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Why every retirement plan should address Support at Home
Most financial advisers have heard clients say, "I'm only leaving my home in a pine box." For many older Australians, remaining in their own home isn't simply a preference - it is an emotional and financial priority. However, maintaining independence often requires increasing levels of support as health, mobility and…
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Three ways to fix client portal adoption
Since 2022, we have run the Finura Tech Health Benchmarking survey, and every year we ask advice firms whether they use a client portal to engage their customers. Every year, more firms tell us they want one. Every year, the number who actually have one working sits roughly where it was the year before. In our most recent…
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Xplan cases changed everything for us
An advice process is much like a piece of string: it has a start, an end and a lot of knots. Around nine months ago, we moved back to Xplan with a simple goal: reduce duplication, bring more of our advice process under one login and make life easier for the team. I took a closer look at cases, threads and tasks, then…
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Trust will define the future of AI in advice
In financial advice, Artificial intelligence (AI) success will be about trust not adoption. AI is moving quickly from experimentation into everyday business. Across industries, organisations are exploring how AI can improve productivity, simplify processes, and create better experiences for customers. Financial advice is…
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The quiet client
We hope that this series of insight pieces drawn from the most recent analysis of Business Health’s CATScan* Client Satisfaction Survey data will help you to deliver the experience your clients are looking for and expect from you, their adviser. The CATScan dataset now contains feedback from over 60,000 clients of…
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A taboo topic: Rethinking industry super funds for retirees and how my perspective has changed
For most of my career, industry super funds occupied a fairly defined place in my advice toolkit. I primarily used them for accumulators or retirees with relatively modest balances. When a client transitioned into retirement, the conversation would often move towards wrap platforms because they provided the flexibility,…
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AI in advice: Have your say for a chance to win $500
Industry data tells us 79% of advisers are already using AI - but more than one-third cite inaccurate outputs and limited integration as barriers to getting more value from it*. So, what does AI adoption really look like across Australian wealth businesses, where is it delivering value, and what do advisers need next?…
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Why new processes fail and what to do about it
Most advice firms don't suffer from a lack of good ideas. Many firms invest in new technology, redesign workflows and they implement compliance improvements. Firms document processes and communicate them to staff. Yet months later, many leaders find themselves asking the same question: "Why isn't anyone following the new…
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It’s time to fix the authority to proceed
When was the last time we really thought about the Authority to Proceed, and whether we can improve it? Investment and advice complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) rose 18 per cent in 2024-25. The single biggest issue was a failure to act in the client's best interests. It made up more than 30…
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Is superannuation still king? The three questions your clients are actually asking about Division 296
Sometimes we can be too clever for our own good, and owning it is the most useful thing I can tell you. Early on, as a planner, I gave in to it — proud of how tightly I could model. Plans tuned to the last dollar, contributions timed to the birthday, every lever pulled. Technically beautiful. Then the real world turned up,…
