As an attendee at Xerocon this year, like most years, you’ll be overwhelmed by the sheer scale and choice presented to you by the Add-Ons providers and various partners that will be on display over the 2-day event. Not to mention by the fact that there will be whopping 3,000 people attending this year. That’s insane when you think that it’s just an accounting event 🙂
Each year the number of Add-Ons and partners keeps getting bigger and their offerings more diverse and sophisticated. But stepping back and understanding that many accountants and advisors exist to serve the needs of both business and individual clients, you’d have to say that the focus of Xerocon and its partners is well and truly out of balance. OK, so in my new role as CEO of myprosperity I have a cause to push here, but if we think about accountants and advisors aiming to address the “whole of wealth” needs of their clients in both a business and individual sense, you’d have to admit that the latter is poorly represented.
Through my journey with Xero over the 5 years as CEO, what was always clear to me early on was that Xero was all about bringing advisers and their small business clients together in a way that delivered enormous value to… yes, the accountant. Forget the SME for a moment who was suddenly using adjectives like “cool”, “beautiful” and “sexy” to describe accounting software… what the hell!?! Think for a moment about the adviser.
Whenever we were presenting to accountants in the early days, I recall that we would use 4 key words, within one sentence, to describe the compelling benefits of Xero to the advisor.
As I reflect back on the not-so dulcet tones of a preaching Wayne Schmidt… “With visibility of your clients’ books, it puts you in complete control and allows you to not only collaborate more effectively, but by eliminating data files, it delivers huge efficiency gains for the practice”. OK, that’s a long sentence… and see Wayne, I occasionally listened to you ?
The missing piece though, is what to do about the individual or household. Behind every business and associated set of financial books is an individual owner who cares deeply about their household wealth, but who often has all this in a desperate state of disarray. And the accountant is equally ill-equipped to help. Beyond static data sitting in a PDF version of the individual tax return, or financial information strewn across an Excel spreadsheet, accountants tend to have very little in the way of tools to help out on this substantial portion of their client base.
Some of you may remember that Xero had a couple of cracks at trying to help in this capacity over the journey. In March of 2010, Xero released “Xero Personal”, a white-labelled personal financial management product, underpinned by Yodlee bank feeds, and designed to assist with personal cashflow and money management. Despite some modest traction with the product, I think culminating in about 5,000 subscribers in Australia, it did little to help the adviser who was cut out of the picture by virtue of this being a B2C offering. Furthermore, whilst Xero Personal handled cashflow and money management really well… that was all it did. All other elements of a client’s’ financial world… property, vehicles, superannuation, shares, insurances, wills, etc, etc were not part of the picture. As a result the product gained little traction and ultimately was shutdown in 2013.
Enter Xero Cashbook as an alternative around that time. Certainly it was a better option for advisers who could sign up their individual clients and remain in control. And with support for bank feeds, an API to connect other applications along with a chart of accounts, it was possible to hack this product out to support the money management needs of an individual client. Again however, the weight of many feature gaps saw support of Cashbook in personal wealth wane with Xero ultimately putting all its attention into the surging SME accounting market.
That inability to service the need of the individual who stands behind the small business is a problem that myprosperity is now solving and why we have more than 400 accountants and advisors in Australia who are on board as partners and putting their clients onto the platform. As a matter of fact, my advisor signed me up to myprosperity back in July 2015 and it was that positive first-hand experience in working with the product that led me to where I am today, from customer to CEO.
Far from being an add-on we are a platform and deliver the missing piece of what accountants need in order to provide a holistic approach to helping their business clients (via Xero) as well as the individuals that manage those businesses (via myprosperity).
So just as Xero connected the advisor with the SME to get visibility and control of their business finances, myprosperity does the same for the individual or household. And regardless of whether you are an advisor or accountant, with an AFSL or not, myprosperity will help you get visibility of the “whole of wealth” position of your clients, enabling you to better understand them, to generate new leads and ultimately grow your revenue.
This is the first time that myprosperity will be involved at Xerocon and on a personal level, I’m delighted to be involved again in what will be my 7th Australian Xerocon attendance… albeit, wearing a different t-shirt. So if any of what I said above strikes a chord with you, make sure you pop by our stand, say hi, and we can show how we balance up that “whole of wealth” story… and maybe even share a few stories about past Xerocons.
Chris Ridd