Pictured: Chris Ridd, Shane Mitchell and Matthew Green

Conrad Francis and Shane Mitchell are directors of Perth based financial planning firm, Inspired Money. We were lucky enough to catch up with them to discuss their thoughts around technology in the financial planning industry and to learn how they’ve implemented myprosperity as part of their services.

Even though Inspired Money are big fans of new technology, they believe that true innovation isn’t just about rolling out a new piece of software, but also how their advice is packaged and delivered to clients.

“When we talk about innovation, we are really talking about the adviser – the person driving the technology and not the platform itself. To maximise the benefits of new technology, the adviser really must understand how these benefits flow through to the client and not just focus on the technology itself,” Conrad Francis said.

It is clear the Inspired Money team live by this mantra as all their staff use the myprosperity platform personally, allowing them to easily outline the benefits clients receive.

The advisers at Inspired Money have certainly earned the tag of ‘innovators’.  Not only have they implemented new technology within their firm to drive huge efficiency gains, but they’ve also remodelled their services to exploit this new technology, and in the process, have created a great experience for their clients.

A client centric experience for success when onboarding

Inspired Money drew a proverbial line in the sand after coming on-board as a partner with myprosperity. The myprosperity Wealth Portal, which is branded with Inspired Money’s logo, is now offered to all their new clients as part of their initial client meeting, effectively becoming the platform that underpins their service offering.

Rolling out new software to clients can be a challenging and time-consuming process, but Inspired Money have demonstrated that with the right processes it can be done successfully, and with a strong buy-in from the client. So, what is the secret to their success?

“The on-boarding is a two-prong approach. We will load what we can in-house and work with the client during a meeting to enter their banking and super details. We’ll then go through it with them to help allocate expenses and income to the right categories, which takes 20 minutes at most. On top of that, we have our client experience officers at hand to help and we set up one-on-one video conferences with clients who need additional support,” Shane Mitchell said.

Shane continued, “The client feedback has been great as clients start to see all of their finances in one place and from that point they know their position any time (that) they want.”

Changing relationships towards technology

By using technology to change the nature of their relationship with clients, advisers like Inspired Money also positively influence how their clients engage with their finances. Conrad and Shane are aware that changing customer behaviour is a gradual process and have been helping their clients become more comfortable using the platform. Clients love to engage their finances through myprosperity, and pretty soon they get to the point where it becomes second nature.

By familiarising their client base with a technology platform like myprosperity, the payoff can be huge. Clients have a clearer understanding of their financial position and Inspired Money can use real-time data to then provide informed advice.

Shane Mitchell explains, “Using a product like myprosperity makes our financial advice more tangible, because it takes out a lot of the guesswork surrounding our client’s spending habits. It helps us hold our clients more accountable for their finances. We can challenge them about why they are spending their money on certain things and ensure that every dollar has something to do and is congruous with their goals.”

Efficiencies and freeing adviser time to deliver value

myprosperity also helps the team at Inspired Money improve practice efficiency and overheads. One of the big benefits of myprosperity is the cost savings in not having to constantly chase data from the client. This assists them in providing fast, quality advice.

“It reduces finding data from weeks into minutes. Every time you contact a client for more information, you are losing money through the time you spend, when it could be more effectively utilised creating opportunities for the client,” Conrad explains.

‘“It reduces finding data from weeks into minutes,” – Conrad Francis, Adviser.

We really love Inspired Money’s initiative surrounding myprosperity and look forward to seeing how they continually evolve their services around the technology.

What’s next?

So, what’s next for the Inspired Money team? They are very keen to explore some of the other functionality available in the platform, particularly digital document signing, the advanced lead generation and building a client’s financial team to make collaboration and client servicing far easier with an improved client experience. As Inspired Money continues to grow with myprosperity, both Shane and Conrad are excited by the opportunity it offers to continually improve the client experience and the quality of their service.