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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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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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AI has changed the rules. Has your firm changed with it?
For years, professional firms have been told to take “reasonable steps.” In the world of AI and cyber security, what was considered "reasonable steps" yesterday is not considered reasonable anymore. In May 2026, ASIC and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) warned that advanced AI models are changing the cyber…
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Five ideas worth borrowing from top performing practices
The most common question I get from advisers, after they’ve vented about timelines or compliance, is “what are other practices doing well?” They want to know what’s working elsewhere, what they could pinch and what’s worth trying. It’s a fair question because the practices running smoothly have usually figured something…
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Advice has got talent: it's just different now
A surge in new entrants and a shifting talent pipeline is changing the mix of candidates advisers are seeing. Here’s what’s actually happening and what it means for your next hire. Watch now Alisdair Barr is Founder & CEO at Striver, a HR-Tech platform designed to help financial planning firms more effectively attract and…
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The two types of AI every adviser needs to understand
Generative and deterministic AI fail in very different ways. Knowing which one you're using is becoming a professional skill. AI is not one thing. For advisers, two types matter, and the difference is not well discussed by AI providers. Generative AI writes and reasons in language. Deterministic AI computes against fixed…
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The true cost of cheap paraplanning
With the new financial year around the corner, every practice I speak to is running the numbers. Client fees, wages, software subscriptions and yes, the paraplanning line item. Timelines have already blown out across the industry and advisers are asking the same question: can we get this done cheaper? It is a fair…
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What your paraplanner actually needs from you
I've spent a lot of time on the paraplanning side of the advice process, and there's a few things that reliably slows the paraplanning process down. It’s easy to blame the paraplanner (and sometimes it is their fault!) but what I often find is that a poorly structured paraplanning request is the reason things slow down.…
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5 efficiency gains that have moved the needle for us
I have used Xplan throughout my entire career as an adviser and, to be honest, I didn’t like it for a long time. It wasn’t until I took ownership of the software and invested the time it deserved that our business truly began to reap the benefits. For a long time I held the mistaken belief that our licensee ran and…