We do bulk imports (override and append) for clients on a daily basis, but has never tried it for maintaining User data. And since I was tasked to update a field (Region Manager Name) for all users, I think doing a bulk override would be the most practical way. But I can't seem to figure out the correct field key to use for the User Entity ID. Is there like a list of the correct Field Keys for the Users data source?

Thank you 😊

Key Features at a Glance

• Tracking: The element calculates the total sum of concessional (CCs) and non-concessional contributions (NCCs) for each financial year.
• Historical Data: Contribution tracking starts from the 2018/2019 financial year onwards.

How the Data is Calculated

The contribution figures are calculated based on the data entered in the Contributions tab within the superannuation plans.

Flexibility and Compliance Details

Manual Overrides: You have the option to manually override the calculated figures for both CCs and NCCs if needed. This is done via the Edit screen for the specific financial year. While in the Edit screen you can also capture:

• Total Super Balance (TSB)
• Refunded Excess CCs
• Refunded Excess NCCs

Notes and Document linking

You can link a Note to easily consolidate all relevant documents/statements for each financial year's contributions in one place, which helps keep all relevant information organized.

Xtools/Xtools+ Contribution Cap Calculations 

The Super Contribution Summary is about to get even more powerful! Contribution cap data will be imported into the following Xtools: Xtools+, Optimiser, Retirement Funding, TTRAP and Lifestyle Goals.

Cap Calculations

Xplan will calculate your client's Personal Concessional and Non-Concessional Cap data by leveraging the existing Contribution Summary information.

• Concessional Contributions (CCs): The system will calculate your client's unused and used concessional cap for each financial year, using previous eligibility for the carry-forward rule.
• Non-Concessional Contributions (NCCs): The system will determine the financial year in which your client has triggered the bring-forward rule.

If you can't see the Contribution Summary on your Xplan site, reach out to your site administrator to have it added to the interface.

💡 For more information refer to this Community article

Why the Change?

No more worrying about an email going out with the wrong signature

• The system now guarantees the signature always matches the sender based on the chosen 'From address'
• It ensures consistency across your communications

How It Works Now

Signatures are now dynamically appended at the time of send, not when you're drafting the email. This applies to personal, site, and group signatures.

• Signatures are no longer inserted into the content when creating an email, SMS, or selecting a template.
• The correct signature is appended based on the selected 'From address' when the email is sent.
• Editing a pre-loaded signature before sending is no longer an option.
• For bulk emails, when previewing, the signature shown is determined using the first client.
• The sender’s signature is no longer included in the message for notifications or acknowledgements.

This updated signature handling applies to: Scheduled Email Tasks, Single Email, Email to All, Campaigns, Portfolio Positions, and Diary.

💡Pro Tip ?

If you frequently use the 'Override From Address' feature, perhaps covering for a colleague or sending on behalf of a different adviser, this update is a massive win! It eliminates the risk of human error in manually adjusting signatures, making your compliance team very happy.

As I send automatic emails each quarter the above password process isn't possible.

In particular need help with "North" datafeeds. Which populates 'Portfolio Account Names' as 'Y30000000 (AMP North) - MyNorth Super'. Not sure if there is a way to change the naming convention in bulk. CSV down load, bulk change then reupload in some way!

Any suggestion other than individually amending 400+ clients respective accounts datafeeds names via the 'cash & accounts' would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Clinton

User feedback highlighted that you wanted a streamlined way for WealthSolver to replicate an asset mix from one plan to another. This insight guided the creation of a new solution to improve workflow efficiency, and also enabled the ability to waive transaction costs.

What’s New?

The Add Investments screen has been developed with a new dropdown option that enables users to select current investment options for the proposed investments.

Transaction Fees can now be waived with a single tick at the time of selecting investments. Once ticked, Investment Fees are waived for that transaction.

These features allow users to seamlessly process a rollover transfer and replicate an asset mix from one plan to another in WealthSolver, making it simpler and more efficient to replicate one plan to another. 

Why we introduced these features

The retention of an existing portfolio is a common occurrence for clients transitioning into the retirement phase, and their super accumulation account needs to be transferred to an account-based pension (in-species transfer).

Further, some licensees require advisers to consider alternative products when comparing super / investment plans, typically requiring the use of a common set of assets/investments to be set across all products being compared.

By providing the ability to seamlessly clone a portfolio mix, apply it to any required plan, and specify within the same process whether withdrawal fees are applicable. You can now quickly replicate an asset mix from one plan to another and complete an in-specie transfer.  

See it in action

Detailed information can be found within the Community here.

Key Features

Simplified Portfolio Cloning: Users can quickly replicate an asset mix from one plan to another with a simple click.

Straightforward transactional cost waiving: You can indicate when to waive transactional costs (such as buy/sell) with a single click within the same process of cloning portfolios.

Streamlined Workflow: The ability to copy an existing portfolio mix to a new plan and, within the same transfer process, waive transfer fees. saves time and provides a streamlined process. 

Next Steps

This feature will be automatically rolled out in Xplan Release 26.2.472.

For further assistance, please contact your Support Team.

The first thing you should know about Advisely's expedition to Perth's FAAA Congress is that we had a sexy elevator. 

It wasn't sexy at first. When it shuddered to life, you’d hear a mechanical scream. But once you reached your hotel floor, a beautiful – barely intelligible, but beautiful – voice emerged from the din. 

“Level four.”

Just like that, you were home. Unburdened from the quotidian concerns of most hotel elevators – engineered primarily to handle the task of efficiently trafficking up to 400 kilograms of meat and Samsonite between levels – this one was free to do something new. Something sexy.

The second thing you should know about Advisely's expedition to Perth's FAAA Congress is that the CSLR was virtually the only thing anyone wanted to talk about. If you saw me there, leering out from behind the Iress candy wall like a trapdoor spider, we probably chatted about it right before I furtively scanned your lanyard. 

Hugh’s piece, linked here, makes this case pretty succinctly. But if you want hard data, consider the second plenary held in the afternoon of the Congress’s first day. It was a panel discussion between the FAAA's CEO Sarah Abood, chair David Sharpe, policy lead Phil Anderson and government relations manager George John. 

During that session, attendees were asked to submit their concerns to a dynamically-updating word cloud. By far the biggest term up on screen, after 267 votes, was “CSLR.” Other popular ones included: 

• “Cslr,” which is the same thing again but using the Guardian style guide
• “CSLR” but smaller
• “Legislation” 
• “Regulation” 
• “Compliance”
• “Cost” 

Call me Valerie Jaudon, but I’m beginning to see a pattern here. So you can imagine the palpable disappointment when, the very next day, Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino took the stage and said basically nothing. 

I wondered how I would spin this. Yet another in a series of articles where I frame “no news” as news in and of itself? Surely not. 

“I hope the Assistant Treasurer announces something soon,” I thought. I had other thoughts, too, like:

• “Maybe I could tie the Minister’s speech to something newsworthy. Anyone died recently?”
  
  
• “I remember when my internal monologue was about how many cardboard tubes it would take to build a rocket capable of reaching the Moon.”

As I pondered the above, two cars sped past our hotel on Adelaide Tce. The first was white, license plate P1NBALL. The second, in hot pursuit, was matte black – license plate F4LLEN. Coal on the wind. 

I knew what I needed to do: I’d go back inside, jump in the sexy elevator, take it up to level four and get to work. That day, Mulino told Congress that the furore over the 2025-26 CSLR levy would be resolved “in a matter of weeks.” Given this government’s history with advice reform roadmaps, taking him to task over that timeline seemed like a safe bet.

Sure, it was exactly the kind of piece I’d been trying to avoid – a self-referential, meandering op-ed that depended heavily on crosslinks to other Advisely articles in order to make any sense – but god damn it, I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, I realised, starting with my first AFA conference in Cairns, and each time I’ve gone I’ve worn the black lanyard; the lanyard of media, the observer, the #content worm, burrowing through convention centres from coast to coast, trying to find something – a quote, a Freudian slip, anything – that my fellow black lanyards had yet to publish in their daily EDMs, so there was no way in HELL I was going to let something as trifling as an underwhelming Ministerial address stop me from putting a piece together, even if it meant going back to the well, even if it meant doing the same piece of commentary over and over again until all is DUST and MEMORY and REGRET, and while I was starting to feel kind of warm while thinking about all this and could’ve done with a change of clothes, I’ve spent most of my adult life telling people on the West Coast that it’s a dry heat, which is categorically different to a wet heat, and you’d know this if you understood why the Bureau of Meteorology includes a “feels like” measure in its daily reports, which is not because they have an intuitive empathic connection with how you, personally, feel about any given temperature range, but because of the scientific fact that the amount of humidity directly influences the rate at which sweat evaporates off the skin, which is why you can’t talk about being HOT AND DRY until you’ve been HOT AND WET –

– but then, just a few weeks later, Daniel Mulino actually came through. 

Dry heat

Two days ago, he announced the outcome of the recent CSLR levy consultation: a special levy of $47.3 million would apply for FY26, but it would be distributed across all retail-facing subsectors included in the scheme. Advisers will pay 22% of the total (or around $10.4 million) over the $20 million subsector cap. 

Credit providers will pay around $6.8 million (15%), responsible entities will contribute $6.2 million (14%) and super trustees will cover $5.9 million (13%). The remainder will be spread between other sub-sectors, each contributing less than 10% each. 

Mulino said this decision reflects the fact that “all of those sub-sectors benefit from there being confidence in the financial services sector and appropriate consumer protection.” 

“It’s also a reflection of the fact that we need to allocate that broadly in order that it’s not overly burdensome on any particular sub‑sector,” he added.

To be clear: the particular sub-sector he’s referring to is personal financial advice. Per the revised levy estimate report provided by the CSLR's principal actuary, Finity Consulting, $67.3 million of the total $75.7 million in costs for FY26 can be attributed to advice-related claims. (Or can it?)

Following the special levy decision, per-adviser costs for 2025-26 will be around $2,000. That’s substantially less than the projected $4,300 each adviser would pay if the $47.3 million excess was attributable solely to personal financial advice, but it’s still well over the sub-sector cap.

In a statement, FAAA CEO Sarah Abood said that this was “unfair and unsustainable,” adding that “advisers paying the largest share of the levy had nothing to do with the misconduct that gave rise to the need for consumer compensation.”

Mulino's decision didn't sit too well with other industry bodies, either – albeit for different reasons. For example, ASFA CEO Mary Delahunty said that asking super trustees to participate in cross-subsidisation sets a “dangerous precedent” that “risks treating retirement savings as a convenient pot of money for solving problems.” 

The Finance Industry Council of Australia, which comprises some of the biggest financial services associations in the country, issued a statement urging immediate reform. Without it, the statement said, "consumers will continue to pay for growing flow-on costs associated with propping up the [CSLR] by entities unrelated to the financial misconduct."

Finance Brokers Association of Australia managing director Peter White was more pointed in his criticism. While he acknowledged that mortgage and finance brokers would only have to pay 1.4% of the special levy, he argued that “this needs to be dealt with within the sector that caused it.”

That’s the question, though, isn’t it? If we go by the letter of the law – specifically, the industry sub-sector definitions included in the Financial Services Compensation Scheme of Last Resort Levy Act 2023 – then “the sector that caused it” is personal financial advice. 

But as Mulino noted following the special levy decision, cases like Shield and First Guardian – not to mention Dixon, United Global Capital and Brite Advisors, which represent around 80% of FY26 claims – arise from “insidious, industrial‑scale practices.” Attributing these practices solely to the advice sector ignores the platforms, research houses, auditors, trustees and lead generators who all played a part.

And that’s without even addressing the fact that managed investment schemes are excluded from the CSLR. Against ample advice going all the way back to the St. John review in 2012, investment products were left out of the scheme’s design to prevent it becoming, in Senator Jane Hume’s words, “an insurance designed to pay compensation to any consumer who has lost money in an investment."

In my view (and that’s all I really have to work with), the decision to spread this year’s special levy across multiple sub-sectors is a tacit acknowledgement of these problems. But it’s not a permanent solution, either, especially given that the levy for FY27 is projected to hit $137.5 million – and could go even higher once the Shield and First Guardian claims start rolling in.

Mulino has a plan, though: in consultation with industry bodies and consumer groups, he's putting together "medium- and long-term options to ensure that the CSLR is fit for purpose." Based on initial discussions, these options include: 

• bringing other industry sectors into the CSLR
• super fund switching reforms
• strengthening regulation of managed investment schemes, including around related-party dealings and capital holding requirements 

These ideas will then be consolidated into a Treasury discussion paper. Mulino expects it to be published in February next year – and based on his mastery of the calendar thus far, I wouldn’t put it past him.

Kings of the wild frontier 

Anyway, you can see why I’m glad I didn’t end up writing that piece in Perth. 

To tell you the truth, I got distracted. On the final night, when I probably could have finished it, Hugh and I went to play darts with the rest of the Iress team. Things started off simple with a few rounds of 301, but eventually a new game emerged – one where each player controlled a donkey and needed to hit specific numbers to progress.

Here’s the catch, though: if you hit another player’s number, their donkey would move back a space. And because there were six of us, you were substantially more likely to move an enemy donkey back than move your own donkey forwards. 

We could’ve focused on our own numbers, individually working towards the benefit of all donkeys, but the rules of the game didn't incentivise us appropriately. 

Common sense tells me that I returned to Sydney at some point – back east, where the city spreads like mycelium and new houses are built over the old ones swallowed by the swamp. I’m sure there are eyewitnesses who could even attest to this. 

I know the truth, though: we’re all still in that pub, sabotaging each other’s donkeys until the end of time. Off in the distance, P1NBALL and F4LLEN rev their engines.

 Any advice would be much appreciated.. thank you

In my last video, I (maybe) sold you on the benefits of niching. But it's not all sunshine and ewoks – you're going to have to get comfortable with ways of doing business that may seem counterintuitive at first. 

So, in this video, let's explore some of the potential downsides of going down this path: 

You should try Dynamic Benchmarks! These will only activate and append benchmarks that are relevant to the individual client’s scenario. If you have a client who is proceeding with advice and requires a document generated with modelling scenarios, these benchmarks can be configured to only pop up at the time of selecting “client wishes to proceed to advice” in your process and completing an advice discussion file note.

The benefit of using Dynamic Benchmarks over standard Benchmark sets is that you aren't left at the end of your workflow process with a list of incomplete benchmarks which are stopping the case from closing.

To go through an example of a Dynamic Benchmark set up, visit the Iress Community page here: Dynamic Case Benchmark Example - Iress Community

Or to learn more, visit the Iress Learning Centre: Dynamic Benchmarks.

I broke up with Xplan. I was done.

Too many things needed to change in the relationship, and there was too little time for those changes to happen. But then, after a period of seeing other software, we got back together. 

Watch the video below to find out how the love affair was rekindled. 

Join our panel of experts – Kerry Ong, Rod Bertino, Simon Clifford and Jeff Thurecht – as they discuss each pillar and share practical steps for boosting profitability in your advice practice.

Is there a way to update the column headers for a Task Widget? Can we simplify and remove some of the default fields showing?

Thank you,

Margaux

As many of you know, from 9 July 2025, advisers providing personal advice on life insurance will need to obtain informed client consent before implementing advice or receiving commissions. (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) Act 2024,)

Now, you can easily record client consent using the new Insurance Commission Consent (ICC) column in Risk Researcher’s recommendations screen. It allows you to indicate whether consent has been received for each product you recommend.

And yes, there’s new merge syntax available so you can include the details in your documents.

This update was the result of conversations with several of you. Many shared that consent would typically be captured in their Advice documents (e.g., ATP) or other consent forms.

For more information, check out the community article Meeting DBFO informed consent requirements in Xplan. 

Now that Risk Researcher supports consent tracking, and lets you include it in your documents, we’re also thinking ahead. Are there other ways you’d like to use this data?

We’d love to hear your thoughts around any other use cases you see for insurance fee consent. Let us know in this thread!

Policy search is specifically designed to search across existing insurance policies - it enables targeted searches that would be difficult to achieve with regular advanced search criteria. 

Ever wanted to segment clients based on policy attributes such as the type of cover, renewal dates, annual premium or product provider? Policy search enables you to tailor communications and service offers to clients meeting specific criteria, improving client engagement and service delivery.

Select Admin from the left-hand navigation menu then choose Business > Policy search and select from the comprehensive criteria options.

You can save criteria to use again or choose bulk actions to email the policy owner or life insured or merge the details into a Xmerge report.

What would you use this feature for? Would it help you target clients for review? Share specific updates on product or industry changes? Engage clients with or without certain policy features in educational campaigns? I'd love to hear from you.

The majority (63%) of Australians under 40 are open to financial advice delivered through digital channels and hybrid models – and employers may be the quickest route to accessing these customers. 

Per the The Big Lift report, developed by Deloitte Access Economics in collaboration with Iress, "there is a disconnect between the way financial advice is currently provided and the cohorts it reaches." However, embedding advice in "familiar channels" such as employers and financial institutions will enable advisers to proactively – and profitably – engage underserved segments.

In order to do this, though, advice businesses will need to explore alternative, simplified offerings. According to the report, this could include employer-subsidised financial education and targeted coaching for different life-stage segments. 

The Big Lift encourages advisers to focus on "expanding, not defending," arguing that employer partnerships would be mutually beneficial – for advisers, they provide access to large and diverse client cohorts. And employers would reap the benefits of increased employee productivity; the research notes that increasing the financial capability of Australian employees to advanced levels "could reflect a $67 billion benefit for Australian businesses."

More broadly, The Big Lift suggests that if all Australians were to uplift their financial capability to an advanced level, it would equate to a $122,950 increase in average household wealth – or $1.2 trillion nationally. And people with high financial capability are "twice as likely to seek out financial advice." 

It's worth noting that financial capability isn't synonymous with financial literacy – not directly, anyway. According to the report, financial capability is a "complex and multifaceted concept that lacks a standardised definition, making it challenging to measure across time and populations." 

For this reason, The Big Lift uses a "bespoke financial capability index" which comprises both financial literacy and "financial behaviours" such as saving, borrowing, proactive engagement with financial advice and wealth building.

Applying this model to HILDA data, the report found that 59% of Australians have a low financial capability. And lower financial capability levels are associated with "mismanagement of assets, [limited] wealth-building potential ... and stress and anxiety." As implied above, people with lower financial capability are also substantially less likely to seek advice.

So: what role do advisers play in elevating financial capability in Australia? And what's the underlying opportunity for advice businesses who take part in this project?

Download the full report here

The FAAA Congress has come around again – only this year, things seem different. 

Maybe it’s the heat or it’s just the end of the year, but something’s missing. Advisers moved through the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, refueling on fresh juice and whatever merch would fit in their branded tote bags. There was much to discuss, but all conversations inevitably veered towards one topic: the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort.

Enter Phil Anderson. While priming the audience for Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino’s appearance at Congress, the FAAA’s policy lead observed that “the problem with having a policy discussion after the Minister speaks is that there’s a real fear you may have to adjust your talking points.” 

“Fortunately,” he added, “I am not presented with that burden today.” 

Anderson wasn’t wrong there. In fact, the real fear – the one that persisted after Mulino left – wasn’t that policy would change. Instead, it was that the uncertainty around the CSLR would continue. 

There’s very little about the CSLR’s implementation that evokes certainty. Currently, the scheme is contending with the sheer number of claimants, pending part 23 SIS Act applications and, of course, upcoming litigation. Further, it is yet to be determined how these factors could further inflate the roughly $1 billion loss attributed to Shield and First Guardian. 

When contemplating the current schedule of compensation payments, it seems that the only certainty is that estimates will change. AFCA’s reporting on paid compensation claims offers a window into just how long Dixon will take to be fully realised; Dixon went under in 2022, but Dixon-related complaints will be handled well into the 2027 (or even 2028) financial year. 

The legislative framework in which the CSLR operates provides considerable flexibility with regards to the application of special levies. Which is why the advice industry’s $20 million subsector cap has so far failed to operate as a cap in the traditional sense. 

Currently, the minister may via legislative instrument make a determination on the following: 

1. Make compensation payments in specific instalments
2. Apply a special levy where the cap is exceeded in one sub sector
3. Apply a special levy where the cap is exceeded across multiple sub sectors

The only overarching restriction here is the $250 million cap on the scheme. In light of the above, it’s hard to see how the advice sector won’t be paying over the $20 million cap for the foreseeable. 

Putting claim and loss estimates aside, the principal uncertainty is how the compensation will be apportioned to the financial advice profession itself. Adviser numbers are still falling: from 2019 to 2025, we’ve gone from 28,000 on the FAR to fewer than 16,000. 

Over time, the CSLR’s costs – and ASIC’s, for that matter – have been spread across a shrinking cohort. One adviser at Congress remarked to me that if the CSLR cost-per-adviser rose from 8,466 to 12,000, they’d leave the profession. In the current climate, that number seems unavoidable. 

The reality is Australians have never needed financial advice more than they do now, and there are fewer advisers around to give it to them. Compensation schemes are an essential ingredient in managing professional misconduct – but if their primary effect is to reduce accessibility of a service so many people require, some would rightfully question their effectiveness. 

Victims of financial misconduct should be afforded full compensation, of course. But policymakers and regulators need to ensure that CSLR policy apportions blame to the sectors, subsectors and individuals actually causing harm. 

Shell ?

Sinnesro Virtual Assist

There is an amazing opportunity for progressive businesses and leaders to make a significant positive impact on those we work with and or those that we employ.

For those who know me or have worked alongside me, you’re well aware that I am a passionate advocate for improving financial education and supporting behavioural change. Not just the theory, mind you, but genuine practical support that can be actioned.

My experiences in this space over the last 10 years highlight a mixed bag of offerings and quality. Some of the offerings have inherent bias and some are limited in terms of focus, which also limits the benefit to the end user. 

Given the future regulatory changes on the radar, I think there is potential for additional support to evolve.

While the advice profession has evolved in terms of structure, service proposition and business models, it’s possible we’re losing sight of the changes and challenges facing those who need our support. For example:

• Cost-of-living pressure has increased levels of financial stress – and poor financial literacy compounds the issue.
  
  
• People need help when it comes to understanding and managing money, and they don’t just need it in a crisis situation. There is an avalanche of need! 
  
  
• The help required comes in various forms, and what will be right for some may not be appropriate for others.  It can include education, guidance, coaching and advice.
  
  
• Ideally, the help is delivered through a range of trusted sources, absent of any product bias.
  
  
• Poor management of wealth and transitions across future generations will have a significant negative impact on preservation of that wealth and future generations’ mental wellbeing.
  
  
• Individuals are prompted to take action via internal and or external triggers.

Traditional industry boundaries are blurring. Technology is enabling scalable solutions and refreshed personalising offerings from non-traditional participants.   

The leadership of most advice practices are also in transition (or will be) over the next five years. Meanwhile, a cluster of aggregators are flooding the market with attractive offers, seeking the fast-track to scale objectives.  

New services and service providers are entering. New partnerships are forming across industry boundaries and there is an emergence of specialists in components of the service proposition.

While many are impacted by cost-of-living pressures, the deeper issue is a much broader lack of access and knowledge – in some cases, apathy may play a role, too. 

To address this problem, we need to anchor ourselves back to our core reason for being. The vast majority of educators, coaches and advisers have, at their core, an overwhelming desire to improve the wellbeing, confidence and financial position of their clients. 

Yes, some may have a product overlay, but I don’t think it’s helpful to get tied up in territorial spats or boundaries. We must endeavour to remember our core purpose and focus on establishing and strengthening positive financial cues, habits and behaviours for those we engage with. 

For leaders, this is about understanding your team and creating an environment (and safe space) for conversations and sharing to occur. Workplaces that are committed to protecting the psychological health of their staff need to ensure they create the space, time and support to navigate financial wellbeing challenges. 

They can also open pathways to support connected family. This means putting aside some of the barriers to implementation – perceived or actual – for the greater good of your team.

As advice business leaders, this means keeping an open mind regarding service providers and partners to our business that support and improve our ability to deliver on our core purpose. We need to ensure we get our own house in order and support our teams so we can advocate from a position of strength. It’s in no one’s interest to build a model where people blindly follow a solution without having some knowledge to challenge, question and test it.  

We also need to get very clear about which clients we want to work with and can add value to. Who else can we partner with to support those clients who may come to us but aren’t the right fit for our core offering? This could mean, for example, children of and referrals from our preferred clients. For those who focus on intergenerational wealth transfers, getting this right will be critical. 

And, of course, we need to motivate people to get off the fence and take action. How do we do that?

Individuals are motivated by a broad range of factors. Sometimes these factors are their values, beliefs and goals, but they could also be external events and/or changes in their environment  – a health event, for example, or a change in market conditions. 

There’s as much to be said about getting strong fundamental financial education as there is in getting a third person who can help us work through the blind spots.

Actions speak much louder than words, though, and that’s why I’ve recently launched My Goal Getter in conjunction with some industry veterans. It brings financial education and personalised coaching together, and is primarily targeted at workplaces. 

More people need help to nudge them along their journey.  Left to their own devices, there’s a large risk that many people will make poor financial decisions.

If you’re in the advice business, what are you doing for your team and clients in this space? 

If you are an employer, I think this is a great opportunity to assist and improve the wellbeing of your team. 

The time is now to get off the fence and take action.

Could your practice turn more profit? Business Health have proven that advice businesses who successfully focus on the three core pillars of client engagement, business planning and staff management have seen a profit boost of more than 100%. Join us for an unmissable session into the top drivers of profit, and learn what others are doing in these areas to unlock the hidden profit in their practice.

With expertise from,

•  Kerry Ong - Iress facilitator,
• Rod Bertino - Principal & Owner, Business Health,
• Simon Clifford - CEO & Owner, Adviser FP, and
• Jeff Thurecht - CEO & Senior Adviser, Evalesco Financial Services
  
  this presents a unique opportunity to boost profit in your business.
  
  Register for the webinar Here

This report, developed in partnership with Business Health, represents the most detailed and up-to-date picture of Australian advice remuneration and compensation currently available on the market.

The last time this research was conducted was in 2023, and it’s clear that two years can make a world of difference in such a fast-moving industry. At a glance, we can see that: 

• demand for new talent, particularly experienced advisers, client service managers and support staff, has driven up pay packages for these roles by 23%, 20% and 17% respectively
  
  
• the average bonus payment across all roles has increased by 98%, reflecting a marked shift away from salary as the primary tool to effect change 
  
  
• remote work provisions have dropped from 92% to 88% as many firms adopt RTO policies.

So, how have these trends impacted the average pay package for a senior adviser? How about a PY adviser, or a junior paraplanner? Let's find out. 

Click below to download.

This report, developed in partnership with Business Health, represents the most detailed and up-to-date picture of Australian advice remuneration and compensation currently available on the market.

The last time this research was conducted was in 2023, and it’s clear that two years can make a world of difference in such a fast-moving industry. At a glance, we can see that: 

• demand for new talent, particularly experienced advisers, client service managers and support staff, has driven up pay packages for these roles by 23%, 20% and 17% respectively
  
  
• the average bonus payment across all roles has increased by 98%, reflecting a marked shift away from salary as the primary tool to effect change 
  
  
• remote work provisions have dropped from 92% to 88% as many firms adopt RTO policies.

So, how have these trends impacted the average pay package for a senior adviser? How about a PY adviser, or a junior paraplanner? Let's find out. 

Click below to download.

This is useful if you want to direct users in Xplan to another client or wizard page. One example is if you want to direct a user to the job queue after completing a wizard doc merge, so they can see where they are in the queue.

Check out this Community piece for instructions.

Tell us how you’re really using tech in your advice business: what’s working, what’s not - and help shape how we support you via the Advisely community, and through Iress software.

It takes about 25 minutes, responses are anonymous, and you’ll go into the draw to win a $1,000 Visa gift card. T&Cs apply.

? [Take the survey now]

A new Edit button has been added next to each existing insurance policy in the scenario. Once clicked, you are redirected to the Client Focus > Existing Insurance section, where you can make the necessary changes.

Upon saving the edited policy, you will automatically be taken back to your scenario page, and all policies marked as "not considered" will be refreshed with the updated details.

A small change on our end that will help make a huge difference to the quality of your data on your end!

Geoff Wilson's first rule of investing is pretty simple: don't lose money.

If you want to know the second and third rules, refer back to the first. While the particulars of his investment philosophy have evolved over the past 50 years – and more on that in a bit – that first rule is sacrosanct. And it’s exactly what led him to the vanguard of a recent (and very public) battle with the Labor government over its Division 296 tax proposal.

"It was shocking," he says. "It was illogical. It was flawed. It was, as Gerry Harvey put it, ‘Stupidity of the highest order.’"

If you're unaware, Div 296 refers to a proposed amendment to Australia’s income tax assessment policy. It was bundled into the Treasury Laws Amendment (Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions and Other Measures) Bill 2023 and would, if implemented, apply additional 15% tax on earnings attributable to the portion of an individual’s super balance above $3 million.

When Wilson was first alerted to the proposal, he declined to comment: "The idea, as I understood it, was that it was trying to bring more equity into the super system. I didn’t see it as our right to talk about that."

The following day, though, he (along with the rest of the country) found out that the $3 million threshold wasn’t indexed to inflation. Worse, the earnings calculations included both realised and unrealised capital gains. Losing money, it appeared, was part of the plan. 

“Now I had something to say.” 

Alea iacta est 

Thus began the two-year fracas. On one side, Wilson and his allies – including Paul Keating, aforementioned retail mogul Gerry Harvey and former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg – and on the other, an Albanese Government increasingly determined to dig its heels in. 

Given the Coalition’s total opposition to the tax – Nationals Senator Matt Canavan said they’d “fight to the death” over it – Wilson’s camp was framed as transparently partisan. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, for example, suggested that Div 296 opponents were orchestrating a “smear campaign.” 

Wilson refutes this accusation, arguing that the goal was always to be “apolitical about it.” 

“Back when the Coalition was in,” he says, “we beat them over the head on other things like allowing virtual-only AGMs. They tried to make that happen and we railed against it. We succeeded. This was no different.” 

The crux of his argument, as detailed in a Wilson Asset Management submission from February 2024, was that Div 296 would “force superannuants to sell illiquid or volatile assets to … [pay] tax on gains they may never receive.”

Illustrating the problem, the submission noted that in the 2007 financial year, the Australian stock market increased by 30.3%. Had Div 296 been around back then, investors would have incurred a substantial tax liability just before the market fell by over 50% during the GFC. 

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, meanwhile, maintained that the proposal was a modest change that would impact “a tiny sliver of the population” – 0.5%, by his estimations – and that it would only mean a “slightly less generous” tax concession for those affected. 

To Wilson, though, it was an affront to the very concept of wealth creation.

“As an investor,” he says, “what do you want? You want patient, long-term capital. We’re all taught about the benefit of compounding. And then you’re bringing in a tax that discourages taking risk.” 

He continues: “Effectively, it penalises investors for taking risk because the more risk they took, the more volatility they’d experience; your investment might go up a lot, you pay a tax on it and then it might fall a lot.

“So it would force a lot of that money into low-risk, low-volatility investments; people didn’t want to get caught out paying a huge tax bill. It was counter to the whole purpose of taking risk and investing.”

To the mattresses 

Now, to be fair: that was kind of the point. According to former Treasurer (and current Labor national president) Wayne Swan, super tax concessions had become a tax avoidance mechanism for millionaires, detracting from their intended purpose. 

Speaking on the Today Show in May this year, Swan argued that the government “shouldn’t be giving concessions to people who have many millions of dollars squirrelled away well before retirement to engage in other investment activities.”

Echoing Chalmers’ statements, Swan added that the new tax represented a “very modest change” that would only impact “very large superannuation balances.” 

Wilson dismisses this line of reasoning on two fronts. First, he says, the lack of indexation could put any long-term super saver in the crosshairs. 

He explains: “It wasn’t people in the retirement phase who were going to be squeezed by this. Because it wasn’t indexed, the 25-year-old nurse or the 25-year-old social worker could end up getting taxed on unrealised gains before retirement if they went through the $3 million mark.” 

And then there were the “second-order effects” of the proposal. 

“You’ve got to remember what that $1 trillion pool of SMSF capital is doing,” he says. “It’s taking significant risks. I talked to startups on the Sunshine Coast, and they were saying that 40-50% of the money they get is from SMSFs. 

“Even if that only makes up a small percentage of all the money in startups – well, if you don’t get that first bit of capital, you don’t end up like Atlassian or Canva. If you can’t get funded, you don’t exist.”

Indeed, Wilson found that Div 296 was causing funding to dry up well even before it could become law. 

“No one wanted to allocate money in their SMSF to those kinds of investments,” he says. “The lifeblood of the Australian economy goes back under the mattress.”

A bitter peace

As you probably know by now, though, the most controversial elements of Div 296 won’t see the light of day. Just over three weeks ago, the government announced substantial changes to the proposal, which included delaying the start date to 1 July 2026, indexing the $3 million threshold and, crucially, no longer taxing unrealised gains.

So: after a protracted fight with a “bloody-minded” Jim Chalmers, Geoff Wilson claimed  a sort of victory.

However, he worries that the damage has already been done. He argues that the government’s dogged insistence on getting its super tax through parliament reflects a widening gap between policymakers and the modern Australian investor. 

And as Wilson discovered, those investors are paying attention. 

Before the Div 296 campaign, Wilson was never an avid user of social media. But partway through the fight, he visited the US and met up with New York fund manager Bill Ackman. At the time, Ackman was planning to raise US$25 million. 

“I asked him, ‘How are you going to do it?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to tweet about it.’” 

At that point, Wilson realised there might be something to all this social business after all.  So he “reinvigorated” his Twitter account and finally – begrudgingly – joined LinkedIn. And his initial forays led to some unlikely alliances.

“I found out that the crypto world was very much on our side in all of this,” he says. “Remember, Bitcoin has had some big drawdowns, and they tend to happen in the six-month period to December. So if it happens to be at a record high at the end of June, you pay the tax and then it falls 80%. At that point, your super fund is insolvent!”

His interactions with the crypto set – and other extremely online investor cohorts – revealed that there were many younger Australian investors who’d have something to lose if an unrealised capital gains tax came back on the menu. 

“I think that something like 7% of new super funds set up have crypto investments,” he says.

Wilson recounts talking to a 30-something who’d set up his own SMSF at 26. He’d contributed up to the cap every year and didn’t trust real estate as an asset class, preferring to invest elsewhere – including in crypto. 

“This young guy had aspirations,” Wilson says. “His parents had come from overseas; he was a first-generation Australian. He didn’t trust housing. Labor’s tax announcement really shook his faith in the system.”

The disfavoured 

Wilson’s story shouldn’t be unfamiliar to Advisely readers. As we’ve previously discussed, Iress and Deloitte’s The Big Shift research projected that nearly half (43%) of Australians between 45 and 54 will not be homeowners by 2036. Deterred by soaring house prices, these Australians represented a growing cohort of “customers [in need of] financial advice to build wealth through alternative means.”

“One of the big problems in Australia is that we’ve had wage inflation of 2-3% but asset inflation of 10%,” Wilson says. “So every year that a worker – a young person – doesn’t buy a house, they’re 7% worse off.” 

However: as a noted chaotician once said just before his work trip was upended by a T. rex, life finds a way. Younger investors, bereft of opportunities to get into the housing market, are pursuing a wholly different kind of Australian dream. 

Wilson sees this paradigm shift as inexorable, and something current and future governments would do well to heed. 

“When I grew up,” he says, “the idea was to put your money in a bank. You had to be a regular saver so you could build up a deposit, and then the bank manager would allow you to get a loan to buy a house. It was all about getting a track record of saving so you’d get the anointment of the bank manager. Quite bizarre, isn’t it?

“Today, I think what a lot of young people understand – which I didn’t necessarily understand when I was growing up – is markets. Because of crypto, for example, they understand volatility.”

Even if every younger investor is sporting diamond hands, though, Wilson still thinks they’re in need of guidance and advice – and this is another area where he believes successive policymakers have a lot to answer for. 

“There’s been terrible over-regulation of financial advice,” he says. “And what has it achieved? How did it go at stopping Shield and First Guardian?”

Wilson argues that, despite the laser focus on regulating for the “worst end of the bell curve,” the primary achievement of Australian advice regulation is “cutting off the people with smaller pools of capital from getting good quality advice.”

“It’s just become too cumbersome and expensive,” he says. “And it probably has the effect of pushing people to higher-risk plays, whether it’s crypto or something else. They can’t get access to anything else, they can’t afford advice, so they just end up throwing darts at the board.”

Perfect day

For the benefit of anyone throwing darts, then: does Wilson have any wisdom to impart about long-term wealth creation? 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, rule one hasn’t changed over the decades. “It’s still about not losing money,” he says. “When you’re putting together a portfolio of stocks, it’s very important to protect your downside.”

That said, he’s no longer as keen on market timing as he once was: “If you’d asked me 30 years ago, I probably would have been much bigger on trying to pick the bottom and sell the top. But my current thought process is different: it’s ‘time in the market’ rather than ‘timing the market.’” 

Explaining what this means, Wilson recounts the time when WAM Global lead portfolio manager Catriona Burns brought a book into the office; it was about US market movements over the past 20 years. 

“What the book showed you,” he says, “is that if you missed the one best day in the year for 20 years – so you only missed 20 days in 20 years – your return over that period of time would have been effectively zero.”

“I’ve been around the market for a long time,” he continues, “and it made me realise something. I've seen the ‘87 crash, I’ve seen the Asian financial crisis, I’ve seen the GFC, COVID, the Trump tantrum – it’s always something.

“Back in ‘87, everyone knew the market was expensive, but it went up another 50%. And yeah, it fell 60% in the latter part of the year, but it had still gone up further. So to me, if you can buy stocks you don’t lose money on, you can be prepared to ride out that volatility.” 

To wit: right now, Wilson sees some signs of excess in the market. 

“But then,” he says, “I could have been nervous two years ago as well.” 

I'd love to know how advisers are tackling file notes in your practice.  Are they:

1. Written / typed
2. Speech to text (with the use of software or manual entry from a dictation)
3. Recorded as audio / video only

Does anyone feel like they've nailed the file note process and are doing it efficiently?

I've worked across a bunch of different industries and jobs that have taken me all the way from Outback Queensland to Sydney's CBD. But through all those experiences, one thing has always stayed consistent: my passion for finance and law. I'm really looking forward to diving in and getting more involved with the Advisely community.

Please don't be shy, feel free to say hi! And while you're at it, let me know what you'd love to see more of in the community.