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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Kelly Power

Colonial First State (CFS) and Morningstar has announced new functionality on the FirstChoice platform which enables advisers to utilise existing client data via seamless integration with Morningstar’s AdviserLogic software.

Developed in collaboration with Elemnta, the new functionality enables advisers to open new accounts more efficiently with time-saving pre-population of up to 15 forms, the ability to set up multiple accounts simultaneously, with the process completed via secure and simple digital consent.

“This is another significant enhancement to the award-winning FirstChoice platform which will give advisers more time to focus on their clients,” said Kelly Power, Chief Executive Officer of Colonial First State Superannuation.

“The CFS Advice Practice Profitability Report found that advisers using FirstChoice as their primary platform serve more ongoing clients. The new integration functionality will further enhance operational efficiency for advisers,” added Ms Power.

Morningstar Director of Wealth Products, Rick Di Cristoforo, commented: “For over a decade, our core financial planning platform, AdviserLogic, has earned the loyalty of Australian advisers by consistently delivering a market-leading digital advice solution. With this integration, we’re continuing to fulfill our commitment to help advisers reclaim valuable time, enabling them to focus more on their clients.”

“By boosting efficiency, streamlining compliance, and automating daily processes, this seamless integration empowers advisers to maintain full control over their client data,” added Mr Di Cristoforo.

Shaun Green, Chief Executive Officer at Elemnta, said: “This integration marks another successful outcome of our collaboration with CFS, demonstrating the power of our integration capabilities to address critical pain points in the advice and product landscape and ultimately enhance client satisfaction. As former advisers ourselves, we deeply understand the challenges advisers face today, and this insight fuels our mission to create meaningful operational efficiencies.”

The AdviserLogic integration follows the recent launch of CFS’s FirstChoice Business Optimisation Service which helps advisers implement the Elemnta onboarding tool and integrate managed accounts.

In the 2024 Wealth Insights Service Level Report, FirstChoice was named best value platform for the tenth year in a row, in addition to being ranked first for technical support, ease of doing business and administrative support. Notably, CFS’s FirstTech team achieved top ranking for technical support for the twelfth year running.

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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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Kelly Power

Colonial First State (CFS) has announced new technology available on the FirstChoice platform which reduces set-up time for new and existing accounts by up to 80%^[1].

Developed in collaboration with Elemnta, the new functionality enables advisers to utilise existing client data via seamless integration with Xplan, reducing the risk of implementation errors and the need for the re-keying of data.”

The new technology selects and pre-populates up to 15 supplementary forms including set-up of adviser service fee, external rollovers, AML/KYC and direct debit.

“At CFS we are focused on ensuring advisers have access to market-leading technology.  This major enhancement to the award-winning FirstChoice platform allows advisers to seamlessly and securely access existing data to deliver significant time savings,” said Kelly Power, Chief Executive Officer of Colonial First State Superannuation.

“The new functionality has been developed with advisers, for advisers. Using deep insights from a wide cross-section of practices, we are giving precious time back to advisers to focus on their clients by increasing efficiencies, improving compliance and streamlining day-to-day processes,” Ms Power added.

Market-leading integration with Xplan enables efficient data retrieval, while providing advisers full control over the implementation process from start to finish.  The new user experience allows access extensive data validations via a streamlined process for creating multiple accounts across family groups.

Shaun Green, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Elemnta, said: “Having served clients directly as advisers ourselves, we understand the challenges that weigh on the advice ecosystem.

“During the pilot stage, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback from advisers who dubbed the new functionality incredibly user-friendly, and a significant time-saver. Beyond its simplicity, advisers reported having increased confidence in information inputs and the ability to streamline staff training. In this sense it’s not just a tool; it’s a key to unlocking the full potential of high-quality data.”

“We are excited to partner with CFS to introduce a solution that not only enhances support for advisers on the front line but also contributes to operational efficiency at the business level,” Mr Green said.

Yvette Peucker, Head of Operations at Direct Wealth, has been using the technology through the pilot phase.

“We had no trouble pulling through the information.  The information it had for the client was perfect. We loved the fact that direct debit is there, we didn’t need to go in and out of everything. There are significant time savings,” Ms Peucker said. 

Financial adviser Belinda Barclay also participated in the pilot phase. 

“The integration takes out so much time, like checking the TFN, checking this, checking that. It cuts out clicking back and forth on different pages in Xplan. Making mistakes by doing it manually can be embarrassing when you need to ask the client to re-sign documents. It holds up the process and is costly. FirstChoice client origination is now so much easier than competitor solutions,” Ms Barclay said.

Supported by thousands of advisers across the industry, FirstChoice continues to set the benchmark for service and value for money. In the 2023 Wealth Insights Service Level Report, advisers rated the FirstChoice platform equal number one for overall satisfaction, and number one for value for money, administrative support, reporting/communication and technical support.

Elemnta, which recently launched as a new brand in the advice and wealth sector, has quickly established itself as a leader in enterprise-level solutions. The new FirstChoice functionality is the result of Elemnta and CFS having signed a master service agreement last quarter.

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[1] Percentage estimate calculated based on pilot phase feedback from advisers using the new FirstChoice functionality.

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Given the rapidly growing demand for digital fact-finding solutions in the advice marketplace, Advice Revolution has recruited Thom to drive further growth of their business. They have successfully capitalised on this market trend to date, with their tools currently being used by over 50 businesses and their user growth doubling, quarter on quarter, over the last 9 months. The future for Advice Revolution looks equally bright, with a highly qualified and accelerating pipeline of large practice clients, which will continue to grow via Thom’s appointment.

Shaun Green, Founder and CEO of Advice Revolution says on Thom joining their team “There has never been more demand for digital fact-finding tools and we want to remain at the forefront of digitising data collection for the advice industry. We are delighted to have someone of Helen’s calibre join our team and spearhead the next phase of our growth, as we continue on our mission to help more advisers run their business like it’s 2022”.

Thom says about joining Advice Revolution “I’ve never worked for a product that has such a positive reaction from advisers and practices. Whether you’re a large or small practice, it can be picked up and used straight out of the box. This is so important for businesses that want to innovate quickly and grow”.

According to Netwealth, the need for digital fact-finding solutions has never been higher. Their 2021 AdviceTech report found that over 40% of advisers plan on adopting digital fact-finding over the next 24 months, representing the highest planned uptake across all categories of advice technology.

Advice Revolution’s tools have helped advice businesses from over 30 licensees to streamline their processes, improve their client experience and drive significant efficiencies in their back office. This is helping firms to create more profitable and scalable service offerings, while better realising their existing investments in technology and people.

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(L to R) Shaun Green and Adrian Patty

Advice Revolution and Worksorted have partnered to help advisers reduce cost to serve and improve their technology experience.

The biggest problem for financial advice businesses is the cost to serve. The seamless integration between Advice Revolution and Worksorted takes 30-60mins off their advice process while providing more choice in how they design their own technology solutions.

Advice Revolution is a digital fact find with deep integration capabilities. It helps advisers capture an end to end fact find and connect this data into the next stages of the advice process.

Worksorted is an intuitive, easy to use CRM, Workflow and Revenue system made for Financial Advisers. It incorporates document management, Fee Disclosure Statements (FDS) and Opt In. Worksorted has built its reputation by delivering great practice management solutions to advice businesses. They’ve decided to partner with Advice Revolution as their first specialist digital fact find and client engagement integration.

Nathan Fradley of Lime Financial, the Affinia Adviser of the Year, uses both systems, and says, “The new integration saves me an additional 30-60mins per client on top of the multiple hrs of time savings these applications already provide me.”

Adrian Patty from Advice Revolution says, “This partnership is just the beginning of many integrations which will dramatically reduce the cost to serve and improve the technology experience for financial advisers.”

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(L to R) Shaun Green and Adrian Patty

The Royal commission has doubled the cost of advice for many practices. Fact finding with clients is the most time consuming part of the advice process. Advice Revolution is offsetting this impact by reducing the time to deliver advice via its digital fact finding solutions. Adviser users of the platform are seeing an improvement in compliance, client experience and a reduction in time to provide new advice by up to 5.5 hours per client.

To help accelerate the benefits of digital adoption for advisers, Advice Revolution has recently released a free mini fact find, the first of its kind in the Australian Advice marketplace. This powerful tool removes the need to use PDF-based fact finds, DIY online survey tools, or expensive software…all for free. The impact of this is a better experience for clients and less time spent by advisers, leading to more profit, not to mention more productive meetings.

Founder Adrian Patty says “We want to help Advisers who have borne the brunt of ongoing regulatory change. The most effective way to counter the increased cost to serve is through digital fact finding. So far, only 25% have made this leap and we want to help take this to 100%. There’s so much opportunity ahead with technology and the first step is to go digital.”

Advice Revolution is founded by two former advisers who have both experienced the challenges of delivering advice with antiquated fact-finding solutions and inefficient processes. Other than their experience as financial advisers:

• Adrian Patty is also a founder of XY Adviser, the largest community of financial advisers in Australia.
• Shaun Green worked inside one of the largest licensees in Australia, partnering with advice practices to grow and improve their businesses.

Advice Revolution has recently formed partnerships with Centrepoint Alliance and other mid tier licensees to make the solution available to their advice networks. They also have a range of practices using their solutions, the benefits advisers are experiencing including:

• Saving advisers up to 5.5 hours per new client
• Making it easier to satisfy Best Interest Duty
• Providing a more user-friendly and less time-consuming client experience
• Unmatched integration capability with Xplan

Advice Revolution has raised funding from a number of industry participants, advisers and early users. They continue to raise funds and intend to complete a larger seed round in 12 months to provide market leading client engagement solutions to advisers.

The Advice Revolution team was further boosted in January 2021 with two additional appointments to their advisory board:

• Hugh Bickerstaff is a Venture Partner at Vulpes Investment Management and was previously ex Chief Investment Officer at Investible.
• Kate Holmes is a leader in the global advice community and a tireless advocate for innovative and impactful financial advice.  Kate thrives on being ‘on the pulse’ of technology innovation, is a member of the CFP Board’s Women’s Initiative (WIN) Council and the founder of ‘Innovating Advice’.

From Kate’s perspective “Advice Revolution delivers great adviser efficiency and the mini fact find is the best example of frictionless data capture available. I’m very much looking forward to it entering the US market”

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