There was a lot for both lender and broker to consider when the Consumer Duty rules were implemented in August last year. As Consumer Duty champion for the intermediary side of the business, and member of several working groups, it was great to see collaboration from all parts of the industry to ensure the key elements of the rules were embedded.

There was also recognition that as an industry we were, in the main, in a good place in providing good outcomes for customers. One of the main strands that runs through Consumer Duty is the dealing with customers that could be considered as vulnerable. For me, this is the area that provides our biggest challenge, a year on from implementing Consumer Duty.

The recognition of and providing the support for, a Vulnerable Customer is fundamental to us, ensuring that we give everyone the best experience when considering a mortgage.

So, who is vulnerable?

The FCA describes an individual with a vulnerability as ‘someone who, due to their personal circumstances, is especially susceptible to harm, particularly when a firm is not acting with appropriate levels of care’.

Whilst we have a definition, it can be hard to recognise vulnerability and we certainly don’t want to pin a badge on someone. The physical characteristics may be easier to recognise and support. Someone with visual & hearing impairment for example, but how do we support those that have been affected by a life event or have low resilience or capability?

Based on the low numbers that have been highlighted to us as a lender over the last 12 months, it’s clear that we need to do more as a lender to support you with vulnerable customers.

So, what are we doing as a lender?

• At Skipton we have provided a broker guide on Supporting Customers with Additional Requirements
• We are reviewing our application process to make it easier for you to provide information on your customer and allowing you to highlight what additional support they may need?

Finally, I feel that as lenders and brokers we just need to talk about this complex subject more. We know that no-one is in a better position to understand the requirements of a potential borrower than a broker, and as a lender we need to better highlight what we can do to support you.

To that end, I have recorded some ‘mini-conversations’ with our Vulnerable Customer team which we will share on LinkedIn. We may not have all the answers, but we thought we would share our thoughts on various topics, like how to have a conversation and address some myth-busters about what a lender would do with this information.

The short clips are aimed at starting the conversation around customer vulnerability and we would be more than happy to take any feedback and suggestions on where the conversations should go next.

Let’s talk.

Welcome to our Winter edition of Industry Voice

"The true value of Protection" is the focus for this edition. We asked experts from the Protection industry to provide their insight on how to have better conversations around Protection, what this entails, understanding consumers needs and what is the true value of Protection. We hope you enjoy this edition.

If you’d like to read previous editions, visit the Industry Voice homepage.

Watch the interview

The Protection Coach Matthew Chapman interviews Iress' Jane Irwin and Warren O'Connell about the latest issue and what is the true value of Protection.

Become a contributor

Industry Voice provides high quality thought leadership, analysis and commentary on the key trends and themes impacting the UK’s mortgage, protection and financial advice industry.

Each edition is produced and distributed by Iress and promoted across our digital and social media channels to a UK-wide audience of mortgage and insurance brokers, financial advisers and wealth managers.

For advertising, sponsorship and editorial enquiries, please contact:

Neal Ray
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How will financial services survive the next crisis or scandal? Legendary crisis communications expert Donald Steel joins Emmanuel Asuquo for the Upfront series finale.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: So, Donald, tell us, how will financial services survive the next crisis or scandal?

Donald: It comes down to the business of predicting what can happen to you. All crises are predictable. There's nothing that can happen to you that you can't predict and then prepare for them. I think it's the same in every sector, including financial services, is this ability to predict and risk assess what might happen and then prepare for it, which is, after all, what they do when they're creating financial instruments, you need to do the same for your reputation.

Emmanuel: What is a crisis then? If we can predict this stuff already, what is the whole crisis management and crisis about?

Donald: This is a brilliant question because what we talk about in crisis communications is that the word crisis has only one purpose. You should only use the word crisis when you invoke the special procedures you've prepared, the team meeting in a room, the senior people, and the different command structures; otherwise, it has no business purpose. The word crisis is bandied around. It's a tabloid word. The word crisis is used to make something seem more interesting or urgent. Actually, in each different company, there is a different definition of a crisis. And in your crisis plan, you need to give examples of the categories of crisis. One of the things we do when we go around companies is give people a load of cards with different scenarios that might happen to that company. And they have to define whether they're a crisis, an issue, or everyday business and it's quite interesting the debate because they don't all agree.

We talk about the bank of trust. You have to be careful you don't make too many withdrawals.

Donald Steel - Crisis communications expert

Emmanuel: Do you think enough businesses even have a crisis management plan?

Donald: Warren Buffet said that you haven't got a business without a reputation. Trust is at the core of all reputation, and we talk about people having a big balance in the bank of trust. Now you have to watch that you don't make too many withdrawals. You don't have too many crises because you only have so much trust. In a big crisis, you could make a big withdrawal. There's this thing we call the drumbeat of positive publicity. It may not be earth-shattering, but we've got this new service, we've won this award, you know, all of the stuff that you do, we've helped someone out, we're doing some community work here. It's all building up this drumbeat of publicity and the bank of trust. Don't dismiss it because you may need to make a withdrawal when things go wrong, which they do with the best will in the world.

Emmanuel: You come across so cool, not cold, like cool as in relaxed. Although you're in these high-pressure environments, I feel like the pressure's around you but not in you. Where does that come from?

Donald: A lot of what we do in preparing for crisis management and crisis communications is we have checklists. So when something happens, we'll grab the checklist, and we've already thought, and we'll do this and this and this. So, for example, in communications. Check what's on social media at the moment. Cancel all planned posts because they're almost certainly going to jar with what's happening. Increase the level of approval of posts because you need several pairs of eyes on so that you're not causing further offence or making the crisis worse and so on. Now, why do we have those? Because in a crisis, adrenaline starts to surge, which is not a useful hormone in a crisis, there are no prizes given by companies for hiring people who come in and make them feel more panicked than they did before. You need to go in and feel a bit of calm. I've lived a long time and I've often wondered if this is a little gift as you get older, that people like a bit of grey hair when their jobs are on the line.

It takes far too long to get statements approved in a crisis, so write them now.

Donald Steel - Crisis communications expert

Emmanuel: Is there a cookie cutter method for any crisis?

Donald: Every company needs a crisis plan. Crisis preparation is an evolutionary process, not something you do in a week. The essential ingredient is spotting a crisis on time, which is a main cause of failure because most crises don't just suddenly happen. It's about how and when we start communicating immediately. To whom do we communicate? How do we communicate internally? How do we organize ourselves? Who becomes the face of the company? It's usually the chief executive for the most serious crisis. It takes far too long to approve statements when you're in a crisis, so write them now. All crises are predictable. If we can predict them, we can write brief statements. It's not that difficult. The public want information and they're not forgiving if they don't see it.

Emmanuel: What advice do you have for the financial sector to help them prepare for the next scandal or crisis?

Donald: Think of everything that could happen to you. You're very focused on your business activities, of course you are. But many other things can happen to you in all of the ancillary things you do around the business. Have you got a plan for every eventuality, and how will you communicate? If you're in the financial sector, don't just think about your products and services. The delivery of your services - what happens if the phone line or your internet goes down? What's our risk in our social media? What's our risk in our different comms activities in speeches? Famously, people making speeches is often a risk. Humour is a risk. We have to think of everything and then work out a plan. If you think this doesn't affect you, you're putting all your work at risk for quite a small amount of preparation. Predict what might happen to you, and prepare for it. That's my big message to everybody: predict and prepare, and then you've got a good chance of coming through it and doing it right.

Listen to this episode in full here.

In the rapidly changing financial landscape, technological advancements are revolutionising daily operations for businesses. The integration of cloud computing and automation is reshaping the trading environment, with the FIX protocol playing a pivotal role in these developments.

Michael Barbera, Chief Product Officer for Trading & Market Data at Iress, recently spoke at the Australia FIX conference, exploring our current cloud-centric world and how innovations in the FIX protocol are improving efficiency, connectivity, and transparency for firms.

The impact of cloud

The most significant transformation seen in recent years in the trading industry is the shift towards cloud-native infrastructure. A prominent trend alongside cloud has been the increasing emphasis on automation and orchestration. Historically, client onboarding processes have been lengthy and complex; however, by utilising automation and orchestrations, firms can swiftly establish system connections. As a result, firms benefit from faster onboarding, with timelines shrinking from weeks to hours. This has boosted efficiency, innovation and agility, enabling businesses to launch new products into the market more rapidly.

As cloud adoption evolves, many organisations are moving beyond a "lift-and-shift" approach to fully capitalise on cloud capabilities. This evolution has introduced autonomous recovery systems, which are among the most exciting benefits of cloud technology. These systems are designed to foresee potential issues before they escalate, automatically detecting anomalies and applying fixes in real-time. This minimises the risk of downtime and reduces dependency on human intervention. Scalability becomes seamless, allowing for easy market adaptations.

Visibility is paramount

One of the most significant benefits to the cloud is improved access to data, creating greater transparency, and allowing clients to connect in real-time. In the trading world, the interactions between buy-side and sell-side clients, vendors and banks create a highly complex environment. In order to manage this, capturing data at every point of interaction is key. Having real-time visibility not only helps with identifying potential issues but it improves operational efficiency.

Any disruption between the exchanges of the three key interfaces—clients, banks and vendors— at any one point, has a rippling effect across the entire trading market. Firms must capture data through every transaction within the trading environment to address the complexity; therefore, monitoring what happens between each stage of the ecosystem ensures any potential issue can be identified and addressed promptly.

This visibility enhances operational efficiency—firms and trading venues can swiftly identify potential issues, leading to faster resolutions and more immediate responses to market fluctuations. Real-time visibility into trading operations is paramount, enabling firms to recognise anomalies and inefficiencies as they arise, leading to prompt corrective measures.

All trading vendors are using some variety of cloud offering so it is clear the direction the trading world is heading in. By leveraging the cloud, firms are seeing the enhancement of scalability, cost efficiency and quicker deployment. While the current cloud based trading platform is gaining momentum, the full impact within the trading market may not be seen for several years to come.

Iress FIX Hub

Iress FIX Hub facilitates seamless communication between the buy-side and sell-side within the market, enabling efficient, reliable and fast trade transactions. Iress FIX Hub offers effortless connectivity between firms and many trading venues and counterparties. As the platform provides access to real-time market data, it allows traders to make informed decisions in line with the latest information. This immediacy is crucial to navigate the fast-pace of the markets where timely decisions can significantly impact the outcomes. Staying aligned with the increase in trade activity is a key aspect of Iress FIX Hub; its scalability allows companies to adapt to the ever changing market conditions without compromising outcomes and performance.

Learn more about Iress FIX Hub here.

Do we have to get up at 5am to be successful? That's the Upfront question for organisational psychologist Dr Amantha Imber, who chats to Emmanuel Asuquo about how we can all be our most effective and productive selves.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: We always start with our Upfront question and today, the question is, do we have to get up at 5 a.m. to be productive?

Amantha: Oh, it's a myth. You don't have to get up at 5 a.m. Let the night people rejoice! From a scientific point of view, it comes down to a concept called chronotypes, where every one of us is different in terms of when the peaks and troughs of our energy levels are in 24 hours. There are three types of chronotypes. There are larks, those 5 a.m. clubbers who naturally rise and shine at about 5 or 6 a.m. There are owls who are the opposite. They come to life at night and naturally like a bit of sleep. And then there are middle birds who operate on the schedule of a Lark but are delayed by an hour or two. So if you naturally wake up at about 7 a.m. and don't have an alarm set, you're probably a middle bird. One of my big pieces of advice when it comes to productivity is to understand your chronotype and proactively schedule your day around that. So if you're an owl, don't get up at 5 am, that's a disaster waiting to happen.

Emmanuel: Oh, I love that. I'm definitely that middle bird and I'm going to be proud.

Emmanuel: What does a typical day look like for you? How do you keep yourself productive?

Amantha: I am lark-ish, so I naturally get up at about six, maybe 6:30 a.m. My brain is best in the morning, so I typically don't schedule meetings for the morning, and I use that time to work on my biggest, most challenging projects, so I use that time for deep, focused work. I typically have most of my meetings in the afternoon and try to disconnect at about 5 o'clock. One of the big things that I do that I feel helps my productivity is time boxing or time blocking, where I book meetings with myself, depending on what projects I want to get done which reduces procrastination.

Emmanuel: I feel like I'm a procrastinator. What trends are you seeing with the way people are working? What does good look like now?

Amantha: I think that the better employers definitely embrace ultra flexibility. So, I'm talking about the opposite of a back-to-office mandate where people have control over where they work, their work hours, and how they get their work done. And even though everyone talks about generative AI, I'm still very surprised by the lack of people using it daily to augment their work. For the last year and a half, I've used Gen AI, including ChatGPT and Claude, to help me with my work. It makes me so much more productive if I'm feeding it the right tasks. And quite frankly, I think that people that are not leaning into that, particularly knowledge workers, are at a distinct disadvantage.

I'm still very surprised by the lack of people using generative AI to augment their work. Frankly, people not leaning into it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Dr Amantha Imber - Organisational Psychologist

Emmanuel: Why do you think we've become so obsessed with being efficient and productive? And what impact does it have on our health and well-being?

Amantha: I think it's having a terrible impact on our health. It comes from hustle culture and tech bro culture, and that was pretty cool quite a few years ago, and maybe that still is a bit cool for some people, but the pandemic has taught us just how important our mental health and well-being are, and if we don't have that, then all of the productivity hacks in the world are not going to help you have more impact in your job. We need to set better boundaries to maintain our well-being and productivity.

Emmanuel: You've interviewed some big CEOs and high performers on your podcast 'How I Work'. What are some of the craziest or most extreme things you've heard them do? And what's the best advice you've heard from them?

Amantha: The one that has stuck with me is this tip from Rahul Vora, a very successful Silicon Valley tech founder and CEO. One of the keys to his productivity is learning keyboard shortcuts and reducing how much time he uses a mouse for things. And that might sound small and inconsequential, but if you're a desk-based worker, as I imagine, a lot of your listeners are part of your day and the speed at which you can get through things and process things is based on how quickly you can navigate, around your computer screen. And it is much quicker to do things on your keyboard than going from your mouse to your keyboard, mouse to your keyboard. And so, after hearing him say that, I've invested a lot more time learning keyboard shortcuts for the various software programs I use.

Why do you think we've all become so obsessed with efficiency and productivity?

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

Emmanuel: I love that. Now, you have mentioned AI and Chat GPT, and, although this podcast is for everybody, it is mainly for people in financial services. I don't know if you know financial services well, but we are pretty much scared of all new technology. If we could, we'd be using paper and pen forever. What would you say to get people to embrace technology and the new wave?

Amantha: I think people listen to podcasts because they're generally seeking self-improvement and self-optimization, and I think people like that, and like us, want to know, what are the things that I can do to give myself a competitive advantage in this world of work? And that's where technology comes in. I feel like I use technology to give myself a competitive advantage over other people and other businesses. That's why I've lent into AI: every single day, I'm getting a huge competitive advantage over everyone who's not using it.

Emmanuel: What are your thoughts about phones? Are they good for us? Are we addicted? Can we live without them?

Amantha: Oh, I think many people are addicted to their phones. The applications on phones are designed to be like mini gambling pokies machines that we have in our pocket. The people that are designing the apps know how to keep us hooked. Here are some tips I'll share regarding managing distractions - obviously, turn notifications off. That's a hygiene factor. Think about your day, try to check your phone less, and do not give in to that distraction. How many minutes or hours over a day is your phone more than an arm's length reach away? For most people, that would be almost zero minutes. So, one strategy is changing your environment and making checking your phone harder. Leave your phone in a different room to where you are. Or if it needs to be in the same room, put it in a drawer below where it's a slight effort to grab your phone. The second thing that I'd recommend is switching your phone to grayscale. There is an accessibility mode on the iPhone that turns your phone from being a very exciting, colourful little gambling machine with like all the, you know, pings and dings and bright colours to something incredibly dull and just shades of grey. So switch your phone to grayscale, and I guarantee you, Instagram is not particularly addictive if you're looking at it in black and white.

Emmanuel: Wow. I did not even know that existed. That is fantastic.

Switch your phone to grayscale. Instagram is not particularly addictive if you're looking at it in black and white.

Dr Amantha Imber - Organisational Psychologist

Emmanuel: People in finance are among the worst when it comes to working long hours. It's almost like a badge of honour. Have you got any tips to help our audience there?

Amantha: It's a flawed belief system. The onus is on people and teams to question your thinking when you see people messaging you on email or instant messenger after hours, whether that be early or late. Don't see that as a sign of productivity or that someone should be rewarded. It's simply a sign that they sent a message at that point in time. So, people need to lean into rewarding the outcomes instead of the hours and challenging those unconscious beliefs.

Emmanuel: So, what do you think companies should be doing to help healthily boost productivity?

Amantha: I think that companies need to start seeing productivity as a skill that can be taught and that there are better and worse ways of working.

People in finance are among the worst for working long hours - it's almost a badge of honour.

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

Emmanuel: I guess the last question goes out to our listeners who may feel burnt out or tired. Do you have any tips to help them get some energy back?

Amantha: I think the obvious thing to do is to prioritize sleep. Sleep is the foundation for everything. I would encourage people to set an alarm for when they need to go to bed and prioritize being in bed for between seven and nine hours. Everyone's a little different, but that is one of the most powerful things you can do to wake up and feel refreshed.

Listen to this episode in full here.

In 2022-23, there were around 874,000 recent first-time buyers in England, around eighty thousand fewer compared to 2020-21^[1]. The private rented sector makes up 4.6 million (about 19% of households)^[2]. The lower rate of first-time buyers means more people are renting for longer. The private rental market represents a great opportunity for advisers to talk about protection. With the purchase of a first home not as much of a life trigger as it previously was, advisers are facing the challenge of creating new opportunities. Is the obsession with mortgages as the only route for protection conversations on its way out?

Future pipeline of customers

30% of private renters had dependent children in 2022-23.[3] This means that just under a third of renters have someone relying on them for a stable lifestyle. Children are a known life trigger for people seeking protection advice and rental market customers are no different, needing guidance to the options available.

Aviva's research into Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012 (ages 12 to 27 in 2024), shows that currently, 49% of Gen Z are renting, 24% are homeowners and 19% are living rent free. Whilst 75% of Gen Z are not currently homeowners, they are optimistic about home ownership. When asked, "when do you expect to buy a house?" 55% of Gen Z non-homeowners said in their 20s or 30s, with a further 25% wanting to buy but are not sure when. Only 19% were unsure if they ever will buy a home.

With the next generation of homeowners staying longer in rented homes, research found renters have a particular fear of the future.^[4] This presents an opportunity to champion products which provide flexible security. The younger that income protection is taken out the easier it is to obtain cover, as an industry it vital we explore new ways of reaching out to new customers.

So how can advisers reach out to renters?

One suggestion is to team up with your local lettings agent and work together to support their customers by introducing tenant protection into their business. From young singles, to couples, to families and older singles the protection gap exists. Having a protection conversation as part of securing a rental property can help support financial resilience. A face-to-face meeting with potential renters before they agree to lease a property is recommended but if this isn’t possible, work with your local letting agents to instead email prospective rental customers.

Another suggestion is for financial advisers to speak to their current customers who are landlords about referring their tenants for advice about protection. Policies such as income protection are linked to earnings so can provide tenants a safety net in case of illness or injury. It’s not just mortgage clients who need this cover, renters do too.

For Gen-Z specifically, family are the essential trusted resource for guidance, and, when prompted, financial-led resources are the second go to^[5] . Make the most of this opportunity and speak with your existing customers who have Gen-Z children about how you can support them and their children in access to protection advice.

Paula Pearson, Strategic Account Manager at Aviva says “The next generation of customers are open to protection cover, it is up to us an industry to reach out to them, educate them and make sur we’re there to help them secure their incomes and create financial resilience. Finding new way to reach renters and building long term relationships with them will help secure your customer pipeline for if and when your renter customers are ready for a mortgage.”

For support helping renters get the protection they need visit our tenant protection hub

^References

^{[1-3] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/english-housing-survey-2022-to-2023-headline-report. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0}

^{[4&5] Gen Z_Insight. The research was conducted by Brand Potential on behalf on Aviva between 01.10.2023-31.01.2024. 16 Qual Interviews: Pre Interview, a mock experience with proposition including Advised/Non-Advised with IFAs, and Direct channels & post interview. Online survey for N=1200 consumers, with a focus on aged 24-27, plus consumers aged 18-23 and 28-40 for context. All respondents including those screened out; age weighted to national proportions.}

With cost-cutting and inflation, is it getting harder to prioritize customer experience? Emmanuel talks to CX speaker and obsessive Amanda Stevens about why customer experience is your business's best investment.

Here are some highlights from that conversation, including Amanda's Five Cs framework for a sustainable and profitable customer experience strategy.

You can also get your free digital or audio copy of Amanda's e-book Turning Customers into Advocates at the end of this page.

Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: All right, let's get into the upfront question of the day. Do you think it's getting harder to prioritize customer experience?

Amanda Stevens: Well, that is a big question. Perhaps some people would say yes. But in an organization with all of the other pressures, I think the bigger theme we want to unpack today is that it's never been more important. There has never been a greater opportunity for a brand, a business big or small, to create a competitive advantage through the client or customer experience.

Emmanuel: Do you feel customer experience is one of those things that some businesses feel they can get away with? Like, if customers are still buying from us or using our products now, why would you spend more money in this department?

Amanda Stevens: At the point that we're at with the economy and with consumer expectations changing, I think the customer experience, the customer journey and how to build long-term, not just loyalty, but also customer advocacy is something anyone in financial services needs to be doing deep right now because it's no longer a nice to have; it's no longer about the warm and fuzzy. It's mission-critical.

Emmanuel: What difference does good and bad customer experience make for a business?

Amanda Stevens: I think it can make or break a business because, as many of your listeners would know, the holy grail of growing a business is having customer or client advocacy. So not just having satisfied clients, but, you know, super loyal clients, but then that next step, when they become advocates, those clients that we all love and we'd love to have more of, the ones that refer their friends and family, that do a lot of our marketing for us, that, you know, can't help themselves but talk about us at a dinner party or a barbecue. Tapping into the potency of customer advocacy can grow your business exponentially and be the thing that future-proofs it.

Way too many businesses are striving for the wrong thing. Customer satisfaction does not get people talking about you at a dinner party or barbeque.

Amanda Stevens - Customer Experience expert

Emmanuel: Everyone talks about exceeding expectations, but you talk about making something epic. What does that look like?

Amanda Stevens: This is my bugbear with customer experience or customer service. Way too many brands and businesses are striving for the wrong thing. Here in Australia, we have some of our biggest banks. One of them is very open about its purpose. Their goal driving their business is 100 per cent customer satisfaction, and I think to myself, what a lowball thing to strive for. Satisfied customers don't generate customer advocacy. I don't go to a dinner party with my girlfriends tomorrow night and say, Oh girls, you've got to go and visit this business. I had the most satisfactory experience. Customer satisfaction doesn't get people talking about you at a dinner party or a barbecue.

Amanda Stevens: So I talk about the three levels of customer experience. There's expected, which is you get an experience that you're expecting and may deliver a satisfied customer. Right? You might have a level of satisfaction that was exactly what I expected. Then there's the next level, which is extraordinary. So that's where it exceeds your expectations. It's not what you're expecting. It was a nice surprise and delight that may deliver a loyal customer. But then there's the next level of what I call epic. And epic customer experiences are those experiences that you have that you can't help but talk about. You write a Google review. You can't help but talk about that brand and entrust your friends and family. Tapping into that level of advocacy where you have passionate, raving fans. Brand advocates who do your marketing for you are literally walking unpaid advertisements. For your business, that's the ultimate. And that's what we should all be striving for. Not customer satisfaction. That's very 1989.

Emmanuel: Amanda, I loved what you had to say, but I can hear the cynics now. Is it difficult to do?

Amanda Stevens: It starts with putting your customer at the heart of everything that you do and doing the small things really well. You know, we are operating our businesses in this exciting opportunities galore era where we're able to do things with technology in our business that we couldn't do five years ago. But when we can harness the best of high tech and the best of high touch, you have a very magic formula because it's about thinking about the human touch points that an algorithm or a piece of technology can't replicate. Those human-customized little magic moments are going to mean more than ever.

When everyone gets on board and has this radical customer obsession, that is where real magic happens.

Amanda Stevens - Customer Experience expert

Emmanuel: How do we get other business areas to want to change?

Amanda Stevens: I think that the mistake that a lot of people make in large, particularly service-based businesses and particularly in financial services, is you might have one department or one person in the organization that gets it, and they get super excited about the power of the client experience, and so they start trying to implement it, but the opportunity is to take a step back and get everyone on board around customer centricity as the first step. I spoke recently at a million-dollar round table, and a couple of larger financial services companies took this one idea I gave them. They said it's such a simple thing, but its difference in our business is massive. And so I talked a lot about who your ideal customer is and personifying that person. For example, our ideal customer might be Janine, who is 45 years old. She's earning this amount. She's also making decisions on behalf of the family. And some of these organizations have literally gotten that avatar and had a cardboard cutout of that person made and given it a seat at the table in the boardroom. It's a bit gimmicky, but it works, right? It's that reminder that we are all here because of our customers, and we need to make our customers part of every conversation and every decision that we're making. Talking about customer insights and what keeps our customers awake at night, that question unifies everyone because everyone will have different perspectives. When everyone gets on board and gets on the same page and has radical customer obsession, that is where real magic happens.

Wow! The value in this conversation. I'm going to have to play this back a few times.

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

Emmanuel: So is this something that can be googled? Is there like a customer experience crib sheet that people can get?

Amanda Stevens: I want to share a little bit of a framework called The Five Cs to building a robust, sustainable, profitable customer experience strategy:

1. Curiosity - being insanely curious about your customers' needs and pain points. Setting up a customer advisory board that you can use as a sounding board for ideas is such a simple, cost-effective way to have that customer-centric view of your business.
2. Commonality - which is the new platform for trust. As humans, we gravitate to people, brands, and places that we have something in common with because it makes us feel safe. Whether you're a large organization or a business owner, when you break it all down, isn't 'safe' the overriding emotion you want your customers to feel? That they're making the right decisions, getting the right advice, and their money is safe, but more importantly, you want them to feel safe to advocate for your brand.
3. Community - I always ask, "What are you doing to become a visible, active part of your local community?" The answer could be tapping you into a whole new stream of customers and solidifying loyalty with your existing customers.
4. Customization - think about personalising different parts of your touch points. Personalization can go a long way to enhancing the perceived value of your service and create that point of difference.
5. Connection - this is such an evolving, exciting opportunity for us to go deeper with our clients, to get to know them, have that human connection and that level of trust with you that you're playing such an important role in their life.

In the next few years, I think we'll see a clear delineation in financial services. We'll see brands and businesses that are very transaction-focused and very relationship-focused. And I have to say that if you're not on the right side of that ledger in the next few years, you are simply not going to win the battle for relevance.

When you break it all down, isn't safe the overriding emotion you want all your customers to feel?

Amanda Stevens - Customer Experience expert

Emmanuel: Wow, the value today. I mean, listen, I feel like I'm gonna have to play this back a few times myself. Is there a secret to getting customers to advocate for you?

Amanda Stevens: It's not a set-and-forget strategy. It's the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which is little bits of improvement continuously. That's how you win over time. That's how you get to customer advocacy, true brand love and raving fans. And it has to start from the inside out. So, if you want your people or team to create customer advocates, start by making them advocates and that will have a flow on effect to your customers.

Emmanuel: What are your final words to motivate our listeners that this is worth doing and something every business should invest in?

Amanda Stevens: Change your mindset around customer experience and customer service. It's not an expense. It's an investment. And if you get it right, you can get monumental exponential return on that investment compared to other marketing investments. And I would also say what are you doing each and every day to demonstrate that you have radical customer obsession? What are you doing to make your customer's days and lives better? I get excited about the opportunity and the potential for particularly smaller businesses in financial services to create a strong, sustainable, future-proofed, competitive advantage by really dialling into their customer experience and striving for those epic moments that create advocacy.

Listen to this episode here

The rapid growth in digital assets and new product types in recent years is part of what has been labelled ‘the big shift’ in a new study of the seven megatrends shaking up financial services.

This ever-expanding range of assets, from traditional digital media to block-chain backed assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), asset-backed tokens, tokenised real estate, tokenised exchange traded funds (ETFs) and cryptocurrencies is creating new opportunities and demanding a mindset shift for financial services players, according to landmark research by Iress in partnership with Deloitte Access Economics.

Nonetheless, while the popularity of ETFs continues to grow – with a 34 per cent increase in market cap in the 12 months to April 2024 and ownership increasing by five per cent to 20 per cent this year – the report, Advice 2030: The Big Shift, says it’s clear investors are preferring newer asset classes. An estimated 23 per cent of Australians currently own cryptocurrency[1], for example, with ownership doubling in the three years to 2023.[2]

Over 10% CAGR
One forecast predicts a compound annual growth rate of 10.15 per cent between 2024 and 2028, reaching an estimated A$2.5 billion by 2028.[3] Another forecast puts the number of Australian users in the cryptocurrencies market at 11.38 million by 2025.[4]

The desire for diversification, the allure of higher returns and the influence of the latest advances in technology are all driving the proliferation of investment products, according to the report. Across Asia, digital assets were already a top-five asset class by 2022, with investors allocating an average seven per cent of their portfolios to digital, more than forex, commodities or collectibles, according to Accenture research.[5] The research found that while a consistent trend was evident across different markets, income levels and genders, younger investors were more exposed to digital assets. More than 50 per cent of millennials currently own or have previously owned cryptocurrencies, the Accenture research found.

New regulations due
So significant is the impact of the proliferation of new products, and the potential risks for investors, that the Federal Government began moves in 2023 to regulate digital asset platforms. It’s expected that the Australian financial services framework will be extended to cover digital asset platforms to ensure consistent oversight and safeguards for consumers. Legislation is due before Parliament this year.

The Big Shift says that if Australia is able to support a “responsible and regulated” digital asset sector, it could add up to $60 billion to GDP each year, representing a significant opportunity for brokers to diversify their offering.

The Accenture report says that despite the burgeoning demand, firms have been slow to embrace digital assets, mostly targeting the small but profitable custody element only. But that sends clients to competitors prepared to offer innovative services or to unregulated peer-to-peer forums. And, with regulatory pressures, rising costs and shrinking trading volumes, businesses are at risk of falling behind competitors that take a more proactive approach.

The Big Shift recommends a mindset shift for those yet to fully understand and take on digital assets. That could include providing access to crypto-related products and direct access to cryptocurrency trading, and developing user-friendly mobile apps using real-time data to allow clients to trade on the go. Providing education and information resources is also a proven strategy to build engagement and attract new clients.

Other megatrends highlighted in Advice 2030: The Big Shift include the intergenerational wealth transfer, the impact of technology, environmental volatility, the ageing population and demands for retirement products and the repercussions of the housing crisis.[6]

Smarter trading for tomorrow
Brokers around the world use Iress’ trading software to connect across multiple markets, monitor and manage risk, access end-to-end multi-asset trading support, and deliver better performance. Visit iress.com/tradingAU to learn more.

[1] Financial Planning and Investment Advice in Australia – Market Size, Industry Analysis, Trends and Forecasts (2024-2029)| IBISWorld

[2] Australian Investor Study (asx.com.au)

[3] Fintech in Australia Market – Companies & Industry Trends Report (mordorintelligence.com)

[4] Cryptocurrencies – Australia | Statista Market Forecast

[5] Digital Assets: Unclaimed Territory in Asia (accenture.com)

[6] The Big Shift (iress.com)

Limited company buy to let: challenge & opportunity

Limited company buy to let is on the up and up, making it more and more important that brokers work with lenders who understand the market dynamics, says Leeds Building Society’s Director of Mortgage Distribution Martese Carton.

It’s about ten years since rules around offsetting mortgage interest costs against income tax were announced – and nigh on a decade on we’re still seeing establishing a limited company to manage buy to let portfolios as an increasingly popular choice. Last year, a significant 50,000 landlords launched limited companies.

Couple this with ongoing interest rate volatility – where higher rates have dented landlord profitability – and limited company buy to let is emerging as the vehicle of choice for todays’ modern landlord.

As always, though, there are tricky waters to navigate. It’s clear that across the buy to let market real change is happening, and not of all it wholly good: industry data suggest that by the end of 2023, there were 13,570 buy to let mortgages in arrears, and just over half of landlords feel confident in the property market.

A daunting prospect? Perhaps. But certainly an exciting opportunity.

As responsible landlords, many buy to let investors are mindful that continuing to increase rental charges for their tenants isn’t a sustainable solution to maintain profit margins, and there are different options available to achieve success.

We know that the impact of inflation continues to bite, and many renters are unable to keep up with ongoing cost rises. Landlords are tuned into this and trading under a limited company structure can reduce the need to increase charges for tenants given the beneficial tax implications it can provide.

As the trend continues towards investing under a limited company structure, many brokers don’t feel equipped to deal with these more complex applications and can feel confused about the steps they need to take to support clients.

Market research we undertook earlier this year showed that brokers value a good application process and clear criteria when considering lenders for limited company buy to let applications.

It’s crucial, therefore, that brokers work with lenders experienced in the market and who possess the technology platform, underwriting nous and excellent BDM support that can help. The benefits, after all, are significant. Limited companies can offer tax advantages and flexibility when planning for the future.

As increasing numbers of limited company buy-to let-cases are landing on lenders’ desks, in the changing mortgage landscape we want to do everything within our gift to empower brokers and build more confidence in limited company buy to let lending.

Find out more about Leeds Building Society’s Limited Company Buy to Let offering.

In episode 7 of the new series of the Upfront podcast, financial adviser Emmanuel Asuquo chats to fintech consultant David M. Brear about why most big digital transformations fail and how you can ensure yours isn't one of them.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: We're going to go straight in with the upfront question: Does digital transformation cause more problems than it solves?

David M Brear: I mean, that's a tough one. It really depends on which side of that argument you're on. I think for big organisations who are really trying to change themselves and want better service for customers and better operating costs, it solves problems rather than causing problems. But I guess with any change comes an element of disruption, and that's predominantly cultural more than anything else. Sometimes, you've got to cause problems to solve them.

Emmanuel: Why is it like every company we hear about, especially big companies, are doing this now?

David M Brear: Many of the big organizations that we work with were born in a very different age. It was analog. It was paper. It was people. It was premises, right? So moving to a digital world, most get that wrong. Most digitize themselves rather than create digital capability, which sounds like semantics, but the difference is ginormous. The difference between taking a. piece of paper and putting it on a website versus truly understanding the real virtues of digital and building something first principle up. The outcome is staggeringly different and probably a little bit less painful as well.

I'll be honest, when I heard we were going to be talking about digital transformation, I thought, this ain't gonna be that fun, but you look like someone I would go out with. You play basketball and talk with passion. It sounds exciting!

Emmanuel Asuquo - Upfront host

Emmanuel: Now, you have famously said that digital financial services are only 1 percent done. Can this really be true with all the money that's been spent and with all the apps that we have?

David M Brear: Yeah, it's a big accusation, right? Big banks in the US spend 12 or 13 billion dollars a year just keeping their technology estate alive. But really, what we mean by that is that the industry is moving so much slower than society. If you look at the advancements that we're seeing around technology change or the regulatory change that's happening all around the world, customer expectations, every industry is so much further ahead than financial services. We think we're probably being quite generous when we say 1%. Given the speed of the market, we're probably moving backwards rather than forward. This isn't necessarily, uh, Hey, guys, come on, what are you doing? It's more kind of a war cry that the 99 per cent of this journey ahead of us will be far more disruptive, impactful and far better for end consumers.

Every industry is so much further ahead than financial services. Given the speed of the market, we're probably moving backwards.

David M. Brear - CEO 11:FS

Emmanuel: I'll be honest. When I heard we were going to talk about digital transformation, I thought, this ain't gonna be that fun, but you look like someone I would go out with on the street, look cool, play basketball, and talk with passion. It sounds exciting. Where does that come from?

David M Brear: It's not easy, don't get me wrong. Anything worth doing never is, right? The passion comes from the fact that this industry can be so much better. We always talk about the underserved, overcharged, and overwhelmed, which covers most people these days, but financial services are not getting any better to support people. It doesn't take a lot with the big incumbent organisations to make these things so much more impactful for people.

The reality is that the ability to stay relevant to customers' problems and continue to evolve is really the only sustainable differentiator in any business.

David M. Brear - CEO 11:FS

Emmanuel: Now, you talk about digitizing the 99 percent. How are you gonna do that?

David M Brear: Yeah, well, I'd say the 99 percent will never be achieved. Successful businesses are always changing as customers' needs or the ability to service those needs fundamentally shift. So we try to get people into a mindset that culture's everything. So many organizations get into a mindset of "Well, there's some sort of technological solution we can procure that solves all of our problems." Like blockchain's a panacea, it will fix all these things, AI, or whatever. But the reality is that the ability to stay relevant to customers' problems and continue to evolve is really the only sustainable differentiator in any business.

Emmanuel: Talk to me about why some digital transformation projects fail?

David M Brear:. Yeah. We’ve seen people spend billions of pounds and write off those transformations because they couldn't make that change stick within the organizations or they've built a thing that they can't do anything with. It's like an organ transplant. You've got to make sure that the host is able to keep the organ rather than just chucking it in and hoping it works out. I'd say most big transformations fail. A lady on the board of a UK bank took me aside after I gave a presentation to them. She said, our problem is, we are a caterpillar and we keep going into a chrysalis and dreaming of this butterfly, but we come out a caterpillar again. And, that's the issue. People do all the work they think is right, but the process is geared up for large-scale transformation. It's two or three years. It's a horizon that never really comes. The most important thing in a digital business is that if you find out something's wrong, you fix it really quickly, right? It's the speed of change. Very often, the fintechs have done the work before the incumbent can schedule the meeting to talk about the work. Even from a cultural perspective, nobody wants to work on something for three years and maybe never see it happen.

It's like organ transplant. You've got to make sure the host is able to keep the organ, rather than just chucking it in and hoping it works out ok.

David M. Brear - CEO 11:FS

Emmanuel: Can you talk to us about some of the more impressive transformations you've done and why they were good?

David M Brear: We're doing some really interesting work now, looking at the complexities of ultra-high net worth. I mean, nobody's going to cry themselves to sleep that they're underserved, but it's much more akin to a medium sized corporate than it is a retail account. We all say financial is a service, and the bit mostly missing from the industry is somebody to solve those problems for you. If you think of Rihanna's banking experience, she's got six people looking after her finances and moving money around like a treasury function to make it work. People don't have that, but actually, that's the type of service we could be building for people. We think the future is essentially self-driving money. Financial services is a funny industry. They have all of the expertise, but then they typically will get you to pick from a list of things which one you think is the right one, and that doesn't make a great deal of sense to me. It's like your surgeon asking you where to cut. So, the advice side of things, I think, will dramatically increase, but being able to use algorithms to help people maximize their money is really where we think the future will go.

Emmanuel: I love that. Like how, growing up, you wish you had a driver and now we have Uber. So even if you can't afford a driver and a nice car, you can have Uber and get that similar service. I totally see your vision.

David M Brear: We use that as a metaphor because it's a chauffeur for the mass market, right? Airbnb is like the second home, Deliveroo is the private chef, right? So that continuation, it's like a private banker for the mass market. That's where we should be aiming. Most people don't know what a good financial system looks like, how much they should save, whether they should pay off debt or save some money. All of these complexities are where organisations have the expertise to help people with that stuff. That's what I think they should be doing.

Most people don't know what a good financial system looks like.

David M. Brear - CEO 11:FS

Emmanuel: What advice do you have for our listeners who are trying to implement digital transformation programs? How can they make them a success?

David M Brear: I always say attitude and effort are everything. Those two things are fundamentally in your control. So, for me, how do you make something successful? Fundamentally, it's just a habit. Do those two things every day, and good things seem to happen.

Listen to this episode here

Welcome to our Autumn edition of Industry Voice

"Moving on Mortgages" is the theme for this edition. We asked experts from the lending community for their viewpoints on the current mortgage market and how they're embracing product innovation, technology and connectivity to make the business of doing mortgages better.

We hope you enjoy it.

If you’d like to read previous editions, visit the Industry Voice homepage.

Watch the interview

Mortgage broker coach Ash Borland interviews Iress' Warren O'Connell and Kelly Bretherton about the latest issue and how technology is moving mortgages on.

Become a contributor

Industry Voice provides high quality thought leadership, analysis and commentary on the key trends and themes impacting the UK’s mortgage, protection and financial advice industry.

Each edition is produced and distributed by Iress and promoted across our digital and social media channels to a UK-wide audience of mortgage and insurance brokers, financial advisers and wealth managers.

For advertising, sponsorship and editorial enquiries, please contact:

Neal Ray
Advertising & sponsorship manager
Call: +44 (0)7816 536 166
Email: neal.ray@iress.com

Earlier this year, we introduced Loop, our feedback program that’s all about you. We prioritised giving you more opportunities to share your feedback, helping us continuously improve both our products and services. Since then, we’ve implemented a series of touchpoints across our services, allowing us to gather your feedback right at the point you interact with us, including:

• During training sessions and learning webinars.
• At the delivery of our quarterly product roadmap updates.
• Following your interactions with our support team.

In 2023, we conducted our last annual customer survey, inviting over 2,000 clients to participate and provide their views on what they value most from Iress and where we can improve. We’ve heard you and I’m pleased to share that your feedback has shaped improvements to our software and services.

Our software is critical to your business.

We understand that our software is critical to your business and we take this responsibility seriously. We have been working hard and reinvesting in our core products to equip you with unmatched tools to help manage your client portfolios with precision and boost your efficiency. Some key highlights include:

• New Visualise functionality turbocharging Xplan’s retirement planning capability. Find out more here.
• New ‘red flag’ feature in WealthSolver identifies underperforming super funds. Find out more here.
• Better visibility of SMA’s, to view, model and transact on SMA’s more easily. Find out more here.

All of these initiatives were introduced as a direct response to your feedback we received.

You want better performance and more robust product development

Much of your feedback called for enhancements to our products and services. We‘ve adapted our approach and reintroduced quarterly product roadmap updates, which have been refreshed and rebuilt around five critical pillars that guide our investment in Xplan’s capabilities and is underpinned by our commitment to continuous uplift, incorporating your feedback and value add integrations. These five pillars are:

• Supporting improved adviser efficiency.
• Leading the way in compliance & security.
• Boosting precision in client portfolios and tooling.
• Transforming adviser and client experience.
• Powerful business intelligence and insight.

In our Q3 roadmap update, we shared that 84% of initiatives were delivered to plan. Demonstrating our commitment and capability to deliver and a more robust product development roadmap.

If you missed the Q3 product roadmap update, you can catch up by watching the webinar here.

Your time and feedback help

Nothing matters more to us than making your Iress experience a positive one. As an Iress customer, you can expect to find an email with a link to our annual customer survey. We would love to hear from you to let us know how things are going.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.

The phenomenal uptake of artificial intelligence in financial markets was always going to be a given. After all, what’s not to like about faster, cheaper insights gleaned from bigger-than-ever datasets? It was especially so with the emergence a couple of years ago of the next step - generative AI.

While gen AI may sometimes behave like an overconfident teenager, there is no argument that it replenishes a battle weary capital markets sector with energy, and introduces new ways to gain ground lost to the challenges of intense competition and regulatory pressures.

So, in a sector driven by technology and all of its latest innovations, it can be easy to overlook the people component. Data is king but it is still people who make the difference.

Clients tell us that while they might be confident about their trading strategies and technology, more than ever they are focusing on robust training and ongoing change management capabilities to make sure their people understand and are on-board with the increasing complexity and significant transformations taking place.

We are also seeing an interesting change in conversations about data quality, which are moving from the middle to back office and right up to the C-suite. A few years ago we would have been dealing with the head of data procurement on pricing. Today, chief revenue officers and chief AI officers want to be in the room to set value creation and value capture imperatives to focus more on source data quality as it sets the foundation for the source code.

Sharing knowledge and skills

One important trend has been our clients’ move to reinvent themselves in the face of competition from fintech startups as well as the challenges of new and changing regulations and constantly evolving technology.

We are seeing more interest in buying or renting off-the-shelf solutions that are not core to the business (such as customer relationship manager (CRM) software). But when it comes to core capabilities, there is increasingly a preference to develop custom solutions collaboratively rather than using a ready-made product.

While there are benefits to buying infrastructure outright - such as rapid deployment and usually predictable costs - there remains much to like about building your own. It’s not only the chance of endless customisation but there are significant efficiencies in having control over system updates, security and maintenance, and in creating a competitive advantage.

Despite compelling arguments for both buying and building, the fact is infrastructure decisions are no longer confined to one or the other. We are seeing more hybrids that marry best-of-breed solutions from the market with clients’ own builds. A hybrid approach balances custom solutions with ready-to-use products, helping to manage costs and mitigate risks.

This approach can lead to deep-rooted partnerships that take the best of knowledge and skills from all parties to create data insights that allow clients to reimagine their offerings and deliver more hyper-personalised products. It means that differentiation is about connecting ideas, relationships and capabilities, not just the ability to outspend.

Real-time demand

The demand for market and transactional data has never been greater, and the need for real-time market data is increasing, driven partly by continued regulatory and compliance pressure.

Our clients are asking for readily available access to market and transactional data and audits either through our data lakehouse or moving to a self-serve model and ingesting data into their own lakehouses to run regular reporting or answer regulator queries.

It is quite a difference to just 12 months ago when delayed information – T+1 or end-of-day (EOD) was enough. An example of this is sanctions data rules. Previously, sanctions breach monitoring was run EOD as a report and often post-trade. Now clients are being pushed to look at "near-real-time" capabilities and alerts. Regulators, too, are helping to drive the transformation by requiring real-time data for compliance assessments.

Of course, gen AI and machine learning are also delivering innovation in data interrogation. One area of interest is trade surveillance, where we are able to ‘learn’ the trading behaviour of dealers. From a compliance perspective, for example, that means we can spot anomalies and trigger a signal.

Trade surveillance is also used to generate alpha signals by providing long-dated high-quality historical data, and tick-by-tick information down to the microsecond. It also allows portfolio managers to very quickly change trading strategies, contingent on a more extensive data set that wasn't previously possible.

This chance to drive efficiency and improved decision-making is also playing out in a reengineering of business processes – saving costs as well as creating growth. For example, there are widespread moves to merge the functions of dealing desks and portfolio managers by leveraging gen AI. We’re also seeing the use of gen AI to spin off new revenue streams, tailoring data assets to individual clients.

Looking ahead, copilot systems are expected to be a source of new growth and innovation. Without exception, our clients aspire to create a copilot to better serve their own clients by tailoring every single product and service to an individual rather than a segment.

Copilot systems rely on extensive and high-quality data sets delivered by stable and reliable infrastructure - a capability that Iress is proud to promote.

Navigating the complexities of global markets may depend on the data and integration of technology, but human expertise and spirit will make it happen in the right way and truly push the limit.

This article was originally published in SIAA Monthly September 2024.

In the sixth episode of the new series of the Upfront podcast, financial adviser Emmanuel Asuquo chats to mathematician and comedian Adam Spencer about worsening numeracy levels and its impact on our finances.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: We're gonna go straight into it. Could a fear of maths or numbers be putting people off finance?

Adam: Certainly, if you were scared of numbers in general and long division sent a shiver down your spine, I think there is a chance you'd balk and think that finance is harder than that and something you couldn't confront at all. Ironically, being quite fluent in numbers, I don't put myself forward as an expert in financial management. Yeah, if numbers scare you, unfortunately, financial management and financial literacy would also leave you feeling a little bit short of breath.

Emmanuel: When did you realise that you were a numbers guy? Or, I like to see a numbers god. Because numbers, to me, are just amazing. And for anyone that can master them, it's almost god-tier level.

Adam: Yeah, I gave a TED talk a few years ago, and the phrase I used was that numbers were the musical notes with which the symphony of the universe is written. I think they're just the building blocks of everything. I always loved it at school. I was always sort of on top of or a bit ahead of what everyone else was learning. So I was lucky. It always came to me pretty naturally. I can't ever really remember having maths lessons going, well, that doesn't make sense.

Emmanuel: We're seeing numeracy levels in the UK and Australia are getting worse. What do you think are the consequences of this?

Adam: One of the stats suggested in Australia a couple of years ago was 40 percent of kids are being taught mathematics by someone who's not qualified to teach it. And, you know, I like to say, make me your child's French tutor, and in six months, I'll give you a kid who cannot speak French because I can't. I'm just not qualified. Make me your kid's tennis coach, Emanuel, and in 12 months, I'll give you a terrible tennis player because I'm just not qualified. Kids can smell fear, and if they're being taught by someone not really deeply attuned to a subject, they're not going to get it themselves. There will certainly be no deeper affection or understanding of the subject. We need more mathematically qualified teachers and more people who love maths and love numbers and are thinking about teaching at least as a part-time or ideally as a full-time vocation.

We need more mathematically qualified teachers and more people who love maths and numbers thinking about teaching.

Adam Spencer - Mathematician and comedian

Emmanuel: How would you fix the system?

Adam: I'd rather see a slightly smaller amount of maths taught in more depth, and the students who then need it at a specialist level, who might go on to do engineering, accounting, or something, can be catered for. But I'd rather have the general numeracy of more people also lifted by them not having to drop the arithmetic and race off to the trigonometry, and before they've had time for that to really absorb, go back to the calculus and then we've got to race over to financial mathematics.

Emmanuel: Do you think that maths should be more relevant? We should teach young people how to understand more practical things like budgeting, taxes, pensions, and interest rates? I remember feeling like if I didn't understand Pi, I wouldn't be able to make it in life. And I have not used Pi since I left school.

Adam: Yeah, okay, spoiler alert: You can probably get a fair way through life without a deep understanding of Pi. There is potential for tuning and tweaking any syllabus a little bit more to make it a little bit more relevant. I stare at some slabs of things and wonder why they're still there. It's one of the great things about this podcast: the more people who are financially literate, the more in control and able to control their own economics and finances, the better.

I miss the old days when you'd put your hands into your jeans pocket, and there was a 2 dollar coin there that you hadn't noticed. Happy days.

Adam Spencer - Mathematician and comedian

Emmanuel: How has a cashless society affected our understanding of maths and money?

Adam: I can remember myself as a child, and even with my kids, who are now 16 and 19, it was round at the local cafe, working out how much it would cost for lunch. And then eventually getting to the point of, okay, if you're going to add up the three things we've ordered and work out how much change we're getting, out of 50, I'll give you half of that change. And then suddenly, I had two little Einstein's running around. I do miss the old days when you'd put your hands into your jeans pocket, and there was a 2 dollar coin there that you hadn't noticed you had. Happy days.

Emmanuel: I remember we'd look for money. You'd lift the sofa and see if there's anything there. We had a little money jar, which we used to put change in. By the time you poured it out and added it up, you realised you had a decent amount of money there that you could actually go and buy something with. All of these things teach you about value.

Adam: Yeah, there was something positive in watching that accumulation process happen and having the discipline to leave it there for a little while. It's certainly a good skill to have.

I myself try to use humour to make personal finance relevant. I try to laugh people into making change.

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

Emmanuel: Do you think there's shame in being unable to understand numbers? Do you think this might make people reluctant to talk to a financial advisor?

Adam: It's an interesting one. There's something about mathematics that makes it almost cool to be able to say that you're terrible at it. And if that's the case, I think there's a real risk of putting your own personal finances in the too-hard basket. I think the important thing for people to understand is when you're getting financial advice from someone, even if you don't really understand the mathematics behind it, and possibly, especially if you don't understand the mathematics behind it, you can still put your trust in someone else, and it's probably important that you do. If I go to a doctor and they tell me I've got some horrible illness, and I don't really understand how that illness works or how I got it or what to do about it, I'm still going to go to that person for advice on that illness. In fact, probably more so because they know something I don't. So I think there's a compelling case: if you're scared by numbers or don't like them, you have to find the courage to ask someone for financial advice.

Emmanuel: What do you think financial service providers can do to help people who feel that they're not great with numbers or switch off when anything's talked about money or numbers?

The great thing about it is mathematics just exists. If humans had never come along, four times seven is still 28.

Adam Spencer - Mathematician and comedian

Adam: You've got to find something to entice people into the conversation. Something simple, something clear, something that doesn't roll over the top of people with complexity and too much numbers and too much data. But a simple change to weekly instead of monthly payments will take X dollars off your current loan, Mark. Or, you'll be paying it down seven years faster. Something like that. Bang. Okay. Now I'm listening. Now I'm willing to trust you to take the conversation a little bit further.

Emmanuel: I know you use humour really well. How have you been able to put the two together? I, myself, try to use humour when it comes to finance and personal financing and make it relevant. I try to laugh people into making change. How have brought humor into something that seems so serious?

Adam: I have a phrase of, laugh while you don't even realise you're learning. That way, you can disarm people and get them interested in a conversation. I tend to find that a lot of the humour when I'm presenting, talking, or writing about mathematics comes from the reflection of just how unnaturally excited I'm getting about the subject myself. I think I'm often, in a lot of ways, the butt of the joke. So I think the first thing you've got to have is a genuine passion and enthusiasm on the part of the person who's telling the story. And if that person is telling you about helping you manage your finances, because at the end of the day, they truly want you to have a degree of financial independence you don't have now and if they want to gift that to you, and if that's what their mission and their drive in life is, if they're the sort of people who should be in that industry in the first place, you're halfway there.

Emmanuel: Finally, what changes would you like to see around the conversation regarding maths?

Adam: Oh, I just wish the beauty of the subject was more apparent to people. You know, poetry's great, and art is beautiful, but far and away, the most powerful device we have is numbers. It's the most powerful skill I think we humans have - to analyze, measure, rationalize, predict, and describe what's going on around us. Numbers are the tools that we use to do that. I just want to make as many people as possible fall in love with that. And the great thing about it is, mate, this thing of mathematics just exists. Like if humans had never come along, four times seven is still 28.

Emmanuel: Oh, I'm going to quote you an end. If humans didn't exist, four times seven still equals 28. I love that.

Listen to this episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the fifth episode of the new series of the Upfront podcast, financial adviser Emmanuel Asuquo talks to behavioural finance expert Krystle McGilvery about how financial services can better support and serve neurodivergent customers.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: I'll get straight into it. Are financial services doing enough to help neurodiverse people?

Krystle: Straight-in, punchy question, big question, and I think an important question. They can do so much more. So, if we take a step back and understand what neurodivergence is, it's so varied. So even if financial services make a massive step to do loads of stuff, there's going to be constant work to do. Making people feel safe, comfortable, confident, and that requires empathy and patience and a look at the whole process. It's a big job.

Emmanuel: What is neurodiversity? How could you define it for people at home?

Krystle: To keep it simple, we're talking about differences in our cognitive ability and functioning. All our brains are made so unique and beautiful and that manifests in terms of how we think, feel, and act. Which then, given that we're talking about money here, impacts our finances. So when you think of neurodivergence, you're thinking of things such as ADHD, autism, Tourette's, dyspraxia. All those things are all about the brain and how the brain is different.

Emmanuel: I've known you for quite a while, but I've never actually learned about your journey. So tell me, how have you battled with this, and how has it affected you along the way?

Krystle: I struggled a lot at uni and actually with my maths. So I had to retake the final year. I passed it very well, but that was hard. Then I fell into working as an accountant. And again, in the workplace, I just felt really different to everybody else and I couldn't quite articulate why. To cut a long story short, 15 years later, I started to question what was going on. Studying behavioural economic science, which is the psychology of decision-making, is where I was diagnosed as being dyslexic and having ADHD.

A lot of my clients call me really upset after speaking to their accountant or bank because of how they spoke to them about their financial situation, they're much more sensitive.

Krystle McGilvery - Behavioural Finance Expert

Emmanuel: How can neurodiversity affect people's financial habits?

Krystle: So if we look at neurodivergence, ADHD, impulsivity, forgetfulness, struggling with future planning, setting goals and sticking to those plans, that can have a really detrimental impact or effect on your finances. There are also things such as emotional dysregulation. A lot of my clients call me really upset after speaking to an accountant or calling their bank because of how they spoke to them about their financial situation. And because they're much more sensitive, they break down. They have a whole full nervous system reaction. There are other things called shutdowns and meltdowns where you literally disconnect from the world, and if you've got financial decisions to make or a bill to pay because you're not mentally in that space, then you can't do that. Again, it can really have a negative impact on your finances. I know Monzo did an amazing study, saying the ADHD tax is £1,600, and the ADHD community were laughing because they're like, it's so much more than that! Think of a simple example, you know, having a subscription to something because you've forgotten to cancel it. Buying groceries and because you've forgotten you've got it in the fridge, it goes mouldy there are so many areas where it can really play up.

Emmanuel: Now, I was surprised to see a stat that says around 20 percent of the population are neurodiverse. Do you think financial services take that serious enough?

Krystle: The stat is good. It's possibly much higher than that. When we're talking about someone being blind, we can quite easily see the impact that's having right away when they walk in the room. With a cognitive difference, well you can't see it, can you? Making it a number one area to pay attention to becomes a challenge in itself, but it needs to be focused on because people are suffering.

I was surprised to see a stat that says 20% of the population are neurodiverse. Do financial services take that seriously enough?

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

Emmanuel: We've seen reports that say investment firms and financial advisers are underserving neurodiverse people and that those customers may be left in worse financial health as a result. How do you feel about that?

Krystle: I can see how that's true. And I guess that leads us to the importance of the financial adviser learning about this and how they can best support them.

Emmanuel: Yeah, definitely. I think it's something that we all got to take away and think about. Now, in my head, I'm thinking about how do I do my part? So, what do you think the financial industry should be doing to better cater for neurodiversity? What aren't they doing now?

Krystle: I think everybody needs to go and learn and understand what it means and how it shows up. Then, along with that training, it's being equipped with the tools and solutions that are going to help them go on their financial journey. Understand how your client wants to communicate. Some don't like emails at all. Giving the client a clear outline of what to expect and what that journey is going to be like for the next however long you're working with them is a game changer because they don't want the element of surprise. There are some who love a graph and data - an autistic client might be like, yes!, I love this stuff but then others who hate it. So at the start of your journey together it's asking those specific questions how do you best like to communicate how should i share this information with you yeah and tailoring that for them.

There is a narrative among certain people that financial services are not out for them and this is a great opportunity to turn that on its head.

Krystle McGilvery - Behavioural finance expert

Emmanuel: I've really enjoyed our conversation today. Finally, this is your platform. What do you want to say to our listeners, people who work in financial services?

Krystle: There is a narrative among certain people that financial services are not out for them, and I think this is a great opportunity to really turn that on its head quite easily by committing to the cause and even open up the door to say, we are open to learning how to be better. That in itself is huge. And then go about the journey of learning, right? Get your training. Bring in financial experts in the neurodiverse space, get the training, and understand. Okay, this is what we can change to support our people better. Some of the nuggets we've shared already - emails, meetings, agendas - are little things you can tweak, I think, quite easily early on. It will take time. You're trying to accommodate a big range of people. You're not going to get it right straight away. It's going to take a while for it to be at a level where you've made a significant change, but it can be done.

Listen to this episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the fourth episode of the new series of the Upfront podcast, Emmanuel Asuquo talks to Deloitte's John O'Mahony and Prof. Deen Sanders about the findings of their new report Advice 2030: The Big Shift which looks at the future of the financial advice market and the choices advisers must make now if they're to be part of it.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: What's shaking up the financial advice sector, and is the industry ready for it?

Deen: What's shaking up financial advice is complexity. Complexity for the marketplace, complexity for clients, complexity for advisers, basically a big wall of increasing complexity in those environments.

John: What we're trying to do is shift from just talking about complexity to the choices facing financial advisers. Who do financial advisers choose to work with and advise, what technology they're going to use, where to specialize, and we hope that helps empower financial advisers to take some action.

Emmanuel: I love this. 'Cos when you said complexity, all I felt was regulation and compliance. That is the thing that bugs my brain every single day and makes me think, do I still want to be an adviser? 'Cos, it feels like everything is a problem. So what situation do financial advisers find themselves in right now?

John: In some respects, the picture for financial advisers isn't positive. We've gone through dramatic industry consolidation. That means a lot of financial advisers leaving the industry, for what you said earlier, fed up with the level of regulation, fed up with what the returns can be for their businesses. But there's good news in there as well. We've already seen the plateauing, the stabilization in the number of financial advisers, we've seen returns recover to what they were in the pre COVID era in the last 12 months. And we've seen optimism for growth; financial advisers expect an extra 25 per cent growth in their customer base over the next five years. If that plays out, the problem isn't going to be a lack of customers. The problem is there'll be too many customers. Financial advisers will have to work out for themselves who they want to work with and how they can service them efficiently.

Financial advisers expect an extra 25% growth in their customer base over the next five years. The problem isn't a lack of customers. The problem is there will be too many customers.

John O'Mahony - Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Deen: And Emmanuel, I want to try and rehabilitate the word complexity for you so it no longer scares you. You're quite right to call out the industry, and it's important to reflect that we are, of course, talking here about data that emerges from the Australian financial advice landscape, but it has a lot of synergy with the UK market. Complexity, as we've seen, has been playing out for the sector, both in Australia and in the UK, through the lens of regulation and internal change. Basically, the industry being at war with itself and with its regulators. The big shift in this conversation is recasting that complexity to focus on what's coming from the outside. The good news is that complexity in terms of the type of clients and market means enormous opportunities for unmet needs and the increasing complexity of that unmet need, which is the perfect space for professional advisers to play.

Emmanuel: That's amazing. What you're saying is so valid, and it's great that there's hope going forward. Advisers are not the only ones that are having it tough. Everyone's got it tough with the cost of living crisis and what's going on in the world. How will financial advisors need to adapt, I guess, is the question.

John: Well, I want to debate you on that point. I think it's fair to say that most people are, but by some metrics, there are other people who are actually doing quite fine in the current environment. The number of people in Australia who, by an objective measure, might be considered rich has grown over the last few years. We've got a standard measure for it. A sophisticated investor asset level of two and a half million dollars. It's about half that in pounds. 1. 5 per cent of the Australian population passed that threshold 20 years ago. Now, it's almost 10 times that level. 12 per cent of folks have that level of assets. And in the next decade, it's going to double again to 20%. So, if you think about the large asset base that needs financial advice, there's enough money there to pay for proper advice. Now, that's not everybody, but there is quite a market out there for financial advisers. This is not to say, of course, that that's the end of the story. There's an enormous need to expand financial advice so that other folks who need to get on the wealth ladder are able to grow their assets as well.

Emmanuel: Professor Deen, please come in here. John mentioned the advice gap - the rich getting richer. How do you see financial advice playing? Should we just focus on the really wealthy?

Deen: Well, it certainly is going to be the conundrum of the future. Populations globally are aging. We're also spreading the assets and the income differently and unequally. One of the things we called out in the report is intergenerational wealth transfer. We've been hearing that for a long time in financial advice. But it is a tidal wave about to hit, and what's really challenging about that is it's not just a tidal wave of money shifting from elderly parents to younger middle-aged parents. It's the fact that we now live in households of four generations. So we have internal conflict. We have internal complexity in some of these families, where everybody's sitting around the kitchen table wanting a slice of Mum and Dad's depleting assets because they can't get onto the housing ladder themselves. So the role of a financial adviser is also shifting away from the straightforward asset and investment models into, frankly, family dynamics. We're seeing more call for a life coach, a family coach, a trusted central advisor to families, that's a really exciting shift to think about what the future of financial advice looks like.

Emmanuel: And do you feel there's a need for financial advisers to retrain?

Deen: Absolutely. John mentioned at the top of our conversation that we wanted this report not to be scary because that was never the intention, or even just educative. We wanted to make sure we were talking about opportunities and, and pathways and choices. In the report, we've sort of diagnosed that future as four choices advisers can make about their business, and one of them is the type of specialization skills they will need. And, importantly, with whom they want to work. In the past, it was the financial adviser trying to be everything to every client, but in a complex market, you can't be. And, of course, all of that is underpinned by the technology platforms you want to engage with. So they're the four choices, customers, business models, specialization and technology.

We're seeing the role of financial adviser shifting away from straightforward asset and investment models into, frankly, family dynamics. That's a really exciting shift.

Prof. Deen Sanders - Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Emmanuel: I love that. But John, if we're competing with online platforms and robo advisors, and having to reduce our costs, can we reduce our costs and then offer more of the services outside of ourselves?

John: What we find is that the different megatrends have different implications. Some of them are the large customer base, repeat product, low-fee, highly competitive environment. But then there are other megatrends that will go in the opposite direction, and there's an opportunity for higher fees and personalisation. For some of these products, it's 10 to 50 per cent more than what's being charged at the moment. So there is a margin there. It just depends on what choices financial advisers make. There isn't one answer to that question and that's why we've got a handy map in the report to try to help them through the answer.

Deen: We don't see a shrinking of the market. We're seeing a growing sophistication of the market, which opens up the possibility for the first time in a long time for advisers to pay to be paid for their expert advice rather than for product-linked advice, and I look forward to seeing that same debate in the UK.

Emmanuel: This is fantastic. I really hope what people are taking away is actually choosing your market. For a long time as financial advisers, we've taken whatever we can get. As opposed to actually now saying who you want to work with. What threats do advisors need to be thinking about? How do we make sure that we don't get pushed out of the way or start to lose clients?

I really hope what people are taking away from this is actually choosing your market. For a long time as financial advisers, we've taken what we can get.

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

John: As a starting point, I'd suggest the best place that financial advisers can go to improve their likelihood of success is inside their own business. That is not looking over their shoulder at what competitors are doing. This research puts the power back in the hands of financial advisers and says if you make the right choices with customers, with people, and with technology, you can succeed. Where are the threats likely to come from? Some of it will be traditional players using technology better than you. Another threat is adjacent businesses that are likely to do more in financial advice. The superannuation sector in Australia doesn't provide a lot of financial advice at the moment, but it could be a way of distributing and getting access to clients. There's a third one, which is unregulated financial information. But really, the biggest threat to financial advisers is inaction by themselves.

Deen: The encouragement is that if you're looking around and things are pretty quiet, they're not quiet. You're looking in the wrong direction.

This research says if you make the right choices with customers, with people and with technology, you can succeed.

John O'Mahony - Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Deen: I don't want to frighten people into making change. I want to encourage them to think about the opportunity for change. It's unwise to sit still when there is so much opportunity just around the corner if they position themselves well for it.

Emmanuel: All right. As an adviser myself, I feel excited and empowered. The future looks a lot brighter than it felt before we started this conversation. Are there some quick wins?

John: I've got three for you, Emmanuel. The first one is to do some experimentation with technology choices. It would be remiss not to kick off there. Some early experimentation with AI and having a conversation with clients about what levels of technology use they're comfortable with is a pretty sensible starting point for financial advisers if they haven't made changes in their business for a long time. A second one is to think about which customers you would like to serve. Then the third one, I don't know if it's a quick win, is more education in yourself.

Emmanuel: So I guess, to round up, do you guys have a kind of rally cry built out from what this report is saying going forward?

John: Stick at it. We do lots of research reports across different industries, and what we've got in here for potential 25 per cent growth in customers is amazing. If I can put in a humble plug, it would be for financial advisers to download this report. It's big, but there's a short version that's like five pages where you can see what the trends are and some actions to take.

Deen: There is a new world of opportunity sitting there. It's just coming. It's absolutely coming. The big shift is on. Grab the report and have a read of it. We want more people activated in thinking about the future because we think it's a bright one.

Listen to this episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The relentless demands of financial market trading have spurred remarkable technological innovations.

Today, trading servers are often co-located into specialised data centres managed by exchanges, equipped with specialised networking hardware and protocols. High frequency trading can call for extreme cooling solutions, and programmable hardware called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). While the speed of data transmission through optical fibres is impressive, microwave network links are increasingly deployed to achieve even faster transmission speeds, leveraging the superior velocity of light through air compared to glass fibres.

Meanwhile, a very different revolution has taken place in the broader tech industry: cloud computing. This revolution has had a significant impact on how software services are built and operated in most industries. The financial sector was a late adopter of cloud computing due to concerns about security and regulation, but these have been addressed. As a result, even the largest financial institutions have undergone significant cloud transformations. However trading is an area where cloud has not had the same traction.

Much of the innovation in trading technology appears to conflict with cloud, such as the push for ever-lower latency, and the use of custom hardware. The requirement for exchanges to give fair access to the market has led to practices that are challenging to replicate in the cloud. For instance, equal length network cables are ensured from all participants by co-location facilities, so that no latency advantage is given to servers sitting right next to the exchange matching engine compared to servers in a far corner of the room. This level of precision contrasts sharply with the variable latency experienced within public cloud providers.

What is the attraction of cloud anyway?

The benefits of the public cloud go far beyond outsourcing of hardware and hosting. Cloud-native architectures promise improved flexibility, reliability, security and cost efficiency. Services can automatically scale up to meet surges in demand and shrink capacity to save costs when demand drops. However, the most significant benefits of cloud workloads are the modern operating practices that accompany them. Ideas from the DevOps movement have flourished in cloud computing, supported by the ability to treat infrastructure as code. This approach can dramatically increase the rate of change while enhancing safety and quality of service.

Growing interest in big data analytics, machine learning and now generative AI makes cloud adoption even more appealing today. While these emerging technologies are not exclusive to the cloud, they are more easily accessible and benefit greatly from the elasticity and scale that the cloud provides.

The tide is turning

We are at a very interesting moment in trading technology as the movement to the cloud gains momentum. Early adoption has focused on applications with less need for low latency requirements, such as big data or post trade systems, or crypto. There are many more applications within trading that do not require the same latency as high-frequency trading systems, and we are still only scratching the surface. Exchanges themselves are beginning to take cloud more seriously, despite their interest in co-location revenue. Nasdaq, pioneers of electronic trading in the 1970s and a leading technology provider to other exchanges, are now on the forefront of this movement to the cloud as they have partnered with AWS to run cloud-enabled markets. Additionally, CME has announced a new facility being built with Google Cloud to host their futures and options markets. Other exchanges have improved access to cloud-hosted participants, or are working towards it. AWS has introduced features to better support trading workloads, such as multicast networking and progress towards deterministic fairness in networking latency.

In my own work at Iress I have seen plenty of the benefits and pitfalls of cloud adoption, which we began about seven years ago with AWS, starting with elements of our wealth management software. Migrating existing services using a “lift and shift” approach was not very compelling. However, “replatforming” to take advantage of cloud features greatly improved our reliability, security and operating model for those workloads. The best outcomes have come from building new “cloud-native” services, which can be architected to best leverage cloud resilience, performance and efficiency.

Last year, we launched a cloud native global FIX hub that challenges perceptions of what’s possible for trading in the cloud with its high performance. The ability to move quickly with this technology has proven invaluable, whether it involves onboarding customers efficiently, expanding connectivity to new regions or building value added features into the product. We have embarked on a much more ambitious project to uplift the classic Iress Order System (“IOS Classic”), which has its roots in the launch of electronic trading for ASX options in 1997, with a new cloud-native execution management system. It is time for trading to reap the benefits of cloud.

This article was originally published on stockbrokers.org.au.

In the third episode of the new series of the Upfront podcast, financial adviser Emmanuel Asuquo explores the gender wealth gap and what the industry should do about it with Future Females in Finance founder Camilla Love.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Emmanuel: Camilla, tell us, are financial services failing women?

Camilla: I think that there are multiple ways to think about this. So, let's think about the gender gap in financial services. Oh my gosh, in Australia, it's about 27%. So, I'd say that's a bit of a fail. Then, think about how that equates to the superannuation gap. Australian women retire on half the amount of superannuation than their male counterparts. So I'd say that's a bit of a fail too. Now, let's look at the brighter side. The financial services industry is a fabulous place for women to work. A lot of organisations recognize that diversity is critical to profitability and good teamwork. Let's focus on the good things,

Emmanuel: Can you explain the gender gap? There are different variations of what people think this is. But can you actually define it so we can really understand what we're talking about today?

Camilla: So the gender gap in income is essentially if you as a male do a job and you get paid X and you as a female do the same job and get paid Y, what's the difference? And then what does it average out for the industry? The superannuation gap is if you are a male and female at the same age and have had the same income level over your career or salaried life, what the superannuation gap looks like. Those two gaps are enormous. There are a lot of people out there who think there are no issues here, and there are a lot of people who do, particularly in our female cohort.

Emmanuel: Here in the UK, we have similar gaps in both income and superannuation or pension as we call it over here.

They interviewed one female out of 15. I thought this is absolutely ridiculous. How can I change this?

Camilla Love - Founder Future Females in Finance

Emmanuel: Why did you start Future Females in Finance?

Camilla Love: I want to leave a powerful legacy in my industry, and everywhere I touch because it's important to me. I want to leave it in a better place. I want to make sure that people can see someone has moved, and they can move in the footsteps or even just see those footsteps and make their own footsteps. I absolutely think that's a critical part of being a leader in any industry. I started Future Females in Finance about five years ago. F3 aims to educate young women about careers in finance, starting from year ten all the way through to the end of their journey at university. The backbone of it is a six-week online work experience program, where a group of five girls get thrown together to research, analyze, and solve a business problem with a corporate partner and alongside a mentor. So, the goal is not only to give them skills and confidence but also to give you the network to start your journey into financial services and to ask people about their careers. It also gives you something to put on your CV. So I describe it, you know, do you go to the gym?

Emmanuel: Oh yes. Not as much as I should, though. I should go a lot more. I pay more for the membership than I do.

Camilla: It's always the answer. Well, where do you see the girls in the gym? You find them all in the group classes and not on the weights floor. But the more often they go to the group classes, the more likely they turn up on the weights floor. That's what F3 is about. It's a collegiate and a grassroots, practical, scalable solution to try to get as many talented young women into finance as possible.

Emmanuel: It's amazing. So much more of us need to do this. We are so focused on hitting our targets and achieving our goals that we don't think about who we are bringing in behind us. How do I make sure that I'm not the only one in these rooms? How do I make sure other people can get in?

Camilla: Absolutely. And you've got to push everybody and pull everybody up that ladder. If you know someone younger or older, you know your peer level, whoever, and you think they're really awesome. Tell them they're really awesome. Tell them that they are doing a really great job, and tell them that they should be going for this role. Because, you know, if we all adopted someone like that, the industry would be in a better place.

Financial services have come a long way, but the pace is way too slow, and it's driving me nuts.

Camilla Love - Founder Future Females in Finance

Emmanuel: How different do you think the financial sector would be culturally if there were more women at the top?

Camilla Love: It would be entirely different. I think the attributes of female leadership are entirely different to male leadership. There's lots and lots of different commercial organizations still out there in financial services, and there are people who have really old school ways of leadership, and that just doesn't fly anymore. So those leaders who are sitting in their glass offices and have their doors closed and just don't have access to the people on their floor, that is not what the next generation is looking for in their leadership, because they want to believe in you. They want to know that you are invested in their career, and it is absolutely critical that the next generation of leadership has a number of these real characteristics. Financial services have come a long way, but the pace it is going is way too slow and is absolutely driving me nuts. I read a statistic this week that said we would close the gender pay gap in 134 years here in Australia. Oh my God, that is ridiculous. And really, that change comes not only from the bottom, which, you know, F3 has a lot to do with, but it comes from those middle layers and the top. I was having this conversation with someone today and reading an article about a sales team that had made all these promotions. I think there were six promotions, and not one was female and it really kills me. So we need to see change in that CEO, CEOs, CEO level, because we all know you can't be what you can't see. And senior leadership in that female realm won't change at all if those C-suite leadership positions aren't filled with people who look, feel and lead like them. And so I can't wait for this change to happen. And if it takes 134 years, it's really disappointing.

Emmanuel: Do you feel that having more women in the profession will encourage more women to seek financial or investment advice?

Camilla Love: In Australia, 1 in 4 financial planners are female, which is sort of devastating, really. You know, if you're a couple, it's 50:50 essentially and more females have more control of their financial outcomes. If you can't talk to someone who looks like you, feels like you, and is looking after what your retirement might look like, it's devastating. So my goal is absolutely, the more females that get into the industry, the more people who want to access the industry in all its forms, if we can, if we can encourage that, that's wonderful.

In Australia, 1 in 4 financial planners are female, which is devastating really.

Camilla Love - Founder Future Females in Finance

Emmanuel: Where do you think the industry needs to do more, to do better, to meet the needs of women? And how do you think they can go about it?

Camilla: I think it comes down to providing better access to advice. I describe it as the supply side and demand side. So there's the willingness to get advice, the confidence to be able to invest, and all that sort of stuff on the supply side. I'm hoping that, as women take more control over their financial future, they will create better outcomes and the industry will create better outcomes for females. We're seeing it here and there, definitely, but it needs to be on a scalable level and I don't think we're there yet.

Emmanuel: Do you think we'll still be talking about this in ten, fifteen, or twenty years?

Camilla: Absolutely. I guarantee we'll be talking about this in probably 150 years' time unless real, real change happens. I now believe in quotas on a whole bunch of stuff, and this is one of them. I think only real change can happen when quotas or targets get put in. Otherwise, we will be standing here in a 100 years time. And I tell you what, I'm not a woman of colour, right? If I were a woman of colour, we'd be be talking about this another 150 years after that. And that's super disappointing.

Emmanuel: I think it is so true. It makes me think about where we all have gone with women's sport. Here in the UK, women's football has just exploded, especially with the success of winning the Euros and doing something that the men haven't been able to do. And now stadiums are packed and there's more money being pumped into women's sport. So, I feel like something like that can happen in financial services. Finally, what message would you like to give the industry and to women starting out in it? Don't hold back.

Camilla: Go for it. It is an amazing industry to be involved in. It is super rewarding. no one day is the same. You are surrounded by so much intellect, so much data, so much information and you can make people money from this. I'm just so glad that the next generation is really looking at this industry as a purposeful career path. I can't wait to see where this industry goes in the next 20 or 25 years because of all that new talent. It's exciting.

Listen to this episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the second episode of the new series of the Upfront podcast, financial adviser Emmanuel Asuquo talks to financial advice marketing expert Philip Calvert about how to grow your income and your client base.

Here are some highlights from that conversation. Listen to the episode in full here.

Upfront Series 3, Episode 2 - Show notes

Emmanuel: Now, if you're a financial adviser like me, you could spend as much as 60-70% of your time on non-revenue-generating activities. That's crazy. So in today's episode we're gonna look at how we can make the most of the time we do have for revenue generation and get some ideas on how to generate leads and new business without too much effort. Here to help us so that is financial advice marketing expert, Philip Calvert. So Phil, we're going to go straight into it. What do the most successful financial advisers do differently? What's their secret?

Phil: I think it comes down to education. A lot of consumers need professional help in terms of understanding personal finances, whether that's a basic level or maybe something much more sophisticated for really high net-worth people. And the financial advisers that I see really cracking this nut are going for the education piece.

Emmanuel: So, what are the habits of some of the most successful financial advisers you've met?

Phil: In the mid-to-late 1980s, I worked as a broker rep for a life office. One adviser was chucking business at me like you wouldn't believe. I had the sense to ask him, How do you do this? And he says, well, the secret is, I look after small business owners in Southwest London. All these people network together. They go to the same golf and tennis clubs, so they all know each other. And so I've done well on word of mouth and referrals, but whenever I was with them, I would always say, Would it be okay if I did a presentation to your team at some point? And they would always say yes. So he'd be doing these 20-minute presentations to the staff, but he had a handout, and the handout was the key. It was a large postcard with five questions about people's personal finances, and he would say to people, Hey, I hope you enjoy the presentation today. If you could fill out the postcard and put your name and address on it before I go, I'll pick one randomly, and someone will get a bottle of wine. And he'd do his presentation. He'd pick up all the postcards, go home, and then send a personalised letter to everyone who had filled in the postcard, which was everybody in the room. The questions were real personal finance basics like, are you a regular saver? What would happen if you were hit by a bus tonight? Five simple questions and then the personalised letter would go, Hey Mr. or Mrs. Jones, hope you enjoyed the presentation. Sorry, you didn't win the bottle of wine. I noticed from your answers on the postcard that you're a regular saver. That's really good. Keep that going. But I also noticed that you said if you were hit by a bus tonight, there'd be a problem. And then he'd say, would you like some help with that? He said his take-up rate was almost a hundred percent.

Financial advisers who are doing really well are the ones who have this magic combination of collecting data and doing live events or webinars.

Philip Calvert - Financial advice marketing expert

Emmanuel: Wow.

Phil : He was basically collecting data. Now, this was back in the mid-to-late eighties. And if I look at financial advisers today who are doing well, it's the ones who have this magic combination of collecting data and doing live events or webinars as well.

Emmanuel: I love that. As a financial adviser, I feel like all we do today is collect data. Sometimes, we collect so much data that I feel like I know my client too well. I know too much information, but it's how do we convert it. Now, let's talk about one of advisers' favourite buzzwords - lead gen. How can they do it effectively?

Phil: I've got an online community for financial advisers that's been going for 20 years. But the topic that comes up more than anything else is lead gen. I would say 10 per cent of IFA and financial planning firms have got lead gen nailed. They know what works for them. There's a guy, Keith Churchhouse, Chapters Financial in Guilford. He has a two-pronged approach to his lead gen. One, he sponsors roundabouts in Guilford. He's very savvy about which roundabouts he sponsors. Some of his roundabouts get 80,000 eyeballs a week going past them. But what he also does is he appears on local BBC radio once a month. He goes in, and they do a phone-in on personal finance. So, you know, we're doing a podcast, audio works, radio advertising works, radio interviews just work. And there are lots of psychological reasons why they're so effective. That combination where people see his name on a roundabout and hear his name on the radio is very, very powerful. So, referrals are still a big thing and work well. If you have a referral mindset and strategy, you need never worry about marketing ever again. Old school stuff still works today but top of the tree is seminars.

I would say that 10% of IFA and financial planning firms have nailed their lead gen.

Philip Calvert - Financial advice marketing expert

Emmanuel: Yes!

Phil: I can convince any adviser they should be putting on seminars, but I know in the back of their mind they're thinking, how do we get bums on seats, and I'm not sure I want to do the presentations or something like that. Just get over it. Just do it. There's a process to getting a room full of people. And I think when I say to an adviser you should put on seminars locally, they also start thinking, well, how am I going to get a hundred people to turn up? And I'm thinking, don't go for a hundred people. Start with five

Emmanuel: Yes!

Phil: And take the win.

Emmanuel: My first seminar, I struggled to get five people in there. Most of them were my family members. But I delivered that seminar like I was delivering it to 100 people. I used it. I learned. I got feedback. I did it again. It's got 25 people, so I did it again. Got 50 people. Now I get 100 people in a seminar. I could do more. It sells out within a few days. And, like you said, when people see you stand up there, they buy into you as a person. You are an expert.

Phil: But here's the other thing: if you've got 10 people in a room, 20 people in a room, a hundred people in a room, there's a fair chance that several of those people will tell their friends about you. A lot of advisers just see their role as doing the financial plan. That's all they do. Yet all this expertise, experience, knowledge, and credibility can be taken out, repackaged, and turned into other things that people will pay for.

My first seminar, I struggled to get five people. Now I get 100 people and could do more.

Emmanuel Asuquo - Host

Emmanuel: So tell me then, do you think financial advisers are stuck doing too many activities that don't generate income? And, if you do, how can they get out of this pattern?

Phil: I think the answer is, undoubtedly, yes. I'd like to see financial advisers becoming a bit more entrepreneurial, which means thinking outside the box a bit. Take your expertise and be entrepreneurial with it, and don't be afraid to play around with how you can do that. Financial planning is one of those concepts that a lot of people don't really get until they've experienced it. There's a huge opportunity for advice firms to be a bit more entrepreneurial. Give people the opportunity to experience your expertise, and they will pay for it.

Emmanuel: Talk to us about AI because if there was ever anything that gets advisers quaking in their boots, feeling like they're about to be replaced, it's AI. How can it help advisers as opposed to being a hindrance?

Phil: Advisers seem to fall into two or three different camps. There's quite a small percentage, admittedly, who were the proper early adopters who dived into it and created suitability letters the day after ChatGPT launched. And there's also a huge number of advisers who go, okay, I recognise AI as a thing, and when it arrives in two years, I'll start paying attention. So there's this idea that AI is a couple of years away. Now that's a real problem. If you still think AI is something that's coming down the track, then you have no hope. Genuinely have no hope. Of course, it's going to impact our businesses in a whole bunch of different ways, but let's throw this back to marketing. AI is the answer to their prayers. AI can get the marketing work done that they've either been putting off or haven't had the resource for. It's like having a completely free new member of staff in your building. This idea that it's some way off and it's going to impact us in the future, forget it. You're, you're toast now if that's your attitude. But the advisers who are smart about it and they think about it strategically are gonna fly. So, AI won't necessarily put you out of business, but another financial adviser using it will.

AI won't necessarily put you out of business, but a financial adviser using it will.

Philip Calvert - Financial advice marketing expert

Emmanuel: I'm going to challenge you to give us some real quick wins. What can advisers do to increase their income?

Phil: Put that entrepreneurial hat on. Start thinking about how you can take the expertise you've got and turn it into something else. Create some online courses. Super easy to do. Just go to Udemy and model what you're seeing there. And ChatGPT is your friend and will help you create that, even videos if you want to do videos as well. Be brave enough to charge for those videos. And, if you get some traction on that, you can start thinking about who is buying these videos, and you may have a completely new business model or a separate one you can run alongside.

Emmanuel: That's amazing. I love that. I'll add another one, which is a book. See a book more as a business card. Think about 10 things, 10 problems you hear all the time as an adviser with your clients. Write down the answers to them and create them into a book that people can download and you can give out. People will read it, and I promise you they'll come back to you.

Phil: Yeah, it's the best business card you'll ever give out.

Emmanuel: Phil, thank you so much for being here. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I know that the advisers listening would have learned some stuff and had takeaways. So thank you for sharing, and keep up the amazing work.

Listen to this episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

As part of our ongoing commitment at Iress to diversity, equity & inclusion, we offer our people engaging initiatives through the year to build understanding and awareness.

June marks Pride month, a month dedicated to celebrating and commemorating LGBTQIA+ Pride. Disappointingly, we still live in a world where people of diverse genders, sexes and sexualities face a range of discrimination that can negatively impact their health and wellbeing. It’s an issue that organisations can no longer turn a blind eye to. According to Deloitte Global’s 2023 report on Inclusion in the Workplace, one in three respondents are actively looking to change employers to find an organisation that is more LGBTQIA+ inclusive.

During Pride month at Iress we had a number of activities running throughout the month to advocate for the rainbow community. We held two panel sessions for Iress people on how to be a great ally. In these sessions we spoke with Stu Pearce (Royal New Zealand Air Force's first openly gay maintenance flight commander on an operational squadron), Elisabeth Lane (Senior Relationship Manager with Pride in Diversity and a transgender woman), and Manjusha Merrymaker (who helps leaders navigate the complexities of diversity, equity and inclusion), alongside Dr Sen Raj (Associate Professor in Human Rights Law), Steph Richards (a 72-year-old trans woman and human rights activist), and Melissa Sabella (CEO of The Honeycomb Works).

What does it mean to be an ally?

All too often the people who suffer discrimination are the ones who are expected to fix it. To be an ally is to share this burden and take it off the shoulders of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Having empathy and caring about the issue is important, but true allyship means putting yourself out there and taking action. Learning to be an ally is an important task, but it can also be challenging and confronting. You must be willing to listen and grow in understanding and knowledge.

Our knowledgeable panellists shared their top tips on how best to embrace allyship in the workplace:

• Don’t be passive. Inclusive leadership or allyship means being visible and showing that you care. Allies can have tremendous amounts of power when they speak up or challenge someone who might say or do something inappropriate. It makes it more likely that the person who acted in that way might not do so in the future. It's especially important to intervene and stand up for people if things are being said behind their backs and they aren’t there to stand up for themselves.
• Be courageous. If you’re confused about pronouns or how to talk to someone who is part of the LGBTQIA+ community, the best thing to do is be open and ask when you’re not sure.
• Learn about the concept of intersectionality. There is a kaleidoscope of intersectional diversity in the LGBTQIA+ community. Intersectionality means acknowledging that everyone has various parts that make up their identity. When someone has multiple parts of their identity that are marginalised, they face even greater inequality or disadvantage, and this can create obstacles within the workplace and broader society.
• Diversify your LinkedIn network. LinkedIn is algorithm based, so if you only connect with and search for other people who look and think exactly like you, then LinkedIn will keep connecting you with similar people and serving content from similar people, making it very hard for you to build awareness and understanding of more diverse people. This has huge societal implications. Get to know people who are different from you, and be inquisitive and curious when you meet these people.
• Be mindful and respectful. When planning team meetings or team building exercises - sometimes we forget that when we ask people to share things about themselves it requires a lot of trust. Some people might feel extremely uncomfortable sharing personal things. We need to be mindful about the sharing activities that we get people to take part in and respect when people decide not to take part.
• Leadership and allyship are one and the same. At every level of an organisation there needs to be people championing allyship. Caring for the cause and getting rainbow cupcakes are great, but they don’t equal inclusion.

For allyship to be truly impactful it needs to take place at both the systemic level and the individual level. Allyship can create greater inclusion and in turn a more positive workplace culture.