to reflect their true workload. It is also leaving many operating on razor-thin margins and struggling to remain profitable.

2. Retirement strategy complications

Retirees and pre-retirees comprise the largest users of financial advice services in Australia. The interim research findings discovered an alarming retirement market error rate imposed on advisers from the counterparties they most often deal with (platform and product providers).

When implementing retirement strategies, advisers are yoked by a provider error rate of between 12% and 42%, depending on the complexity of the strategy. Such implementation errors cost practices an annual average of $22,400 (per one hundred clients, per annum), representing avoidable time and financial leakage that is further eroding the sector’s credibility and profitability.

These numbers cover retirement planning only and are distinct from other practice areas which may also suffer similar error rates and inefficiencies.

3. Product implementation performance

The study also reveals a stark divide in efficiency between product types:

• Modern Platforms: Applications cost practices an average of $760 per application, take 8 hours 25 minutes to complete, and have a rejection rate of 12–18%.
• Industry Funds: Applications cost an average of $1,645 per application, take 17 hours 20 minutes, and have a rejection rate of 30–35%.

This efficiency divide means adviser profitability and sheer workloads varies markedly depending on which platform or product providers they interact with.

A system under strain

The interim findings come as the financial advice sector grapples with rising compliance obligations, manual data handling, and fragmented technology. With adviser numbers continuing to fall and demand for advice surging, inefficiency is a defining constraint on industry growth.

Shaun Green, CEO of Elemnta said, “The early results confirm that inefficiency has quietly become the largest cost centre in advice, as firms face far greater profit and practice burdens than we first thought.”

“The perception gap itself is alarming (the gap between what practices think they spend on administration, compliance and implementation and the reality). Interim data shows a clear trend towards advisers either overcompensating for or grossly underestimating the drain of time from non-advice effort. This underscores why some advice businesses are barely profitable – if at all.” Mr Green added.

“These early figures are a confronting set of numbers, and we felt it necessary to release them now to begin focusing the entire advice ecosystem on understanding the impacts and prioritising solutions for its collective immediate benefit,” he concluded.

Elemnta-Marshan Consulting 2025 Adviser Efficiency Analysis

The full report and analysis from the Elemnta–Marshan Consulting 2025 Adviser Efficiency research will be released in early 2026, offering the industry’s most comprehensive analysis of operational drag, financial waste and technology fragmentation in advice delivery.

Elemnta will continue to expand its research collaboration with partner platforms and advice firms to track the evolution of capacity and efficiency across the sector.

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Shaun Green

Elemnta today announced the official launch of Adviser Workbench, an implementation solution designed to tackle a deepening capacity crisis impacting the Australian financial advice and wealth management sector.

The platform acts as a central engine, consolidating transactions and workflows into a single, intuitive environment for advice practices and partner platforms. By automating high-volume, low-value administrative tasks, Adviser Workbench frees capacity for advisers to refocus on client service, business growth and long-term profitability.

Shaun Green, CEO of Elemnta said: “The advice sector does not have a product problem. It has a capacity problem.

“Practices are being forced to spend more time on administration than on advising clients. We created the Adviser Workbench to address this. It’s not an incremental improvement; it’s an operational leap that enables Platforms to turn a practice’s biggest cost centre into its greatest competitive advantage,” he added.

“True transformation isn’t about ripping and replacing systems; it’s about making what you have work brilliantly.

“Our modular design provides the fastest and safest path to modernisation, delivering a near-immediate return on investment,” concluded Green.

Advice sector under strain

The launch comes as the Australian financial advice sector faces unprecedented strain. Rising compliance obligations and growing administrative workloads are stretching the traditional advice model, leaving many practices struggling to keep pace. Advisers now spend over 50%^[1] of their time on product administration, reducing their ability to scale and meet client demand. At the same time, this demand for advice is surging, widening the gap between client needs and industry capacity.

In this environment, efficiency has become the decisive factor in growth and sustainability, yet advisers remain tied up in fragmented systems, manual data entry and time-consuming processes. Platforms, meanwhile, are competing on their ability to improve connectivity, deliver scalability and reduce the cost-to-serve. Increasingly, technology and adviser experience are the primary drivers in adviser platform selection.

Delivering capacity, efficiency and better client outcomes

Adviser Workbench directly addresses these pressures by:

• Reclaiming practice capacity – Automating repetitive tasks to cut administrative workloads by up to 90%^[2], freeing advisers and staff to serve more clients and grow without increasing headcount
• Driving platform efficiency – Enabling platform partners to simplify and accelerate complex product implementation, significantly reducing cost-to-serve and transforming legacy systems into scalable, competitive assets
• Enhancing client experience – Delivering faster, smoother and more reliable implementation across the full advice lifecycle – from onboarding and rollovers to retirement income strategies – supporting greater client satisfaction and trust

Adviser Workbench launches with proven results from Elemnta’s partnership with CFS where its underlying technology has already delivered time savings of up to 80%^[3] on core onboarding processes for advisers using the FirstChoice platform.

Modernise without the disruption

The Adviser Workbench is powered by Elemnta – an intelligent middleware architecture that enhances – rather than replaces – a platform’s existing technology stack. This allows institutional partners to adopt next-generation automation and AI-ready capabilities without the cost, risk and disruption of a full ‘re-platforming’ project.

This architecture is built on an enterprise-grade foundation, with ISO 27001 and SOC2 Type 1 & 2 certifications ensuring institutional partners can have the highest confidence in the platform’s security, resilience and compliance.

Building for the future

Adviser Workbench is the foundation for the next wave of industry innovation: intelligent, autonomous administration. Future enhancements will leverage AI agents and natural language processing to make implementation workflows almost invisible.

This vision is supported by an expanding connectivity suite, set to include Fin365 and open banking in the new year, building on an existing framework that supports over 100 custom Xplan sites and integrations with Midwinter and AdviserLogic. These advancements are positioning Elemnta’s partners to lead the market in an era defined by seamless connectivity and intelligent automation.

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Notes:
[1] Based on preliminary findings from Elemnta & Marshan Consulting’s forthcoming research (2025), not yet publicly released.
[2] Efficiency improvements based on adviser research and feedback from solution design workshops. Results may vary across practices.
[3] Time savings of up to 80% observed in Elemnta’s Originations (Account Onboarding) deployment with Colonial First State (FirstChoice platform, 2025).

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We recognise the challenge lies not with the incumbent industry participants, but in between them.

elemnta has announced key independent research findings that shed light on the severe data-related challenges holding back Australia’s wealth management sector. The research, ‘Data Storm: Exposing the Real Data Challenges in Australian Wealth Management Practices’, conducted by Marshan Consulting, highlights data fragmentation and lack of standardisation as the primary hurdles preventing scalable, efficient financial advice delivery in the Australian wealth management landscape.

The findings coincide with the announcement that influential technology executive and former Westpac Group Chief Information Officer, Dave Curran, has joined the elemnta Board as its Non-Executive Chairman. His appointment strengthens the company’s momentum in addressing the industry’s systemic data challenges. Mr. Curran, one of Australia’s most impactful technology leaders with decades-long experience in financial services, has been closely involved with elemnta for almost five years, and will continue to offer strategic guidance as Chairman as the company continues to expand its market presence.

Research highlights data fragmentation in wealth management

The independent research review from Marshan Consulting offers a comprehensive assessment of the data challenges facing Australia’s wealth management and financial advice practices. The findings, which were gathered through in-depth interviews with professionals and experts and a thorough review of existing literature, identified three core challenges:

1. System fragmentation: A lack of integration between a large volume of different systems and non-standardised data formats are driving inefficiencies.
2. Implementation obstacles: The significant time required for administrative tasks and product implementation, strains profitability and limits service capacity.
3. Compliance complexity: Balancing data collection for regulatory compliance with data minimisation required by privacy laws remains difficult.

Importantly, the analysis identified a significant disconnect between the challenges and solutions described in existing literature and provider offerings, compared to the operational realities faced by advisers, driven by fundamental data issues. This contrast has led to a misalignment between proposed technology solutions and the needs of practitioners.

Mr Curran, Chairman of elemnta, commented: “The wealth and financial advice sector is at a crossroads. Our industry has been grappling with the fragmentation and inefficiencies that arose after the 2018 Financial Services Royal Commission, which led to the exit of major banks from providing advice. The industry is simply not equipped to meet the growing need for affordable, accessible advice.

“The research released today validates the challenges we foresaw, and the work elemnta has been doing for the past five years in putting advanced technology and seamless connectivity at the forefront. Ultimately, we need to ease the burden on wealth managers and financial advisers by providing them with integrated, scalable tools that improve efficiency and reduce the cost of delivering quality advice. This is a crucial part of solving the ‘access, affordability, quality’ challenge.”

elemnta’s Integrations Platform capability enables smoother workflow, automation and efficiencies for industry players through a range of data infrastructure capabilities. As a middleware solution, it is designed to orchestrate data exchange and validation, format translation, and facilitate seamless connection to other systems

Shaun Green, CEO of elemnta, also said, “At elemnta we believe that the industry’s future depends on a strong data infrastructure foundation. The research makes evident a severe disconnect between the top-down technology solutions and bottom-up practitioner challenges. The ‘fracture’ stems from a lack of standard data and system integration at the base of our industry.

“We recognise the challenge lies not with the incumbent industry participants, but in between them. The solution, therefore, also exists in this space, and this is our focus.”

Mr. Green went on to emphasise the importance of investment in quality data infrastructure. “Our goal with this research was to spark an industry conversation and bring awareness to the fact that we are rapidly approaching a new competitive frontier driven by digital-first strategies. Given the scale of pain points experienced by practitioners, power will lie with the product providers who place technology at the centre of operations and customer engagements.”

He concluded: “We’re already seeing the potential of this approach to grow and transform the industry. Feedback from institutions and practices regarding the operational efficiency and service quality derived from our own Integrations Platform supports this promise. The product providers who fail to adapt risk falling behind.”

Read the whitepaper.

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