Leveraging data to empower the future of advice

At a recent HUB24 webinar, futurist and author of Australia 2030! Where the bloody hell are we? Rocky Scopelliti outlined a decade of intergenerational disruption led by demographic change, national debt as a constant feature and the rise of Millennials to become the primary producers of income.

“Millennials are reaching an inflection point in terms of the proportion of profit they are bringing to your business. They are about to overtake the average of the population in terms of economic capacity,” he said.

This backdrop of change and uncertainty will increase the need for financial advice, a trend we saw during the global pandemic. In a recent Investment Trends survey, it was estimated that 2.6 million non-advised Australians intend to seek help from a financial adviser over the next two years, with 44 per cent of the Australians surveyed identifying the COVID-19 pandemic as increasing their likelihood of seeking advice. And yet, while demand for advice is increasing, so, too, is the cost of delivering financial advice, with the median advice fee per client rising to $3,240, making it inaccessible for many Australians.

To support the future of advice, HUB24 is driving efficiencies via platform innovation, challenging the traditional role of platforms as custodians of assets to generate “platform alpha” and deliver value for advisers and their clients. By collaborating with advisers and licensees, HUB24 is also helping them meet their compliance obligations, improving their operational efficiency, and to build solutions that will empower financial advisers, licensees, brokers, private banks and accountants to deliver better financial futures for their clients.

HUB24 believes the delivery of efficient and cost-effective advice relies on access to quality data, and in our work over the past three years with five large licensees representing more than 760 financial advisers, they have told us their biggest challenge is lack of access to quality data.

HUBconnect Insight aggregates, cleanses and stores data so it can deliver efficiencies and replace the manual, time-consuming and costly processes that increase the cost of advice and deliver solutions which drive efficiencies for licensees, advisers and brokers. Now in pilot with several licensees, HUBconnect Licensee supports licensees and practices by providing a range of solutions that monitor advice activity and deliver compliance insights derived from structured and unstructured data sources.

These solutions include reporting and dashboards on a licensee’s key risk indicators and business metrics, providing access to consolidated data and monitoring revenue processing compliant with recent regulatory changes. They will provide licensees and advisers with a more efficient way of managing their compliance requirements while also delivering efficiencies across their business.

HUB24 believes industry participants have an obligation to work together to build a strong future for advice and to empower better financial futures together.

Neil Griffiths

Neil is the Deputy Editor of the wealth titles, including ifa and InvestorDaily.

Neil is also the host of the ifa show podcast.