In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne speaks with Matt McGuinty, Director of FinTech Strategic Partners, about the real state of artificial intelligence in financial planning. Matt brings a grounded perspective shaped by data security, platform knowledge, and hands-on experience with advice firms. He explains why most practices are not behind on AI. He outlines where AI delivers safe efficiency today. He warns against rushing into agentic AI, bots, and automated advice without the foundations in place.

Rob and Matt unpack the hype driving fear of missing out across the industry. They discuss data breaches, hallucinations in advice documents, and the risks of delegating judgment to machines. This episode offers clear guidance for firms that want to innovate responsibly while protecting trust, compliance, and reputation.

LISTEN

SHOW NOTES

Topics Discussed

AI adoption in financial planning.
Why data security must come first.
File note automation as a low-risk entry point.
The dangers of AI hallucinations.
Using AI in Statements of Advice.
Compliance checking and disclosure reviews.
Agentic AI and automation risks.
Data quality and system readiness.
Vendor-driven fear of missing out.
Maximising existing technology stacks.

Episode Highlights

(Timestamps are approximate)

[00:01] – Rob introduces Matt and frames the AI adoption debate.
[03:10] – Why most firms are not actually behind on AI.
[06:45] – The true cost of data breaches in financial services.
[10:20] – File note AI as the safest and most practical use case.
[14:05] – Why AI agents and bots create major security risks.
[19:30] – How AI confidently makes things up.
[24:40] – The danger of using AI to draft SOAs.
[30:15] – Using AI to check disclosures and compliance gaps.
[36:50] – Why clean data matters more than new tools.
[42:30] – The myth of competitors leapfrogging with AI.
[48:10] – Why most efficiency gains already exist today.
[53:40] – The role of judgment and trust in advice.

Quotes

“Don’t be the guinea pig.” – Matt McGuinty

“AI makes assumptions with confidence.” – Matt McGuinty

“Data breaches destroy trust and reputation.” – Matt McGuinty

“File notes are the safest place to start.” – Matt McGuinty

“AI does not replace professional judgment.” – Rob Pyne

Resources & Links

The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au/
FinTech Strategic Partners: https://www.fintechsps.com/
Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
Connect with Matt McGuinty on LinkedIn
Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast

Key Takeaways

AI adoption should be deliberate.
File note automation offers immediate value with low risk.
SOA generation with AI remains unsafe.
AI hallucinations are common and persuasive.
Compliance checking is a strong near-term use case.
Data quality is essential before automation.
Most firms underuse existing technology.
AI does not deliver an instant competitive advantage.
Trust remains the core differentiator in advice.

TRANSCRIPT

Rob Pyne

Rob welcome trusted advisers. This is the Podcast where we explore what it really takes to build, grow and sustain a thriving financial planning business. Every fortnight, you’ll hear candid conversations with the leaders, innovators and trailblazers of our profession, people who have navigated the challenges, embrace your opportunities and are willing to share what they’ve learned along the way. If you’re curious, ambitious and committed to raising the bar in advice, you’re in the right place. Today’s conversation is one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. If you work in financial advice in Australia, chances are, your entire business rests, whether you realise it or not, on the strength of your technology stack, and more often than not, that means Xplan. But very few people truly understand how Xplan works under the hood, how to push it, where it breaks, and how it fits into a broader technology ecosystem that is evolving faster than most firms can keep up with my guest today, Matt McGuinty is one of those rare people. Matt’s Jr is remarkable from auditing in Canada to managing a financial planning business here in Australia to being headhunted by Iress and thrown into their most complex technical problems. He worked inside Xplan with the coders themselves. Helped transform into a CRM for 2000 staff globally, and eventually saw an opportunity to step out and provide something the industry desperately needed, independent advice on technology not tied to any software vendor. Matt McGuinty, welcome to The Trusted Adviser podcast. Thanks, Rob. For those that don’t know you can you start by walking us through your journey, from your early days at Iress through to becoming a director of FinTech Strategic Partners. Yeah.

Matt McGuinty

So actually, I guess prior to Iress, I was an auditor in Canada and decided to move to Australia for probably the like a more relaxed, better lifestyle. We’re working like crazy hours over there, two weeks vacation, and my wife and I hardly saw each other, so moved here 12 years ago, managed a financial planning company for about three years, automated a whole bunch of processes and procedures. Worked really closely with Iress, because the business was using Xplan and Iress went, why don’t you come do that for all the other businesses in Perth? So I took that opportunity primarily for knowledge and educational growth, because it’s really hard to learn anything about Iress. Xplan, financial planning. IT systems without working at Iress because there’s not a lot of documentation. It’s fairly closed shop in terms of sharing those trade secrets. They share a lot, but through like the community and Advisely and stuff, but really being able to get inside information and learn from the developers and the coders. So I joined Iress. That was probably nine years ago. Worked there for around five years, worked in their key accounts team, primarily dealing with all their challenging, complicated clients. That’s how we met. That’s you guys. Anyone that was trying to push Xplan, a bit more would get pushed into my realm, and I got a lot of like Jeff Gibson, allowed me a lot of freedom, like creative freedom, to do whatever I needed to do to help those businesses grow. And my clients were growing, like some of the quickest clients in the country in terms of revenue growth, because they’re just using the software more and buying more licenses after about three years, and this is a con in me to like the global CRM team. And I helped take Xplan. This is a weird project. We took Xplan and made Xplan the CRM system for Iress globally. So I got to build that system for 2000 employees. It was hectic and note product development, it was all like, just config, like, we just had to work around all the problems. So taking a financial planning CRM system and then making it into business to business CRM system was fun. Got to meet a lot of cool people, and then during that process, I did find out that looked like they were, I guess, changing their approach to client management, and it basically had to become more account management based because the account managers were doing probably too much for what the clients were actually paying. It was almost like a consulting role, sure. Well, actually, a lot of clients that I deal with right now don’t like the fact that they moved away from that role, but it’s a similar approach to like Microsoft, Salesforce, any other system out there, but you don’t get a free consultant with your paid subscriptions. Yeah, even though they’re fairly like, they are the most expensive financial planning system commercially, like, if you looked at the numbers, it just like, didn’t make any sense. So when I heard that news, I just went old. It’s a good time to start a consulting business, because if they’re kind of pulling away from that, there’s going to be a lot of like, people still need the help. Well, five years ago, four or five years ago, started this business primarily just focused on helping finance, like financial planners, from, say, 20 employees, all the way up to, like, 150 that’s where we target in the private wealth space, primarily, that’s where my specialty kind of lies, and it’s, it’s where you’ve got businesses still have a lot of flexibility and a lot of freedom. They’re not bogged down by dealer group compliance and they’re too small. Their budgets are too small. So they’ve got budget, they’ve got flexibility, and they can move quickly. So it’s a, it’s a really cool space to operate. And it’s like, where you guys are, right? You guys can, can move fairly quickly if you make mistakes, they’re not like, $50 million mistakes. They can be expensive, but it’s not like, like, you can still play around a little bit. And from there, we’ve kind of just developed a series of products like we initially started like a Power BI / data warehouse for Xplan. Then we built Xplan advice templates, primarily because we’re quite good at coding and building, kind of pre built solutions. And then the latest one is we’ve, we’ve kind of branched into the client portal online fact find space, and that’s in really early days. We’re starting to test probably an easier to use fact find directly index plan that’s not overkill, and it won’t be like, extremely expensive, like some of the other fact find solutions. So that’s kind of a rundown of everything that I’ve done since moving to Australia, where we’re at today, and it’s been a really interesting journey that I didn’t I didn’t think I’d actually be where I am now, like when I actually came to Australia, had no idea what I was going to be doing, but I’ve definitely enjoyed it. It’s been very, very interesting. Yeah, that was the word that came to mind. It sounded like you’ve done some interesting things, certainly, getting on the inside with Iress, and talking to the coders and understanding Iress from the inside out, rather than being an external user and as you say, as they begin to pull back from having that account manager do sort of quasi consulting, realising that they were going to step away from that model that created a real opportunity to set your own business up and be that consultant, knowing what you know about Xplan and having that intimate knowledge of it so five years or so as a key account manager there at Iress and helping to build their CRM function for their own business. What did that experience teach you about the industry’s technology and the strengths and weaknesses of financial planning technology in our industry, yeah, so specifically financial planning technology within Australia, the strengths and weaknesses, I would say, starting with weaknesses, it’s very challenging being in a small market. Financial Planners often look at America, and honestly, I hate when our clients go to America and go on conference and they go see all this cool tech that American companies are doing, but the legislation is completely different. Consumer base is different. The talent pool is a lot bigger for people that understand tech, because globally, all the tech people are moving to Austin before is like Silicon Valley. So it’s challenging when America is taking so much of the talent and advisers go and expect that in Australia, when you start looking at, well, how do we roll something out in the Australian landscape, it’s a lot different. That’s why I explain hasn’t really been like touched too much, is because one, if a really good financial planning system comes out in Australia. First thing they do is move to America and start trying to get into the American market. Yeah, to know, American companies are bringing their tech to Australia because they’d rather just go to another state in America, because the states, one states, basically Australia. So why deal with self managed super fund legislation and your cash flow models, like all those other weird complexities, it’s hard to find a strength compared to like the American model, because of the legislation and because of the talent all going into America, I feel like in Australia, you kind of have to look at your software stack and try to Do what you can with the tools that you have. A lot of people will try to do a bit too much, and once they get to it, they end up with like multiple CRM systems, like I’ve seen like five or six CRM systems in one business. Yeah, actually one strength would be everyone’s on a similar platform. Yeah, I guess that’s gonna be positive, I guess, because then in the role that you perform helping businesses, almost there’d be no business you would meet that wouldn’t be using Xplan. So that’s, I guess, that common thread, even though there’s variations on how it’s been implemented, it’s a common system which does allow, I guess, transferability when business.

Rob Pyne

To sell to other businesses. They’ll go, Well, are you an Xplan? Yep, we’re on Xplan. So it’s really there’s a continuity there, I guess that from a software position. And I guess I was curious about as well. You said there one firm you saw had five CRMs. I mean, professional advisers sometimes get this itch where they can see there’s a need, and they want to go out and build their own piece of software. And that’s something we’ve seen over and over. You would have seen that being as connected to technology in our space. What do you see there’s the pitfalls of that, because you know Xplan as well as anyone I’ve met, and you know what its strengths are, you know that there are shortcomings. And what do you think the pitfalls are for businesses that think, well, I can do this better. I’ll go and build something that should compete head to head with Xplan, because everyone’s finding Xplan challenging. Have you seen some stories that you could share there about the challenges people then are faced with not appreciating, perhaps, the depth and complexity of Xplan’s toolset?

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, I think I compare it to if you’re looking at renovating, like a full gut renovation at your house, and you get your builder quotes back, and you it’s like $200,000 and you go, I’ll just do it myself. These guys are charging away too much. And then you start getting into it, and your bathroom tiles are all crooked, and your bathroom second story starts leaking. It’s cheaper, and you can definitely like do software yourself. Typically, what we find is people hit the data security component, and then that blows up your costs completely. And time frames, like when we built the Power BI data warehouse, that was probably 90% of the work was around data security, and that wasn’t even a CRM system. It wasn’t a very complicated process. All we’re doing was using a standard SFTP process out of Xplan into a zero to move data from Xplan into data warehouse, it’s the SQL database, and then use standard tools, all Microsoft tools to then push that back up into Power BI, that took like a year to build. If there was no data security requirements, we’d be done in like a couple of weeks. Yeah, yeah. So, so when clients DIY, it data security is usually the first thing that goes because a client would build that warehouse, and they We’ve actually looked at a lot of clients that had their own Microsoft with zero setup, and the security requirements are terrible. Like, they’re not compliant with any standards. They just pumping data in, and they’re just like, they don’t even know that they need to put security. They go, Oh, it’s in our Microsoft environment. It’s all safe. You just host the environment. It’s your responsibility for all the security around it. So that’s usually what happens with people DIY software. Also, they just don’t understand, typically, how much it takes to connect things using APIs. And you can go to, like, tons of software vendors, the problem is, like, you’ll go to someone and they’ll say, yeah, we can connect this and connect that, plug that into there and do this and that they’ll do it for you. Will cost tons of money, and then you’re also then building a dependency on all those connections, yeah, so you have to maintain them now. So if something breaks in that API because one software system upgrades and the other one doesn’t, and those two systems don’t talk to each other as well, and you’re in the middle, and you’re trying to go figure out, and you’re going to one vendor and going, is it your problem? Go the other vendor, is it your problem? And in reality, they don’t care, because it’s probably a non standard connection you made. So at the end of the day, it’s your business’s problem, and you’re gonna have to spend the money to fix it?

Rob Pyne

Yeah, so you moved out of Xplan to do independent consulting. So you’re one of those rare people in technology that isn’t selling the software itself. Because it’s fair to say that most financial advisers are getting their advice from the software vendors. They’re walking them in the door and saying, Tell us about your software. What can it do? They may be even giving them a brief of what the firm’s looking for, and then having the vendor speak to that brief. But there’s not a lot of businesses out there like you and what you’re doing there, Matt, to actually just independently assess the technology landscape to determine what’s best fit when we chatted, and we were doing a bit of a pre episode chat, you talked about sort of a threshold of where anything beyond having a all in one system like Xplan, when you’ve got a small firm is really going to be overkill in terms of budget, in terms of requirement. Can you just share a bit more about your perspective on that, with regards to, at what point does it become? Okay, Xplan might not be everything you want it to be, and you might consider doing something additional to Xplan. Where do you see that break point exist?

Matt McGuinty

I think it starts at looking at a few things like, like your actual core competency of your business. What do you want to be when you’re smaller and you’re just a single advice business? Chances are you just want to provide financial advice. You’re just growing a small company. You’re the adviser, the business owner, everything, the BDM, all in one those people are usually really strapped for time anyways, and they should be focused on just getting new clients, new financial planning clients, recurring revenue. Don’t concern yourself too much about technology and building custom stacks. You get to a point in that that growth. So you go from a really small financial planning company, maybe you have another two, three advisers, and you go, Okay, well, I need to start working in a consistent manner, so, like, use some sort of technology, probably Xplan to pull that all together, but you’d probably sit in a dealer group or on a centralised XPlan site someone else is managing it for you, to give you some tools that work. Don’t fight the tools. Don’t go, Okay, well, if I get an SOA auto, I have to have it like this, so like that. Chances are your clients don’t really care about how that document is flowing or looks as you grow. You might be 5,6,7, advisers, and you might go, Okay, well, we’re going to start doing more with advice documents, with how we present advice, and change our business model, be more bespoke, and hone in on our competitive advantage. To say, this is what we do, and this is how we’re different, then you would start using more of, say, Xplan, or even might add a couple small systems in the mix, like Calendly, things like that. You might do that, and you might integrate things that are a bit easier. They’re not like the main CRM system of your company that’s still connected to most of your other tools. For you, honestly, at that point, you’re also looking at becoming a self license, like you’re on AFSL. So then once that process happens, you then go and get a bit bigger, maybe you’re 1020, 30 advisers. Then you start thinking, Okay, well, it’s somewhere along that line where you go, Hey, we should start becoming somewhat of a quasi technology company, a tech company that offers advice. And you got to try to figure out what that blend is. Do we go super heavy on technology and provide advice as like a product of that technology, or do we still put advice as a top level, and we’re just using technology to facilitate it. So at that point you basically make that investment that move. And if you go all in on technology, you’ve got to increase your technology budget. Either way, at that point, you got to start thinking more strategically with technology, like don’t minimise your IT spend. That’s a really bad strategic approach when you’re that size, looking at it as a cost. Yeah, I think it’s the right move to actually remove your spend on IT projects out of your income statement and onto your balance sheet, because it’s an actual investment. People look at, well, it’s on my income statement, so it’s reducing my profit margin, so I don’t want to spend on it, but if you actually want, okay, we’re going to spend 100 grand on a technology project. Let’s put that into an asset, like property, plant and equipment, similar to like a manufacturing company. So it’s at that point, when you’re 20,30 advisers, maybe, that you start making those different decisions, and you could significantly cost your business a lot of money. If you do it incorrectly, you can do it correctly. If you do it correctly, you’re probably in the minority of groups out there, I think the bulk of larger clients that I see in that space that try doing custom technology stacks and things like that. There’s a lot of challenges to it. Yeah, there’s a lot of risks. And again, it goes back to your business strategy of, are you technology company? Are you advice company? And what’s your identity? And how do you grow your business off the back of that?

Rob Pyne

Yeah, what do you prioritise? Because technology can be a fixation, can it? And you know, artificial intelligence has only amplified that sense that we got to be doing something on tech. We’ve got to be staying at the forefront of technology so businesses can become very preoccupied with it. But I hadn’t heard that before, but I totally can understand the point you’re making there about it being an investment, that it goes on your balance sheet, because if you are making a technology investment, a well considered one, perhaps with guidance and direction from someone who understands the landscape better than an adviser who has a general interest. I suppose then you are, in fact, potentially going to make a transformative change to the way your business functions and improve it in either the client service delivery or the way in terms of the output deliverables, or it may be, and that was certainly an investment we made a few years back now, or also just the way in which the system functions operationally, and so you’re building capability effectively, IP on the back of that technology investment, if it’s well thought through and considered. So I like that insight makes sense to me, and. Certainly helps justify some spend as well.

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, you could get that through the board easier. I think that’s right, because if you’re actually working on a technology project that’s inherently a full 100% expense that year, you’re probably not doing it right. Like you spend 100 grand, you should actually get maybe 300 back in efficiencies in staff productivity over probably five years. I usually do three to five years for what we’re costing projects. You’d say, okay, within five years, you might actually replace this solution.

Rob Pyne

Okay, so your business, FinTech, strategic partners, you’re going through a demerger, as we speak. In fact, is that completed, or are you still in the throes of that?

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, it’s complete. So that that was a nine month project, but yeah, it’s all it finalised, wrapped up. So it’s been good.

Rob Pyne

So can you talk a bit about that? And what does the new structure allow you to focus your time and attention on?

Matt McGuinty

Essentially, what we’ve done is because we’ve had a few products and services like I mentioned before, like the BI product, Docs, client, Portal, consulting services. There’s about six of us that work on multiple things. So what we’ve done is we’ve essentially just split out the Power BI component that data warehousing service, and I’m going to be focusing and the company is going to be focusing on advice documents, a lot to do with client portal and online fact find, most likely an online statement of advice, review documents, things like that, going more digital with our solutions and still consulting as well, because you kind of need that hand in hand with the businesses that that we’re building, like you can’t board financial planning companies and say, Hey, use our statement of advice document in Xplan. There you go. It’s going to work. You need, actually a consulting arm to go, Okay, well, how is that going to fit into your business? What do you have to change? What can we change in the advice document to mold it to your company. Otherwise they’re just throwing out like out of the box solutions. No one’s going to actually be able to efficiently run, and they’ll still be manually doing about 40% of their SOA, yeah. So I think with business changes like that, either mergers or de mergers, I think everyone thinks that things will be a lot quicker than it is, and then at the end of the day, once you get down to all the details, it’s like nine months it went by, and honestly, that consumed a lot of my time for nine months. And I’m pretty excited that there’s going to be a lot more capacity. So with FinTech Strategic Partners, the staff are all staying the same. So we’ve got the vice documents, consulting services, everyone that was working here is still here. It’s just the BI product that’s being split out. And one of the other directors has left the business with that BI product. But all the other people, all the ex-Iress staff that we actually have on board, they’re all with us as well, which has been, honestly, really, really handy.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, great. And so you said something there that I want to pick up on. You said online statements of advice got, perhaps a sense of what that might be, but I’d love to hear you share what you’re thinking is there. Yeah.

Matt McGuinty

So I think a few things happen with Q, A, R, some very underwhelming changes. Yeah, what we’ve done is, during Q A R, we went and built an Xplan based SOA generator, and primarily because we’re just really good at Xplan merge document coding, one of our directors, he was one of the top Xplan coders globally, and he worked primarily with Close Brothers in the UK. Amazing work, a whole bunch of really cool stuff, full disclosure.

Rob Pyne

We use that software that you’ve developed for SOA production. We use that at HPH, yep. So just for full disclosure, and that’s how we’ve continued our relationship beyond your days at Xplan. So carry on. Sorry to interrupt.

Matt McGuinty

And you guys actually do advice a lot differently than most financial planning companies we deal with, and not in a bad way. It’s just, I think you go more so in depth, in goals and how a client can achieve not just financial goals, but other types of goals. And you get really close to your clients, which means that advice document, a lot of other people, their advice documents, are very here are your investments. Here’s where your asset allocation mix, here’s is very different. The way our solution kind of stands out is that it’s a lot more flexible, so we can cater for differences in those documents. Every one of our clients, their SOA, looks different. There’s certain sections that look the same, but you guys are probably definitely the most different. And I say that from a good approach, though, because you can see that’s definitely your competitive advantage, right? That’s what you guys push. That’s your difference. Yeah, so online SOA’s, we initially built that SOA document with an Xplan with the plan to, okay, well. So we built it all on HTML coding in our templates. We built it in a way that it’s structured in Xplan so that we could surface that in a digital form in a client portal. So we’ve got the client portal working like client can log in directly to the portal. They can do an online fact find. The next bit would be, can we deliver notes in a very user friendly fashion? And then can we deliver, like a statement of advice document? We actually debated, should we start with fact find, or should we start with a statement of advice? I wish we did it reverse, because the statement of advice, I think, is a lot easier to present than a fact find, because it’s mainly just pushing content to the portal, and it’s just reading off the back of Xplan API’s and building a nice visual advice presentation that also it will come with a document, right? Like you’d still produce a document in our SOA tool, but then you’d have a presentation to go with it that the client can log in and have a document plus the presentation.

Rob Pyne

So just so I can try and grasp what you’re saying there, so effectively, it’ll present, almost like a web page presentation of your advice. There’ll be a document attached. People can download if they want to have the document. And so the benefit of that is that the advice becomes a little more live effectively if you make changes that template or that HTML, that web page, version of your advice can actually be live, updated in that sort of online environment. Is that the way you’re thinking?

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, it’s been a real challenge to get a digital version of an advice document, because people hate writing into HTML fields, right? So if you want to display it in a web page, it’s got to be HTML based to display it, and it’s got to be able to, like, expand and shrink with phones. All that stuff has to happen. But pair planners and advisers, they do so many work arounds and word documents that it doesn’t mix. You can’t have both, but they want both. They want the flexibility and simplicity of doing it in Word and Excel, but then they want an automated presentation that they don’t have to do any extra work for. So that’s what we’re trying to solve. No one solved it yet. I haven’t seen anyone solve it yet. I know Pneuma group’s done some stuff in that space. I think cup 24 recently bought a stake in that product. We’re going to approach it a bit differently, quite a bit different. We’ve already started that work, but I feel like Q A R has set up quite a few tools in this space where people went, Hey, we’re going to do automated advice documents, or we’re going to do presentation tools online, because Q, A, R really was signaling, hey, you won’t need a document anymore. You can have a really cut down summary version. It could be like one page. You can write it on a napkin. It’ll be like the good old days of advice again. And then they looked at and they said, We can’t do that. And then a lot of that got unwound, and people are still finding out, yeah, they still have to give that massive compliance document. We’re going to find a solution with that in mind, like you still will have to produce a compliance document to cover yourself. But how can we do that the most efficient way the client gets a really cool experience on end?

Rob Pyne

Yeah, that’s fascinating. I hear where you’re coming from and the comments around QAR being very relevant to a lot of firms that were expecting significant change, and we are still waiting to see how that will play out.

Matt McGuinty

That was disappointing, like I was waiting for something, because there’s so much cool stuff that could have happened from a technology perspective that can’t anymore. Yeah.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, absolutely. So your core services in the demerged entity, and you’ve kept all your staff and all the really technical people that have come out of Iress that have joined you. So software stack review, what are you doing? What have you got in the system? And are you doing overkill on software, process, design, compliance, automation, Xplan optimisation, getting the best out of Xplan, not just using it as a glorified Rolodex, and project management generally, about improving the way things are done. That covers a wide spectrum still in your business. Going forward, which of these are right now most in demand in your business, and why do you

Matt McGuinty

think that is funny enough. It’s a manual SOA. It’s the Xplan based SOA document that we’re seeing a lot of demand in. And again, it’s not the back of Q, A, R, kind of falling flat so far. Yeah, and people just holding out for three years, basically going, we’re not starting a new SOA project, because it won’t have to do them. All of a sudden that came up, and they’re all going we need a solution to our SOA, and we can’t see that changing in three years. It’s going to have to be out of Xplan, because that’s what everyone all the Para planners are trained on, everyone’s using, and they have to get away from spreadsheets and manual document edits and things like that. So we’re seeing a lot of growth in that space. There’s a lot of interest in like investors and partners in the portal space that we’re working on, more client interest right now, just the advice document space, it was interesting trying to run the data analytics and the document management at the same time, because I feel like it was, it was easier to sell the document management solution, because it’s a need. Everyone’s like, like, my SOA is there? Like, we’re spending a month to get an SOA out. And the analytics is really cool, and it’s really useful with putting controls over your whole operations and figuring out how long does it take you to process a document from the client’s perspective, are we missing any key compliance issues? Are client fees dropping off month by month? Now? That was a bit longer to sell because it wasn’t an immediate need. You’d have to be a fairly mature business that’s really thinking about controls, which is a lot less sexy than like, a statement of advice document. So, yeah, but just saying a lot. So yeah, I feel like the so is definitely still on everyone’s mind right now.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, yeah. And I said that’s full disclosure. We use that tool you’ve developed ourselves as well, integrates directly into Xplan. Feels like Xplan, obviously, like was created by them, but obviously wasn’t, was created by you, and because you know it so well, how has that product that you’ve developed there matured over time? It was solving the problem, I think we were on model office for a while, which was the module that Xplan had acquired, I think, and then integrated it, rebranded it, and then they sort of went away from wanting to deliver that module, and kind of stopped investing in the development of that module. So you, I think you were solving that problem. You saw that as being something that was withering inside Xplan, and that you could be the solution for firms that needed that Xplan. SOA generation piece. How is your product matured over time?

Matt McGuinty

We approached her a lot different than model office. So model office got replaced by adviser toolkit. How they approached that was, it’s more completely out of the box, like there’s a like, you can brand it and configure it, but everyone does get the same. Soa, every solution on the market was very similar. We’ve had businesses look at every other provider on the market and they say, yours isn’t the only one that’s actually different everyone else, it looks like they just copied each other. So what we’ve done is, I think it’s how we approach it. So we started that whole process by interviewing and you guys were involved in this process where we had about 40, primarily para planners and a few advisers, come to a couple workshops, and we just went, Hey, what are your pain points? And we’ve listed all those pain points about production of SOAs. And to be honest with you, one of the main things was that software vendors kept saying and people producing SOAs kept saying, Your SOA is not your competitive advantage. Don’t focus on customising your SOA. Just use ours. It’s out of the box. Your clients don’t read it anyways. And it’s probably true that your end clients probably don’t really read much of your 8090, page SOA document. But fundamentally, these advice businesses believe that their SOA has to be in a particular format, I have to have 16 different risk profiles, because that’s how I run my business, where those software providers go. No, you just need five risk profiles. You need one SOA that matches every other SOA out there. And that’s how you scale your business. And they might be right, like they actually might be completely right about it, and you could make way more money. But unless you can convince those financial planning businesses out there that you should just throw out what you perceive as your competitive advantage and your differentiating factor with your advice documents and how you present advice, you’re not going to actually be able to win. They’ll still get your template out and still keep customising it manually until they get it perfect for the adviser. Things like, like people will just merge out cash flow tables, and then the paraplanner will spend an hour formatting that cash flow table, adding probably not an hour of value to the firm or to the client experience, while often business owners don’t even know that’s happening.

Rob Pyne

I think what you’ve hit on there, Matt is a really pertinent point that we should just which is to say that advisers are thinking that the SOA, and their version of the SOA is important in its format, in its structure, in like, the order of things, what’s included and that Xplan sort of said, well, you don’t need that. Clients don’t read it anyway. So why are you fixating on how the SOA is structured? I know from experience internally as well, we’ve had conversations about some advisers saying, can we bring that section of the SOA forward earlier in the SOA. Can we change that from page 16 to page 8 or something like that? And my instinct was always like, why don’t you just flick to page 16 and read that thing? Go back to page 8? I’m not sure why the client would even know, and they don’t know the difference. And it’s kind of, I think it’s maybe, and I’ve thought about this because we’re about to embark on a project of sort of trying to continually try to bring everyone back into a sort of a version of that everyone can be happy with. We’ve got one SOA, and it’s everyone’s agreed with that, but there’s still variations people apply for their client set. So we’re going to try and learn the best of what advisers are doing and embed that into our system, our process, if you like, and maybe jettison the things that are really superfluous to the client need and the value delivered to them so but I was thinking that it’s an interesting dilemma businesses face. I think you said this when we spoke last week. You said you’re still amazed that firms seem to think the value is in the advice document itself, that they actually spend a lot of time thinking about the advice document looks like, and that the value is there, whereas inevitably, the clients aren’t reading it anyway, and the adviser is using it as a tool to communicate

Matt McGuinty

the advice. Yeah, and we don’t fight that. That’s the main difference between us and the other businesses that provide help with templates and your advice process. I’ll be very honest with people. But if someone really feels that has to be in that order or that structure, business to business adviser to advisers is crazy. But if someone really believes that they have to have the goal page looking in a certain way, and it takes us like an hour to code that goal section and replace our goal section in our document theirs. That’s a better outcome. It’s gonna save them time anyway, yeah, exactly. And it costs like 200 bucks, and you can then automate that whole goal piece. Yeah, I

Rob Pyne

guess a major new focus for you then that you spoke about when we chatted last week was that you are now stepping into a space where you do pre acquisition due diligence for firms looking to acquire other businesses. And what triggered your decision to offer this service? Because I don’t think I’ve heard that before. When you said that businesses are going in. They’re looking at the numbers, they’ve sort of said on the balance sheet, and the P&L, we can merge that in and the platform similar, or product line is similar, but they’re not probably doing that DD on the technology integration, I think, Oh, you’re on Xplan. We’re on Xplan. That should be okay. So what did you see? And you thought, no, there’s more to this, and I need to step into this space and offer the DD service for technology, yep,

Matt McGuinty

part of the reason was the staff members that we have that aren’t as like techy, that can’t do a lot of coding, they’re still really good at how you run an operations, how you run financial planning businesses, what you need to see, and we can still extract data out of those systems and build a little bit of a report for them to say, Okay, well, how well are they running their CRM system if they’re using Xplan, great. We can easily pull all their like file notes, their workflows. What type of merge documents are they using? We also we’re connected to about 50 financial planning companies like that are looking to acquire. And we often actually see that transaction, like, after what you spoke about, and it gets passed off on to us to say, Okay, now you guys go figure out how to smash that together and make it work. So if we can combine those, and we can do a little pre vetting, and not a huge amount of work either, really like if we do it in a very standard away and people are on Xplan, we can actually pull together a report that shows you how closely they align and how they use technology compared to your company. We’ll go down a little bit further. We can do a few interviews with your staff and figure out like how they actually produce so ways, what wizards are they using? What have they customised? We’re working with one client right now where they’re looking at moving to a larger group, and they’re both fairly big businesses, so we’ve taken the larger groups Xplan interface, and we’re putting it on to their Xplan site. So because they both have a lot of customisation, then what we can do is, before that migration happens to that bigger site, they can see how Xplan operates in that new environment, and figure out all the differences before they make that transition. It’s just, I think, working in a smarter way, like you identify the problems before they’re going to happen. Pay a bit more money, figure out the solutions, build a plan, then when you’re actually merging those companies together, it’s a lot more like the change management piece is a lot more smooth. I agree with you, like, I haven’t seen many companies out there actually operating that, like pre vet space, like before the transaction occurs. Have you seen

Rob Pyne

some horror stories there where people have just. Gone in, thinking it’s going to be fine, and then they’ve come to you and said, Can you help us? Because this is not a smooth integration of tech. So what have you seen? Just without naming names? Obviously, you’ve seen anything that’s kind of gone sideways because of that.

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, it’s usually cultural challenges. There’s a lot of people when you merge businesses, personalities don’t fit culture doesn’t fit things like you see a lot of the times where you might have a smaller businesses, a lot of smaller advice firms. Some of them are very lifestyle focused, and they’re just running a small financial planning business, couple staff. They’re always a bit overstaffed. Their margins are a bit lower. Really crazy, lots of vacations and big insurance trail books to support it, things like that. The adviser might have maybe 100 clients, but they’re happy with that. It’s not too hard. I’d like to say they’re lifestyle advisers, and there’s a lot of lifestyle advisers out there. Yeah, sure, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s just like, how you prioritise your own personal goals and objectives, right?

Rob Pyne

It’s a choice, isn’t it? It’s a choice you’re making. Yeah, yeah.

Matt McGuinty

Some people are super happy and with their life, and they have, like, a tons of time with their family, and it’s all really positive. But then when you try to merge that type of business with a business that’s like firing on all cylinders, trying to grow as fast as they possibly can. Every adviser should be managing 150 to 200 clients, like family groups. They’ve got KPIs, they’ve got a hit processes. Every client gets the same process. We don’t have charity cases. We don’t do $1,500 clients, because you feel bad for them. When you merge those types of businesses together, you can see that there’d be challenges. So we’d help identify that some like some of that should be quite clear when you’re actually doing the your own personal due diligence, but sometimes when you’re not, like a third party to you actually can kind of be blinded by it. Yes, and then, from a tech perspective, have seen mergers where, like, four or five years later, both businesses are still running. I think there are three businesses that came together. All three of them are running different so ways, different wizards for like, four or five years, because they couldn’t agree on how they actually produced advice together, which means you’re maintaining three solutions, triple the cost. Eventually they merged it all together. But those are things that you can you can definitely surface before you actually make that decision to acquire. I think there’s a lot of pressure right now for businesses to actually merge and acquire, because, like you guys would be looking most likely to grow through that way. Other companies that I talk to, they’re all looking for small, good financial planning businesses. How do you guys deal with that whole process right now?

Rob Pyne

Yeah, well, we’ve got some pretty talented people on our team on the tech space, and obviously we’ve got people that do the number crunching as well. I’m doing more the connecting piece usually, but we are learning through experience as we go. And certainly we are in that camp of yeah, we’re growing organically, very strongly, but we’re also very much looking for inorganic growth with good people. So not just fees, definitely not just fees. We’re not just trying to buy businesses that don’t have great people in them. We’re trying to bring great people to the table along with fees to continue to invest further in our business. It creates opportunity to invest further in capabilities that will benefit all of us. So when you look at that pre vet, if you like, on business mergers and where the two businesses can truly integrate successfully, what areas are you looking at that are key differences that might uncover gaps that could lead to future issues? What are you seeing there?

Matt McGuinty

Number one, if you’re on different software tech stacks, that’s a big challenge merging someone that’s on Salesforce to Xplan or vice versa. Yep, that’s a huge change management cultural piece that you’re going to hit. Then what we do is, if, say, if someone is using Xplan and they’re smaller company, you can tell pretty quickly if they’re using technology properly, like they’re storing file notes in the right place. They’ve got a proper file structure. They’re using workflows to move work from person to person in their company. They’re tracking their new business, all those really good core fundamental pieces that you’d see in a company, you’d notice it like, you’d extract, like, probably take, like, a half day, you could extract all that information out of the business and do a report back. It’s you see red flags really, really quickly, and then conversations around it as well, just to see what they are using. It is challenging when it’s like a single adviser small business, that they’re doing everything themselves. So that’s kind of a hard one, because you wouldn’t just task yourself,

Rob Pyne

yeah, workflow, process me to me, yeah, then execution to me, yes. But so when you’re looking at a firm’s tech stack, what are the blockers that you see that preventing scale or efficiency?

Matt McGuinty

A lot of advisers really having to have bespoke solution? Solutions per client, yeah.

Rob Pyne

So too much flexibility across different clients, yeah.

Matt McGuinty

Investment picking different SOA documents and different client groups to a certain degree, you need some flexibility. But this is a very common problem where clients come to us and they go, Hey, we want to run really efficient Investment Management portfolios, but everyone has to be different, and they’ll be on MDA or something, and it okay. Well, you have SMAs. SMAs are very efficient because everyone has the same portfolio, but literally, everyone has to have the same portfolio to have that scale. You could do that on MDA is as well, like if every one of your clients has the same mix. You can bulk transact, you can bulk rebalance very, very efficiently. But the problem is, everyone goes, Okay, well, that client has the model, but then I’m going to go adjust it a little bit. Yep, yeah. It’s that mindset that probably kills efficiency. And most like, if you took that example and applied it to kind of everything in the financial advice business, that’s what kills your efficiencies. I think I’m

Rob Pyne

going to call that the tyranny of variation. Yeah. I mean, you want to make sure each client’s getting a great experience, but sometimes we can get a bit too willing to vary for what we think will be perfect for that client, without really adding a lot of value, but certainly detracting value in terms of the business’s efficiency and the ability to scale. So I can relate to that internally as well, and it’s always something you have to work hard to prevent from happening. So with businesses like ours, where you’re running more than one piece of technology, dual systems, like Xplan alongside Salesforce or fin 365, or other CRMs. Where do that? Most businesses run into trouble when they’re trying to run more than one system outside of moving away from Xplan, because they’ve grown beyond that being the only be all, end all solution,

Matt McGuinty

yeah, if you’re using Xplan, I always say that Xplan is actually, to be honest with you, it’s a really easy CRM system that actually implements into business compared to any other CRM systems. Financial Planning businesses often just have like, a friend of the family or someone like a para planner. Oh, you just use Xplan and build it for the business. So they don’t usually have like, proper software developers or anything actually helping them, or companies like us, and we usually walk into that mess

Rob Pyne

till, like, it really is, Matt, we walk into that mess. Yeah.

Matt McGuinty

And to be honest with you, I do see some companies though they’re using Xplan really well. They’re using as much as they possibly can. Like you guys were using so much of Xplan you went, you’d go to those workshops that we had at Iress, and you’d be like, we’re doing all this stuff, but we want more. We’re kind of pushing the limits of what Xplan can really do for what you guys wanted in a business. And I know a few other companies, but you’d look at those companies and you’d go, Okay, well, they’re using workflows, they’re using File notes, they’re using opportunities, like all of it’s in use, and then they’re finally maxed out those companies, you’d go, Okay, well, that’s fine if you want it to go and then branch out and to be like, add a CRM system. So before you even make that move, make sure that you’re using everything properly. Because it is a really easy system to actually implement. If you’re looking at Salesforce or dynamics for a solution to your financial planning technology problem, but then you look at Xplan, you’re not using workflows, you’re not using opportunities, you’re not doing file notes. Your client data is like. You can’t even pull a list of clients out of your CRM system. If that’s you. You’re the problem. Don’t try to implement a new CRM system because you weren’t able to configure a basic CRM system that’s already configured for your industry, where you’ve got all these other solutions, and those companies that, there’s quite a few out there and there, it’s really tempting for them to go my problems Xplan, I’m going to go implement a new CRM system that’s way more complicated, way more complex. I’m going to need developers to write code to change processes, and I’m going to go straight to the advanced level. I’m going from not even a beginner and go straight to advanced technology. And those people get a lot of problems now when it comes to managing a company of yours, or some of the other clients that we have that run multiple tech stacks. The next challenge is, how do you keep that data in sync? So you have APIs that connect to and from those systems. Now, the problem with those vendors is they go sell, hey, we’ve got APIs to explain. What does that even mean? APIs just mean that you can connect to Xplan in some way, shape or form, a lot of them just sync really basic information back and forth. And when you go to the demos, you’re thinking in your mind, you’re like, everything’s just gonna sink and it’s gonna be perfect. Because they’re telling me that that’s the biggest challenge. Is that that API component and how you manage double entry. Data. What you do is you go and say, What do I need in each system? Because all those extra CRM systems, you end up still using Xplan to produce the advice, because all your tools and the advice generation is still done there. So you still need all that personal information in text, point, the places I see that operate the most efficiently with dual CRMs is you clearly define what goes in each try not to double and turn it to both. If there’s a sink, try to use it. Most of them don’t really work that well. Acknowledge that. Consider, hey, does this data need to live in the system, right? Like if I have client assets in Xplan. Do I need the client’s asset position in my CRM system? Which is, say, dynamics? Probably not. You might just use it for marketing workflows, email, file, notes, things like that. That’s cool, but don’t expect to sync asset data, or don’t expect to double enter asset data into both of those systems. Same with portfolio data as well, things will start getting out of sync. You’re going to pull your hair up. Also consider, when do I put a data warehouse in the mix? Instead of syncing the data between those two systems, can I just pump the data from both systems into a warehouse and then structure that for reporting for that client that I can then surface in the CRM system. So I could just go to that client’s page and I’ve got a Power BI or a tableau report based on the warehouse data, not data that lives in the CRM system itself, which is it’s so much easier to pump data into a warehouse and try to sync between CRM systems.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, that’s a good insight for people who are thinking about how to try and make those two things work together in the old API sort of solution where it’s all just going to sync beautifully. But having a data warehouse between them does make a considerable amount of sense. And my big takeaway from that comment you just made is that, if you’re not using workflows and the like, you know, and you think, explains the problem, take a look in the mirror, you’re the problem. So I like that one reminds me of, yeah, that old saying, I don’t have people with portfolio problems. I have portfolios with people problems. You know, advisers can relate to that one, because if we just stopped meddling, you’d find it, it’s gonna be just fine. But you’re one of the few people in the country you really understand Xplan. Few people I’ve met, at least at a deep technical level, what do you believe Xplan still does exceptionally well?

Matt McGuinty

Some people can’t get away from the tools in Xplan, so cash flow modeling. It’s the most robust cash flow modeling tool in the market, and all the pair planners are trained on it, right? So, yeah, well, solver and risk researcher as well. Tools are great, best on the market, best research on the market, from what we see. CRM systems actually not that bad. They’ve made some improvements to it so that you can manage your opportunities and your deals. You can do pretty much everything that you could do, and like another CRM system, things that I see other competitors kind of doing a bit better would be definitely client portal, and that’s why we’re pushing that space. That’s one of them, email integration, like the ability to bulk sync all your emails. A lot of clients really like that functionality. They’ve iterated three versions of the new plugin, and every time it seems to get more restrictive. And no one’s happy about the email plugin that I’ve seen or heard from and probably integration with telecommunication. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Like, they do have one that was age, like really old, and I used to at the last company I was managing, but like teams integration with Dynamics is pretty cool. So yeah, subscriptions, right to file notes, things like that. That space is starting to become more and more appealing in the external CRM systems, same with copilot, things like that.

Rob Pyne

So you get this situation where, as you said there earlier, as long as you know what each system is really good at and what you’re using it for, and you keep that kind of separation, because you’re describing some things there that people want to get access to, and they say, well, Xplan is not really good at these things, is that they go to a CRM, but knowing there are some pitfalls to navigate there, and obviously you’re helping to advise firms to make that choice consciously about what they’re going to do and what those new tools will do for them. So I think that’s a good piece of guidance there for firms that are thinking about, how do I get access to these new tools, and can I get away from Xplan? The answer is, well, no, but as long as you know what belongs, where you can effectively run two systems, but just know what you’re facing there with the ability to run two side by side and not expect them to integrate neatly, unless you’re trying to build a warehouse in between the two and can report out of that method.

Matt McGuinty

I think the main thing is going back to your business strategy, like, how much of a technology business are you so how much of that technology do you want to bring if you want to bring a lot of tech into. Company and move to your own CRM system. You’ve got to spend on it. You’ve got to, like, go all in on that approach. And you can’t do it a bit cautiously, but even still, just like, I think my advice there is just don’t jump on things that are new, dynamic systems and things they’re not new. But you can see a lot of failed projects. I’ve seen more failed CRM additions to Xplan than I’ve seen successful and not to say I haven’t seen successful ones, but just keep that in mind, like you are going against the odds. So what can you do with your business to ensure that you’re going to be successful and implement a CRM system that’s actually going to return investment, and you’re not going to be, well, expensing the cost of your CRM, and you’re going to capitalise it, and you’re going to be able to use it for three to five years, because it improves your whole efficiency of your business.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, so it’s very thoughtful investment, isn’t it? It’s considered investment, not going to a conference getting wowed by some shiny tool and thinking, we’re going to bring this back and start to implement it, but actually, implement it, but actually getting some guidance, obviously, is what you and a couple other firms around that are doing, helping firms navigate this question of how to get the best out of technology without going down a rabbit hole, and maybe, yes, a failed implementation of a piece of software that wasn’t well thought through from the outset. So I think that’s very, very wise advice to sort of slow down, have a deep think about what you’re trying to build, and make sure you’re going to get that as a true investment return for the time and investment you put into it. I’ve got one more question for you, Matt, because we’ve been a little while, and I could talk a lot about this, because it’s very interesting space for me and all the other firms out there that are using Xplan, which is almost all of them, they’re kind of asking this question of themselves, is Xplan still be all? End All for us. What else can we do to try and get access to these new tools and systems that AI are bringing to the table as well? So looking ahead, which parts of the financial device process are most ripe for automation and AI driven improvement in the next two years? Let’s say. What do you think’s right for automation and efficiency gains through AI? And what’s just hype?

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, it’s funny, we had this whole conversation so far about technology, and we haven’t talked about AI.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, this is the big question. This is the one that everyone’s waiting for.

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, well, it’s interesting. So there’s, I feel like, with AI right now, there’s so many startups out there, and there’s so many people going, I’ll take your money. I’ll take 50, $60,000 from you. You want this bot, we can get this bot to do this for you. And so there’s all these companies like riding that hype, right? And it goes back to data security as well. Like, to me, like, I’m fairly conservative in my approach to technology would we would align really similar with, like, larger organisations, because I’ve worked with a lot larger organisations, and they’re very IT security focused, right? And it does slow you a little bit, but that’s not a bad thing, right? Because if you have a data breach, and if you have ever talked to a company that has had a data breach, it’s terrible. It’s so expensive and it hits your reputation. And so when I, when I look at AI, I’d say, Don’t be the guinea pig. Right now, some people will be those guinea pigs. That’s fine. Move slowly if you, if you don’t implement, say, file notes, where is probably the one thing right now that everyone’s pretty much using, you’re not using File note AI or one of those equivalent solutions, you’re probably behind even if you’re using, probably Microsoft copilot for your file notes, probably go get like, a proper financial planning ai file note tool, because they’re specifically designed for that. Xplan is coming out with one soon as well. If people are telling you that everyone is using AI, bots or agents right now, that’s BS, it’s not widespread. There are some suppliers out there that are saying, hey, agents and bots. If you’re not using them, you’re behind, and you need to be using them. And they work 24/7, that, to me, right now, is the and I spoke to someone at Iress that’s really high up in the IT data security space and he said that that’s one of his main concerns. And like, like, he’s like, I can’t sleep at night thinking of all these small financial planning businesses moving into agents, AI, agentic, AI, and all these, all these things, and they don’t even have, like, a data security plan or AI strategy plan or anything of how they’ll implement it, so that that’s coming, though, I’d say, like you said, two, three years, let other people make those mistakes. I feel like it’s just a ticking time bomb before something happens with AI and data security and financial services the way people are moving so quickly, it’s something I think will happen. So just Yeah, slow down. Use file notes right now. So ways like AI makes stuff up. So if you’re starting to use AI for SOA. That’s probably fine for like, certain customise the strategy that, like, here’s what I’ve done for the client. Here, write some benefits, considerations and risks for this financial planning strategy, but then read it over and make sure that it didn’t make stuff up. Because everyone’s had that experience where I’ve had AI read contracts for me, and I said, Hey, it’s just summarise the pros and cons for each party, and it gets the parties reversed. And then you ask it. You go, Well, isn’t that wrong? I think you, I think you misinterpreted that. And then it just apologises,

Rob Pyne

just, oh, sorry, yeah, I did. So Don’t, don’t take it to the gospel.

Matt McGuinty

It happens all the time, and I apologise. Oh, no, sorry, sorry, you’re right, completely right. That was completely wrong. I completely screwed up that interpretation. So if you’re using it to prepare advice, that’s risky, because it makes assumptions, but it does it with confidence, and people are starting to just go, it came out of Grok or ChatGPT. So it has to be right, because it’s AI and it’s smarter than everyone that, to me, is, don’t, don’t move on SOAs yet, I think we’re a bit away. Some clients are starting to use it for vetting. So ways, like after you’ve written it, go check to make sure certain pieces of that document are included. So certain disclosures that have to be made. That stuff’s pretty cool. That’s there now.

Rob Pyne

So compliance checking framework, yep, to teach it what to look for, and if it’s there or not there, to alert the adviser or the team that there’s bits missing here before you go and publish it and present it.

Matt McGuinty

Yep. And then, if you’re starting to look at eventually, when agents are more of a reality for the financial services industry, for the broader network, not just large companies that have big pockets, you’re going to want to make sure your data’s quality. So, like, we’ve had one business that went, Okay, well, we want to get bots to do reviews. You don’t keep your review data up to date, exponent, what’s going to trigger the bot? Okay, well, you’ve got to then go clean up and have a really like before AI and agents, you need really good data process, quality checks, data management systems, like, that’s fundamental. And people, I think people aren’t ready for it in financial services, yeah,

Rob Pyne

that’s good advice, because there is a fair bit of FOMO out there thinking that someone’s getting ahead because they’ve got technology deployed and they’re using AI to do things that we aren’t doing yet. But in reality, as you said there, it’s almost inevitable there’ll be some issue pop up publicly where someone’s used AI. And we saw a big accounting firm without naming the name. One of them was big government contract, and they just used AI to generate the advice to the government and was clearly flaws in the advice delivered, and then there was hundreds of 1000s of dollars of advice being delivered and generated by AI. So yeah, I don’t want to be the first firm, and I’m sure others don’t either, to be caught out giving advice that I didn’t actually prepare, or at least, at the very least pre vet make sure the AI didn’t get it wrong when they produced the advice document. So yeah, I can hear your wise advice there for firms that are thinking they need to just get on this juggernaut of AI and make sure they’re getting their business running efficiently.

Matt McGuinty

Yeah, no one’s gonna be able to really leapfrog you in terms of your competitors over, like, the short term, over two to three years. Like, if someone’s using AI, and you guys are still using, maybe outsource to the Philippines and some internal processes, like, most of your revenue is coming from referrals, like client referrals, or networking that component, like the AI side, is just going to be efficiency gains and profit margin gains. And I doubt that they’re really screaming that that much. And honestly, you could do stuff with templates and your current process that you’ve been able to do for 10 to 15 years. The amount of people that come to me and go, Hey, we need AI to automate this review report, and you could have been doing that for 10 years.

Rob Pyne

Yeah, that’s the lesson here, isn’t it that many people are actually not getting the best use out of their current tech, and they’re worried about the next piece of tech, so just make sure you’re maximising the tech you’ve got, getting the best out of it, before you go thinking about some other piece of technology that’ll be solving your problems, because often those problems can be solved with what you already have on site. So, and that’s really the space you operate in. Matt, certainly been of great value to us. I know that you’re one of a very few, I think, in this space, that offer that sort of independent judgment about software and technology. And I think that’s a really refreshing thing for people to know, because they are otherwise getting their advice from the vendors of technology without being able to compare and contrast software. And so bringing a skill set to the table for firms that are wanting to be thoughtful and considered in their technology choices, whether it’s bringing a business in and doing that pre vet. Process or thinking about going into a second piece of software, as you’ve gone up and pushed explained as far as you can push that, and then you’re kind of peeking out and wanting to go to another piece of software. I think you offer a really valuable service, and certainly we’re beneficiaries of your insight and products that you’ve implemented. And I’m sure we’ll be having lots more conversations off air in the future as we continue to develop our own tech stack. So I appreciate you taking the time today, Matt on The Trusted Adviser podcast.

Matt McGuinty

No worries. Thanks for having me.

Rob Pyne

Thanks for tuning in to The Trusted Adviser. I hope today’s conversation brought you new insights and inspiration for growing your business. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your favourite podcast platform, leave a review and share it with others in the industry, and don’t forget to connect with us on LinkedIn for updates on future episodes until next time, keep building trust, embracing innovation and driving success in your practice.