The Financial Planning world has seen huge changes forced upon it by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the advent of working from home becoming a more normalised staple of the current climate. With this shift, we have seen a rise in the use and the proficiency of available technology. These adjustments to our industry have paved the way for the simplification of outsourcing.
Outsourcing creates an opportunity for Financial Planners to improve their own efficiencies, increase time spent with clients and, ultimately, increase their profits.
Post-COVID employees are looking for more freedom from their working arrangements, such as days working from home, completing hours over the weekend or late evenings, days off in lieu. If this is not something that can be provided by the Financial Planning Practice, there is a chance that employees may leave for greener pastures, and it is becoming increasingly hard to employ quality staff.
Practices with a single support staff may also notice a downturn in productivity whilst they are away for holidays, sick days etc. as the adviser may have to take over that work or it is left until the support staff returns.
Outsourcing your CSO administration means it becomes Quantum’s responsibility to cover staff holidays, sick days and staff turnover, ensuring your work can continue without disruption.
At Quantum, we feel that Financial Planning practices should endeavour to have their internal support staff speaking to the clients, whether it be booking in client meetings, informing the client about their advice implementation, or generally presenting the voice of the business.
All other tasks, such as entering information into Xplan, phoning product providers for data collection, completing product research and implementation work are easily able to be outsourced. These tasks do not involve speaking to clients and, therefore, can be attended to in the background, giving your internal staff the time they need to speak with clients.
Using a CSO for 20 hours a week to complete those tasks can afford you an extra 4 hours a day to speak to your clients, build referrals, see more clients and ensure you can still leave the office at 5pm everyday!
Remember, with annual advice agreements and opt-ins, if the client does not feel valued and their calls answered, they may leave and find another adviser – let Quantum assist by removing the admin burden! To discuss further please call Chris Cleaver on 07 5532 9516 or email chris@quantumsupport.com.au
As a Financial Planner, your role is to build relationships with new and existing clients. All too often, do you find yourself getting stuck with back-office administration, compliance and advice implementation which takes you away from your income producing role, seeing new and existing clients?
Using Quantum’s outsourced staff to fulfil the time-consuming file preparation, advice research and implementation, as well as general administration, can be a great way to free up your in-house staff to work more closely with you and to focus on your clients.
Outsource staff provide a more cost-effective approach because during quieter times when they may not be required, there are no mandated wages to pay. Furthermore, there are none of the standard costs in employing staff such as; computers, annual leave, bonus, sick leave and superannuation.
The last couple of years have been volatile for the Financial Planning industry, coupled with the introduction of education requirements and the adviser exam as well as the introduction of fee for service and annual advice agreements. Now is the time to simplify and grow your business through outsourcing your time-consuming tasks.
All admin, Pre-SoA and Paraplanning work completed by Quantum is completed in Australia.
Let’s have a positive start to 2022 and discuss how outsourcing can benefit you and your business.
Please call Chris Cleaver on 07 5532 9516 or email chris@quantumsupport.com.au with a suitable time and he will call you back.
The Financial Planning Industry has gone through a huge overhaul over the last few years with estimates indicating the number of Financial Planners will drop below 16,500 this calendar year and below 10,000 within three years. For those who remain, it means the ratio of advisers to Australians will change to almost 1 to 1,500 this year providing ample opportunities to grow successful businesses.
Following on from the royal commission, licensees are no longer able to subsidise their fees to advisers with vertically integrated investment costs. With this in mind, we now see advisers looking at ways to reduce their overheads and remove themselves from a vertical integration model, providing more freedom within their advice.
We are seeing more Financial Planners actively looking at new licensees as well, which can provide them greater freedom to make recommendations in their client’s best interest whilst reducing their overheads.
What do you need to consider before changing licensee?
The chances are your current licensee won’t make it easy for you to change because they do not want to lose your business.
You will be required to ensure you have all your client files up to date, they will need to be digitalised, audited and checked by your current licensee prior to leaving. Your new licensee will probably also require you to have everything digitised, allowing them to carry out their own due diligence.
Roadblocks to changing licensee?
There’s a good chance you have all that information in paper files stored on your desk or filing cabinet or if your records are digital, you hold them across Dropbox, Google Drive, or various hard drives.
The thought of taking time away from seeing clients to scan and file documents on your licensee’s preferred platform is unappealing and may be enough for you to consider changing licensees. After all, you must continue to service clients and will want to spend your evenings and weekends with your family!
Can I change licensee and continue to see clients?
As a business, you need to remain profitable and continue seeing clients throughout the year. By outsourcing the administration requirements, you will be better equipped to change licensees and continue growing your business.
Quantum can work with you and your current licensee to ensure that your files are digitalised and saved on their preferred platform ready to be audited. We can liaise with your licensee and inform you of any developments that need to be completed such as signatures from clients or missing information, allowing you to focus on continuing to service your clients throughout the transition period.
Quantum will quote a fixed fee based on an agreed scope of work allowing you the certainty to budget.
What is Quantum Professional Support, and can it help you?
Please give Chris Cleaver a call on 07 5532 9516 to discuss how Quantum Professional Support could assist your practice.
Why was Quantum Professional Support started?
Many years ago, Nathan, Matthew and Chris were working for the same Financial Planning company, with Nathan and Matthew working as paraplanners and Chris as a Financial Adviser. After a few years, we went our separate ways. Nathan and Matthew started Quantum Paraplanning, and Chris continued as a Financial Adviser.
However, we continued to meet for lunch every Friday and the same topics kept arising. Chris would complain about how long it took to put together a file, and Nathan and Matt would mention that not all files that came through to Quantum were fully ready for SoA construction, causing frustration for advisors and paraplanners alike.
Over the weeks, we thought there must be a better way for files to be constructed and allow Financial Advisers more time to speak to their clients and generate new business opportunities.
Given Nathan and Matthew’s Paraplanning experience and Chris’s experience as a Financial Planner, we felt we could create a model that could be the link between the advisers and SoA construction.
Quantum Professional Support was born.
What does Quantum Professional Support do?
We currently offer two service offerings
· Pre-SoA Package
· CSO
Pre-SoA Package
During our conversations with advisers, we have established that speaking to and seeing clients for meetings is not the hard part about providing advice. The hard part is finding the time to write file notes, get up to date statements, formulate the advice, conduct the research, write the BID working paper, and submit to Paraplanning.
This service offering provides a solution to the time-consuming work. Once the adviser has completed the Fact Find, written the file note and documented their initial strategy, this can be submitted to Quantum Professional Support. From there, we can complete the file and ensure it is ready for Paraplanning.
As part of this service, we complete all research, product comparisons, quotes and supporting information. Thereafter, we will write the working paper on behalf of the adviser, leaving them with more time to service their client base and generate new business.
The pricing for this service is a flat fee depending on the type of advice given, making it easy for it to be factored into the advice fees being charged the client, ensuring advisers do not need to be out of pocket.
CSO Offering
Throughout the COVID pandemic, businesses have had to adjust to working remotely. As part of this, businesses have become acutely aware of the additional costs associated with employing staff during times when generating and sustaining an income may be tougher than usual. The challenge of managing all of this can be intensified when staff take holidays, fall ill or if the business sees a sudden increased workload.
The introduction of Annual Advice Agreements has made interacting with clients throughout the year and conducting reviews more important than ever.
Quantum has launched a solution to help businesses who may need administrative support for a short period (to cover holidays or busy periods) or for a more sustained timeframe (potentially allowing your internal staff to be more interactive with your clients).
We currently help businesses complete time-consuming admin tasks in relation to review meetings, where we: ring product providers to collect up to date information; gather certificates of currency; input information into XPlan; and, download an up-to-date Fact Find so that the adviser has all relevant information for their meeting.
Other areas we assist is with more day-to-day tasks such as following up on insurance applications, super rollovers, change of address, checking annual advice agreements are implemented and in force. These types of tasks take up so much of your staff’s time, which could be better spent building a stronger relationship with your clients, rather than being on the phone to product providers.
In conjunction with our Pre-SoA service, we can complete the Super / Pension / Investment application forms whilst our Paraplanning team is constructing the SoA, so that when you receive your SoA, your clients’ applications are pre-loaded, ready to submit, upon a successful SoA meeting. Thereafter, the adviser can hand the task back to Quantum to follow the application through to implementation, freeing the adviser up to move onto the next client.
Can Quantum Professional Support help you?
For those businesses looking to expand and think they may need additional support staff or for those businesses who may need to replace a staff member, consider if it is possible to outsource some administrative tasks.
Quantum is not employed by your practice, so there is no requirement to pay us if you do not provide work during slow times. There is also no obligation to provide a minimum amount on a weekly basis.
COVID has taught us we can work remotely and think differently about the standard office set-up. There be opportunity, as part of this, for Quantum to help save your practice in ongoing costs, whilst improving your efficiency.
Please give Chris Cleaver a call on 07 5532 9516 to discuss how Quantum Professional Support could assist your practice.
During the last few years, the financial planning industry has gone through wholesale changes with many advisers leaving the industry. According to AFR the supply of registered Financial Advisers is on track to be 50 per cent lower than before the Hayne Royal Commission in 2018, whilst the costs of providing advice has increased.
Despite fewer advisers the costs of being licensed has increased by 28% over the last few years to an average of $38,500 per adviser and indemnity insurance has increased to an estimated $6,000 per annum.
There are many costs with running a Financial Planning Business not limited to licensing costs and indemnity insurance such as office, software and support staff which, depending on the location and requirements of the job are estimated to be $50,000 – $80,000 per annum, let alone the advisor taking an income.
With the decline in advisers’ numbers and the uncertainty in the global economy it’s natural for there to be more work for those advisers who remain, however an increasing client base with increasing advice costs to cover the increased running costs does not always correlate to an increase in profit.
However, there are areas that you can save costs and create efficiencies within the business to help create a profit margin.
Through speaking to advisers, we have established that in most cases seeing clients is not the hard part, it’s completing the research and working papers preparing the file for paraplanning so they can present their advice.
Of course, in some cases the adviser will have a CSO to help assist them which is costing them around $60,000 + Super plus holidays etc. This is additional money that needs to be paid even if there is no business being written or the adviser goes on holiday, which could put a strain on the business’s cash-flow.
In cases where the adviser does not have a CSO to assist they will be spending time away from speaking to their clients to conduct their own research and complete their own files which is possibly not the best use of their time and could be better spent speaking with more clients, generating more business.
Quantum Professional Support has a cost and time effective solution where we can complete the research, write the working paper and prepare the file for paraplanning on their behalf, allowing the adviser time to continue speaking to their clients and generate more business.
Quantum Professional Support and Paraplanning works in the same way as an outsource solution where the adviser pays a set fee for the file to be completed which can be factored into the fees charged to their client ensuring they are not out of pocket and have no monthly obligation to pay.
If you would like a discussion around how this may work for you and your business, please call Chris on 07 5532 9516 or email chris@quantumsupport.com.au
