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.
Virtual General Manager for Financial Planning Businesses
The demands of Financial Planners in running their own business and attending to their client needs have never been greater.
Why is it that some businesses however continue to outperform? They engage support to assist owners in driving to achieve goals – both business and personal.
Access specialist support – a Virtual General Manager with over 20 years financial planning Industry experience.
Virtual General Manager Role
Key areas of focus for the Virtual General Manager include strategic and operational planning and supporting the business owners and team, to complete marketing, admin, operations, HR and financial management projects.
Your General Manager offers your financial planning business hands on help as a personal “Virtual General Manager“, who helps with the overall management of your business while you as Principal, can continue to focus on what you enjoy the most and do best.
Do you want to build stronger profit and enjoy a better lifestyle?
As your Virtual GM, we assist you in developing business strategy & operational plans, whilst holding yourself & team members accountable to these plans. Hands on help is provided in working on the business around the various projects of improvement identified.
Would you like your business to be less reliant on you?
Your General Manager provides a Virtual GM service at a fraction of the cost of recruiting & employing Management in your Practice.
Virtual General Manager Benefits
The key benefits of a Virtual General Manager include:
Enable sharing of experience and knowledge across a number of businesses
Business Owners and their Team are able to focus on client work and improve business output
Using our Virtual General Manager service will save thousands on a full time Practice Manager or General Manager and actually enables directing further resources to grow the business
An experienced Manager, Coach & Mentor on your team
On site options available
How does a Virtual General Manager Work?
There are several options available as to how a Virtual General Manager may assist your business.
It can be challenging running a sole adviser practice.
Sole Practitioners are responsible for everything. Client advice and relationships and everything else like paying the staff, practice compliance and generally running the business. It is a difficult juggle particularly when you are in growth mode and building the client numbers.
This a story of the need to not drop off the key activities that build the business.
Our Sole Practitioner has developed a relationship with an accounting firm over several years. The relationship has been quite successful and both parties have developed a mutual respect for each other. The Accountants are impressed by the financial planner’s expertise and technical knowledge. He has been referred quite a few clients of the firm and always delivered very sound, comprehensive advice.
The relationship worked well in the first two years with fortnightly visits by the financial planner.
However in the past eighteen months the financial planner’s visits dropped off and so did the referrals for new work.
Part of the reason was COVID related, however the financial planner was also focused on other things happening in his business.
acquisition of a small number of clients
building a new venture with another third party
back office workload issues required the hiring of another support staff person
All of these business matters were important and consumed a lot of time from the financial planner.
The business financials were now becoming a concern by the end of 2020. Expenses had risen and profit had declined. No time had been allocated to the most productive referral relationship – the Accounting Firm.
A strategic planning session (to kick off the new year), with me illustrated several issues. They were:
Profitability
Poor pipeline of new prospects
Underperformance of new third party referral venture
A new plan of attack has been created with some clear KPI’s for the Practitioner to focus on.
Back to the Accounting Firm – fresh contact has begun and co incidentally the Accountants have asked for the fortnightly meetings to resume!
I work with this financial planner and through our regular accountability meetings provide support to stay on track. My clients find this support highly valuable in helping achieve both business and personal goals.
