In this episode of The Trusted Adviser podcast, Rob speaks with Chris Hill and Rafael Cohen from Inherit Australia about the intersection of estate planning and financial advising. They discuss the challenges faced by advisors in getting clients to engage in estate planning, the inefficiencies in the current processes, and how Inherit Australia aims to bridge the gap between advisors and lawyers. The conversation covers the importance of advisors driving the estate planning conversation, the systematic approach to overcoming objections, and the future of estate planning in a rapidly changing landscape.

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SHOW NOTES

Topics Discussed

The advisor’s role in estate planning and family dynamics.
Platform-enabled collaboration between advisors and lawyers.
Structured processes for capturing family, asset, and trust information.
Concierge and paralegal-led models to support advisors.
Pricing models, licensing, and integration with practice systems.
Managing client transitions and data retention.
Using estate planning to strengthen client engagement and cross-generational relationships.
Benefits of Life Vault for document storage and ongoing client access.
ROI and business growth opportunities for advisors through estate planning.
The future of financial advice as trusted family guidance beyond investments.

Episode Highlights

(Timestamps are approximate)

[00:00] – Introduction to Inherit Australia
[01:39] – Identifying the Problem in Estate Planning
[04:48] – The Role of Advisors in Estate Planning
[07:05] – Overcoming Objections from Advisors
[09:25] – The Panel Approach to Legal Services
[13:21] – The End-to-End Process of Estate Planning
[18:44] – The Importance of Document Storage and Access
[20:45] – Navigating Family Dynamics in Estate Planning
[24:28] – Catalysts for Estate Planning Conversations
[26:30] – Fee Structures and Concierge Services
[26:44] – Building Comprehensive Solutions for Advisors
[28:49] – The Concierge Service: Bridging Gaps in Estate Planning
[30:23] – Understanding the Pricing Model and Licensing Structure
[33:36] – Client Data Management and Transitioning
[37:13] – Implementing Inherit: A 90-Day Plan for Advisors
[40:24] – Enhancing Client Engagement and Intergenerational Relationships
[45:42] – The Future of Financial Advisory: Embracing Family Advice

Quotes

“The whole scripted narrative is to look for issues and identify problems before they become conflicts.” – Chris Hill

“Life Vault allows clients to access and manage their estate planning documents in a central, secure location.” – Rafael Cohen

“Advisors see the value of estate planning not only for clients but for growing their own business through cross-generational engagement.” – Chris Hill

“Structured questions enable even less experienced advisors to have meaningful, in-depth conversations with clients.” – Rob Pyne

“Using estate planning as a beachhead into family advisory is a very good strategy for advisors.” – Rafael Cohen

Key Takeaways

Chris has 36 years of legal experience and 25 years in financial advising.
Raph has over 20 years in tech and web platforms, focusing on security.
Many clients lack current estate plans, leading to significant gaps in wealth protection.
Advisors are in the best position to drive estate planning conversations.
The platform allows advisors to charge for estate planning services.
Lawyers prefer working with informed clients who have been prepped by advisors.
The process is designed to be lawyer agnostic, allowing for flexibility.
The platform captures family dynamics and potential issues early on.
Advisors can enhance client relationships through estate planning discussions.
The future of financial advising will focus on family advice rather than just financial products.

Resources & Links

The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au/
Inherit Australia: https://www.inheritaustralia.com.au/
Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
Connect with Chris Hill on LinkedIn
Connect with Rafael Cohen on LinkedIn
Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

Rob (00:02.242)

Welcome Chris Hill and Rafael Cohen to The Trusted Adviser podcast.

Inherit Australia (00:05.532)

Good morning Rob, thank you and welcome to our audience. Thanks Rob.

Rob (00:10.146)

Thanks for joining me guys. Before I get into my question set, which I’ve pre-prepared, I would like to just get you both to take a second just to talk about your respective backgrounds because you are coming from different fields, but coming together to build what you’ve built with Inherit Australia. So Chris, perhaps start with you. Can you give us a quick snapshot of your background and then we’ll go to Raph.

Inherit Australia (00:30.076)

Yeah, thank you, Rob. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been a lawyer for about 36 years. I’ve also been a financial advisor for about 25 years and in that role tried to bridge the gap between legal work and financial planning work. And a lot of my work today is specialised around SMSF’s death benefit planning and estate planning. So that’s where my core focus is at the moment. But I’ve had a pretty broad background in the last 36 years.

Rob (00:59.808)

Yeah, and ref, what about yourself?

Inherit Australia (01:02.054)

Yes, I’ve been working in tech and web platform for over 20 years. Started from the dot com days in the late 90s. And over the last 20 years, I’ve been working with accountants and planners to web platforms, specifically in security, secure data. And this is where basically our both professions interact within security and then into estate planning.

Rob (01:26.646)

Okay, so as I’ve said in the introduction, you’ve come together to build out a platform called Inherit Australia. And I want to start with you, perhaps Chris, take us back to the start. What problem were you trying to solve when you first connected your legal background with your work as a financial advisor? And how did that become Inherit Australia?

Inherit Australia (01:45.776)

Yeah, great. Thanks, Rob. When I was a financial planner, like most planners, you go to conferences every year. And when I did my DFP and my CFP, the topic of estate planning was always a core topic. And then at a conference, you learn about estate planning concepts. But the question was, what do do with it? You learn this knowledge, but you don’t know how to apply it. And then when I started talking to advisors about doing it, they

The overall sense was one of frustration because they knew their clients’ affairs, they had assisted in protecting their wealth and accumulating that wealth. But when it came to getting clients to see a lawyer to do their estate planning, they were powerless. And the most common complaint was, I put it in an SOA or a rofer that they had to do their will or review their will because they knew, the advisor knew that there were problems.

but the clients next time they came back and they would even give the advisor a business card of the lawyer that they worked with, but that the next review, say 12 months later, they still had the business card in their hand and they did nothing about it. So it’s this sense of frustration from an advisor’s perspective on getting them into the hands of the lawyer. And then of course, from the lawyer’s perspective, they were powerless too, because the clients were usually, unless they were their own clients, were usually referred to the lawyer. And the complaint was, well,

They’d say to the lawyer, well, I’ve sent the client to you, but they haven’t contacted me yet or they won’t do anything about it. Typically because estate planning is not a sexy topic. It’s one of those things that people need to do, but they tend to do it when they’re on holiday or there’s a health scare. And then of course, the other frustration was that when clients met with lawyers,

The lawyers were asking questions and the client said, look, my advisor’s got all that information. You’re asking me everything that my advisor knows, why don’t you ask my advisor? And so I observed there was this inefficiency in the whole process, right? And that which led to the fact that there’s about 50 % of Australians in our community that don’t have a current estate plan or even have a will. And so I thought there was a better way of addressing this.

Inherit Australia (04:05.424)

by bringing lawyers and advisors together in a way that shared information that enabled advisors to play a relevant and important part of that process because they were already an important person to that process.

Rob (04:20.031)

Yeah, I mean every advisor listening to that Chris would relate to that story of saying to your client, here’s the solicitor we work with, here go see them, they’ll organise your will of power of attorney, advanced health directive, enduring power of guardianship and the like. And then a year later, unless there’s a real concerted effort to really prompt the client to do it.

they turn up and nothing’s been done. And I think that’s true of so many people, as you say, half the community doesn’t have a will because they may have thought they would do it or should do it. And even the advisor clients who actually are being prompted to do it aren’t getting it done. So from a planners perspective then, you’ve got your view of both sides of the fence there, both as a solicitor and as also a planner. Where does the state playing naturally fit into the advice journey? Because we’re used to doing reviews and preparing SOAs and so it’s all…

planning around the person’s finances, but why do you believe advisors, not lawyers, should be the ones to drive that conversation?

Inherit Australia (05:13.201)

Yeah, well I think it fits very much into the financial planning paradigm, right, because the planner’s goal is to look at the client’s goals and objectives and to develop a plan to achieve those objectives at a future point in time. planning fits into that paradigm because estate planning takes the same approach, it deals with an inevitable event at a future point in time. I think it sits better with the planner because planners

know all their clients’ affairs, as I’ve mentioned. They’ve been involved in accumulating their assets. They know about things like Centrelink issues, SMSF death benefit issues, insurance bonds, aged care issues. They have a broader knowledge of a client’s affairs and the things that will impact their estate planning than lawyers do. Most lawyers are good at drafting wills, but they don’t understand concepts around aged care, superannuation particularly.

So we think our view, my view is that a planner should drive this conversation because they’re best suited to. They already have the relationship with the client and for the client to move forward, because we know the stickiness of clients or the resistance to clients doing it, it’s much easier for the advisor to drive that because they see them every year, two or three times a year. They may not see a lawyer unless they need to for a particular purpose. So they’re in the best position to drive a client.

to complete an estate plan. to me, it fits well within the advice process because advisors work on wealth accumulation, they work on wealth protection through insurance, but what they’re not good at is wealth distribution, which is estate planning.

Rob (06:57.975)

Yeah, we’ll get into exactly how that connection happens in a moment, how you built the platform and how it’s designed to both give the advisors sort of that front end opportunity to capture the information they know about the client already in a structured way and then give the solicitor, the lawyer, a really good opportunity to enhance their own understanding of the client situation before they even meet the client. we’ll get to that in a moment. But before we get there though,

What were the common objections you were hearing from advisors early on? That this is legal advice, I’m not insured for doing this work, we don’t get paid for this work. How does your workflow answer these objections advisors might be having about how to incorporate this conversation into their review meetings?

Inherit Australia (07:43.739)

Yes, it’s a good question because we had that feedback from most advisors in the early phase of our development. So we tackle those objections in a systematic way. Firstly, what we do is we script the entire conversation that the advisor has with a client, which is based on the conversation that a lawyer would have with a client, but we strip out the issue of legal advice or legal advice from that.

And that provides two main benefits. Firstly, for advisors that have no knowledge around estate planning, we enable them to have a fulsome conversation with a client, gathering information that they would, without any knowledge or experience. And secondly, and importantly, from a risk management point of view, we create guardrails in that process to avoid the advisor going off stray and giving advice. The advisor’s role is to facilitate and to gather information. So we…

we address that first question of risk of giving legal advice and many advisors say, look, I have no experience and knowledge of it, so how do I have that conversation? So we address those two issues. The third issue about getting remunerated, what we’ve effectively done is we’ve, because we stripped the conversation that a lawyer would have with a client and give it to the advisor, we’re effectively allowing the advisor to charge like a lawyer would for that advice. It’s an appropriate and it’s a necessary

piece or part of that process, we’re just saying that the advisor is the best person to do that, not the lawyer. And for most lawyers, they prefer that because it’s time consuming and their time is valuable. So we address the third piece by allowing advisors to charge for that time, as well as to facilitate the rest of the process.

Rob (09:31.31)

And do you find the consequence of that is that the lawyers fee would be reflective of the fact that the time they take on that work would be less than they would otherwise charge for because they now have, it’s much like …

Having someone do your deep dive discovery as a financial planner, if you’re not the one doing it, you still get the file with all the information in it. You are actually accelerated in your process to then review the file. I mean, we in our business had an onboarding specialist for many years. And so by the time the advisor got the file, all the data had been collected for them. And that really gave the advisor a good runway to build out the advice. So are you seeing lawyers that are working closely with the platform and your advisors that are using it?

getting their fees are adjusted according to the fact that that front-end work is done for them.

Inherit Australia (10:16.252)

Well, that’s certainly the case and certainly what’s intended. So from a client’s perspective, it shouldn’t cost them any more in theory. But what it’s doing is using the time of the lawyer more efficiently because quite frankly, you don’t need a lawyer at five, $600 an hour asking about the client’s family, the dates of birth of their kids and what assets they’ve got in their super fund and what’s in their trust. It’s just not efficient use of the time. So lawyers, yes,

would normally charge less because that time is not being charged and needs to be charged but from a lawyer’s perspective, especially experienced lawyers, they enjoy it more because they’re dealing with the real issues, not all the information gathering process. The intention being that the information is gathered and the lawyer works out a solution or identifies the issues and works out a solution to those issues and of course documents it.

Rob (11:12.683)

Yeah, no, it makes total sense. And so what I know having now investigated a little bit about this space that you guys operate in, there are other platforms out there that are essentially something, attempting to something similar to what you’re doing, which is to have the advisor lead that conversation, take all the information they already know, and ask a structured series of questions to help gather all the relevant data for the person to get their estate planning work done.

but many platforms funnel clients into a single law firm. So the law firm themselves have actually built the platform to essentially create a front end for advisors to collaborate with them as the law firm. You chose a panel approach across all the states of the country now you’re operating in. So why does that matter to you in practice? And how do you match clients and advisors to the right lawyer using that panel approach?

Inherit Australia (12:01.69)

Yeah, that’s a good question because our fundamental view is that there should be transparency in the process and there should be a lawyer agnostic approach. But we’ve done that because state planning laws in each state differs, not only in terms of the way family provision legislation operates, but even just the forms and the procedures. Each state has their own different jurisdiction. We don’t have uniform jurisdiction.

And so therefore it’s more appropriate to have lawyers in that state that are more familiar with the issues that might address a client who has assets in that state or who lives in that state. So that’s the first reason. The other reason is that we believe that for most clients and even most advisors, they have a relationship with a lawyer, but that lawyer is not going to be the best lawyer for all of their clients. And that may be because of their skillset shortages,

for particular clients, it may be because of the way they charge their fees, may not be suitable for all their clients, or it may be because of their personality. Clients sometimes rub against lawyers who might be difficult or may not be as accommodating, particularly if they’ve got sensitive family issues or health issues. So we think a multi-lawyer approach is the best approach for both clients and advisors, and it allows the advisor to have the

in the selection of that lawyer, whether it’s their own lawyer of choice, because advisors can bring their own lawyers onto the platform, or to choose another lawyer from another state or within their own state that has a particular skill set. On our panel we’ve got lawyers who specialize in farm succession planning, in estate planning, around aged care. In my case I do a lot of work on death benefits and SMSFs, dealing with transfer balances and the like.

advisors can then have a choice and we think that choice is important to both the advisor and the client.

Rob (14:02.657)

That makes a lot of sense. Raph, I’m gonna throw a question to you now. You’re sitting quietly there and listening in, but you’re the technical brain behind the build of the platform. Can you walk us through the end-to-end process? How an advisor prepares with the client, but what gets captured in the platform and how and when the lawyer steps into that process? Because I’ve been through the process of…

I’ve walked my way through those steps and it’s extremely comprehensive. When I first spoke to you about it, I thought you’ve thought of everything here and you said, well, we kind of thought we did, but we’ve been working with a number of advisors who’ve helped us to shape it and improve it. And so the question set is now so comprehensive that there’s nothing that will get missed under any sort of family scenario. So back to that question, can you walk us through the process? Has an advisor prepared with the client? What gets captured and when does the lawyer step in?

Inherit Australia (14:52.38)

Yeah, so that’s a very good question. And usually the way advisors start the process is what we call health check and a price estimate. And the reason for this process or this sub process is to create a to understand what the client actually need. Basically like going to the doctor, get your, your temperature and blood pressure. And in most cases, as we said, 50 % of clients will, by default will need something in estate planning, but even

clients already have an estate planning in place, may need to review the estate planning that they have, maybe it’s been five years since the last time they’ve done it, maybe there was a life-changing event, and then advisors can run a quick process to understand what are the gaps, where the gaps are, and get a price estimate, how much it’s gonna cost to fix, basically what’s gonna be the damage when you actually go and see a lawyer. And then, once the client is basically sold on the idea that they have to do something about their estate planning, we move to

I did a collection phase. This is, as Chris already said, is a gated process where we scripted all the questions. All the questions have been approved by lawyers and advisors and actually dealer groups at this point in time. And the idea is to actually script the question for advisors that they’re not going to the legal advice territory and only collect the information and create that brief for the lawyer. And it starts from family, personal. For most advisors, it will look like a fact-finding when they start. But then it goes to

more personal items around questions around children where they live with the family, not with the family. If the children have relationships, if they have any problems, and then go through their assets, their entities, and moving to the testimony wishes before we move into client sign off, which is really important because this is basically a gateway between the advisor and the lawyer where the client can review the entire information and say, yeah, that’s correct.

we can move on to the next step and see where. At this point, the advisor can help clients to select the right lawyer. Most advisors have a preferred lawyer for the firm after they do a couple of plans. It’s a very personal relationship between the advisor and the lawyer. We’re not talking about eBay type of marketplace where you just send it somewhere and it comes back. Most advisors know the lawyer. We know they talk over the phone, emails outside of the platform. We just help them do it very efficiently.

Inherit Australia (17:20.29)

and in a compliant manner within the application. We don’t care if they actually communicate outside the application within themselves. Once the lawyer is selected, the lawyer will approve the price estimate after all the information has been entered to make sure there are no gotchas for the lawyers that are gonna spend days on end with a client based on that plan. And then we move into basically the lawyer will move into quotation.

and a fee disclosure as they have to do from their side of the business. And the client will pay for the plan. Once the plan has been paid, the lawyer will into legal advice and the drafting of the documents. It’s a bit tedious when we’re talking about it in all the steps, but again, once you see it in the application, actually lay it out for you as the advisor. see exactly where the client is within the process and you have a bird’s eye view of all your clients as they run through the process.

Once the lawyer finishes drafting, they send it back to the client and the advisor can actually have visibility of the documents at this phase, make notes. They can do multiple reviews of the documents as they do in the old process of basically working directly with the lawyer. And when everybody are happy with the documents, we move into signatures that can be digital in Victoria only at this point in time and still wait signature in all the states and territories.

can be done by the advisor, again or the lawyer depending on the proximity to the client. The last phase, yeah go ahead, you have a question?

Rob (18:50.241)

Yeah, for sure.

I was just going to say there, go to the last phase, then I’ll come back to the question I have in mind.

Inherit Australia (18:57.754)

Yeah, so the last phase when it’s all said and done, all the documents are loaded in what we call Life Vault and the client has access to this information from their end. They can basically have a login under the advisor branding to see their state-of-the-art documents. They can basically nominate executors and attorneys within the Life Vault that will have access to the documents when the time comes when they actually need access to the documents.

That’s a whole separate component of the application. But the idea is that it’s process from the discovery to the storage of the documents at the end and the maintenance of the documents by the client and then setting up a review process with the advisors five, three years down the line or when a major event happens.

Rob (19:46.68)

Yeah, for sure, that life vault part of it is such a crucial final point, isn’t it? That all the work that’s been done, the documents get captured and stored in a central location where when it comes time for someone to go looking and accessing the information, accessing the documents to see what the estate plan is, they have got one place to go instead of going, now where did mum store that document and start the search if there’s not been a good orderly way of…

Inherit Australia (20:10.939)

Yes.

Rob (20:12.587)

of recording that. The question I had in my mind was you said there right at the beginning there, Raph, that you’ve had dealer groups that have agreed now to work with the platform. Are you at liberty to share who of the dealer groups that you’ve worked with that have started to sort of say, yep, they’re approved for their advisors to use your platform?

Inherit Australia (20:31.002)

Yeah, so count is obviously the major one that we got the approval last July. And that was a process of about 12 months of compliance from the business decision down to legal working with the lawyers and then moving to compliance. Seems like it never ends. And then we go to AT which sent us over 100 points of basically key points that we have to take care of and basically look at.

This is actually helpful for us on our side because every time we go through with a group through this, all this process, actually improve our application as well and our procedures and our security and the way we deal with compliance, make sure there are no leaks of legal advice from the lawyers to the advisors. So the advisor actually protected in terms of liability. So that was a proof of account, but we also work with lifespan, which are pretty major, especially in the Eastern States.

Rob (21:02.423)

Yes.

Inherit Australia (21:29.02)

and other smaller groups that are basically approvals basically on their own account. But the idea is basically to move through the industry every time advisor is basically asking to get approved by the group, we go up to the group, get the approval and get back to the advisors to get approved basically so they can actually start working under the compliance of their own dealer.

Rob (21:50.22)

Yeah, I can see how would be, had it been a thorough process that Count put you through and I’m sure they would have asked all the relevant questions about data security and cyber and the like. So to be sure that the information that’s being captured, which is such sensitive information, is going to be stored safely. And being that they’ve got a traditional alignment to accountants being the Count platform, they would naturally fit very comfortably in this space. Accountants are used to having these conversations as well on the estate planning work of clients, especially for their…

their business clients. So that’s super helpful, Raf. Thanks for sharing that. Are you able to share a de-identified example where the conversation surfaced some family dynamics issues? Have you got an example that, without mentioning names, sort of blended families, executive tensions, things that actually, because family dynamics can be quite tricky. mean, anyone that’s been working in advice for any period of time, or legal for that matter, has seen situations that have gone south because…

Inherit Australia (22:39.74)

here.

Rob (22:47.383)

there’s been a relationship breakdown in the family, either at the point of the will being read or even prior to that, and things get very awkward. How have the structured questions that you guys have actually created, they helped resolve and get ahead of those issues before they become a real challenge for the family and break down those family relationships?

Inherit Australia (23:07.804)

Yeah, no, that’s a really important point because to help advisors give value to their clients and to help lawyers to identify issues, the idea of the process is to look for problems. So the whole scripted narrative that we’ve provided is to look for issues that may exist and to identify those issues.

so that the clients know that there is a problem that they need to address. That’s where the value part of the process comes, transfers to the advisor, but also it enables the lawyer to identify, okay, these are the issues, now we need to provide a solution to them. That’s the legal advice piece. I mean, the classic cases, as you’ve identified, is in the blended families, families that are in conflict, families that have had a health scare, you know, maybe there’s a terminal illness.

and or around relationship issues generally, children with disabilities, with vulnerabilities. So in our process we probe into relationships between the client, their children, the children and their partners, even their grandchildren, and to try and identify how the estate plan should address beneficiaries with special needs or special vulnerabilities.

and also to identify conflicts that might arise with executives. I had a client yesterday who wants to appoint their son as an executive, but the son is only 10. He’s thinking that he’s going to out, he’ll be well and truly in his, you know, he’s in his 40s, but he will be by the time he passes, his son will be in his 20s or 30s. Well, hopefully, but there’s no guarantee to that. So our system will pick up, will flag those sort of issues as well as

Rob (24:45.26)

Wow.

Rob (24:55.787)

Hopefully.

Inherit Australia (25:03.44)

how executives can work together, especially because the default position in most states and the trustee acts is executives must act unanimously. So how do executives make executorial decisions where there’s discretion is given to them and there are personality issues. So probing the relationship characteristics of the family is really important and the system will do that to identify issues. If anything, just to help the advisor have a conversation with the client about who

they want in control of their estate and who may take control of trusts, including superannuation trusts or funds.

Rob (25:42.242)

Now Chris, do you see people looking for this solution, almost being aware of it perhaps, but then as soon as they have one of those situations you described, like a family in conflict or a terminal illness in the family or there’s something that’s kind of…

prompting the advisor to go, need to get ahead of this now. We could just handball to the solicitor or the lawyer to do the work, but it feels like it’s very much in the domain of the advisor who’s so intimately familiar with the family and the issues that they are talking through with their advisor. Do you see that as kind of often the catalyst to get people sort of open and exposed to what you can do to help to get that family prepared for the eventual reality that they can sort of see coming?

Inherit Australia (26:22.652)

Yeah, because the problem is the advisor knows that there is things brewing in a family and that it’s likely to implode and they’re powerless to know how to address it. So by driving the client into a structured process, A, they not only identify the issue but we try and identify other issues that may impact downstream. So MH may provide a solution around some of the issues that they’ve confronted because

Rob (26:29.356)

Hmm

Inherit Australia (26:52.42)

A lot of these families can be complex, especially with multiple relationships, children from different relationships, assets that may be offshore or in different jurisdictions, and particularly with assets that are held in trusts, you know, that don’t form part of the estate or which won’t be regulated by the will. addressing these non-estate assets and if it might be compounded with family conflicts is something that

It needs a holistic approach because advisors can be consumed by the emotion or the clients can be consumed by the emotion. A typical case I see often is as a lawyer is a client will come in, it may be a second relationship and the wife cannot get on with the children of the husband. Maybe they might see her as a gold digger or destroying the relationship that they had with their mother.

And so the new wife’s concern is, what happens if my husband dies? I’m going to have to deal with the children from that other relationship. How’s that going to be navigated? So that opens up a whole range of issues. And this is where the platform can capture those issues and lay out a foundation for getting legal advice that addresses those issues.

Rob (28:12.117)

Yeah, for sure. And so you mentioned a bit earlier Chris about the way in which people would charge for this perhaps because it is the work of the lawyer typically, but the lawyer is getting a clean sheet and starting from scratch, but this gives the lawyer a head start by capturing the information the advisor knows well. What are the effective models you’re seeing that firms are using? So bundling it into their ongoing fee that they’re charging for this work or charging a separate discrete fee. And also you’ve mentioned to me when we spoke before that you’ve got a

are kind of a concierge or a paralegal lead option as well. And when does that become a viable pathway instead of perhaps the advisor themselves doing the work? So that fee sort of model and also the concierge service.

Inherit Australia (28:45.627)

Yeah.

Inherit Australia (28:55.568)

Yeah, so in our early phase, the feedback we got from advisors was that either they were time poor, didn’t have the knowledge to deal with some complex clients, or had clients that were very price sensitive. So we had to, or in fact we did, we built different models to deal with all the clients of the practice. The idea being that Inherit is a one stop shop, I hate to use that phrase, but it’s a complete solution, an end to end solution

the advisors practice. So in terms of pricing, what a lot of advisors tend to do is for those A or B or gold clients where they’re charging significant annual fees, they incorporate it as part of the value to that client. They just add it into the service because it strengthens the relationship. It provides more value and it’s captured by that fee. Some advisors

take the approach of charging a separate fee for their BEC or lower value or lower higher priced clients with the opportunity maybe getting other work across because the inherent system captures all the client’s wealth and maybe there’s assets under management that could be managed that’s outside of the planners firm. The concierge service was developed for advisors who either were very scared to

dip their toe into this area, notwithstanding the fact that we narrate the whole conversation, they just wanted somebody else to start that process and they would sit in on it. So the concierge process involves a paralegal, typically, driving that conversation or it being outsourced completely to a lawyer. So some advisors sit in those conversations to gain confidence and familiarity.

Others just say, I don’t have the time, but I know the client needs to have their estate planning done. the concierge service is a way that that initial meeting can be outsourced to a paralegal that has that facility meeting and the advisor can be involved or connected. They can have visibility of the information that’s gathered. But it’s really about the advisor having the ability to deliver the estate planning solution to all of their clients based on their time, their resources, their staffing.

Inherit Australia (31:17.584)

And of course the client’s appetite, financial resources and desire. The objective being, like most advisors, and what we want to see is clients do their estate plan no matter whatever way they do it. They get it done properly and competently and not through an online provider.

Rob (31:33.848)

Yeah. And what struck me when I first saw the platform, we’ve been hearing now for some time about this enormous intergenerational wealth transfer. And the fact that there are, you know, there’s a lot of wealth in the hands of baby boomers that ultimately are perhaps not fully prepared as to how they’ll pass their assets on and then maybe have some of those family dynamics that we speak of. But just going through the platform myself,

it does a wonderful job at capturing the entire family, the family tree. And you’ve got a great visual there. And when I first saw that, it’s sort of, you know, we build family trees for our clients using a charting program, but essentially it’s a very streamlined process to capture the information that’s relevant to capture. And then it drops a family tree out of the back end of that as well, which actually does give you a really great sense of who’s there in the family and being able to connect more to the family, perhaps as those

wealth transfer issues come up and getting the estate planning done is obviously a pretty convenient way to have that conversation as well about who’s in the family and their current situation as well. So can you lay out your pricing model? We’ve talked about how advisors might charge, but obviously listeners will be interested to say, how do you charge for this work? How are licenses structured? Are they are per user or per household? Are there any tiers or minimums that people have to be aware of? And what’s included?

Inherit Australia (32:58.428)

Yeah

Rob (33:00.193)

versus what are the add-ons like onboarding and training integrations and the like. So give us a full sort of run through on that, perhaps Raph, if you want to give us that high level.

Inherit Australia (33:08.828)

Yeah, I can pick it up. So it starts the license starts from $250 a month plus GST for the entire practice. So we charge per practice and it’s unlimited team users. This is really important for us that all the employees in the firm, even if you have an outside employees, people in the Philippines, people interstate, we want every user to have their own account. It’s really important for obviously for security just to have

people logging in from their own account. But it’s also important for compliance and the groups actually enforce it to us as well to ensure that every login is the actual person who actually logged in. And this is why we don’t charge per user like other online platforms that you see a per seat or per user charge. It’s intentional this way, a charge is a per practice, it’s encompassed for all users. And it gives you two estate plan per month. So it’s basically to start it off with a firm.

Usually one or two advisors are using it, they’d risk it, running through the clients, one or two plans per month. As other advisors join in, basically they can go up the scale in terms of how many plans they actually run per month. This is where we go up to a more expensive license, that goes up to 550 and 950, five plans and 10 plans, then up to more plans per month as on a per plan basis. But the idea is the more you use it in the practice, the more you pay for it.

and the less you use it or if you have a small practice of one or two advisors and support staff they can basically stay with 250 for a very long time as they gradually run through their client base with two plans per month on a very long term.

Rob (34:50.637)

Okay, and what about the onboarding and training or integrations, Raph? Tell us how that works. Is there an onboarding fee for someone to practice to join and start work? And how do you actually integrate them and white label the platform portal so that people can use it with their branding?

Inherit Australia (35:06.192)

Yeah, so there’s a one off $750 fee for branding. So basically we rebrand the whole application for your own practice. It is optional. Some small advisors basically decided not to go for it when they started and then they gradually…

after year maybe they decided to take the plunge and take the branding. Integration by default is free and it’s actually within the application and we integrate with X-Plane, XeroxPM, WinWinter, BGL and other smaller platforms. X-Plane is still the most common integration for advisors because they still control, dominate the market.

and they use it, usually basically we pick up from X-Plane all the information that is already there that is related to estate planning. It’s a one-way integration and if you have any problems sometimes the group has to tick a box somewhere in X-Plane to prove the integration but we just get embedded within the onboarding that we don’t charge for it. If you have specific requests, we have your own in-built in-house platforms, obviously we can basically create a project around integrating

the application as we integrate with the generic vendors within the marketplace.

Rob (36:23.403)

Yeah, great. And as you say, Explan is still the dominant CRM provider in the market. So the fact that there’s data there that can be pulled across from the relevant estate planning fields, I guess, in Explan, that gives the advice firm a head start. So that’s good. Thanks for the run through on the pricing model. And what about if a client were to leave the advice firm?

When we first looked at it, this is one of first questions our guys said, what if a client leaves though, and we’re the advisor that’s put them into this platform, we’re attached to the client as the gatekeeper effectively to get them into the Inherit Australia platform. What happens to that client’s data and their access? Who owns the record and how is it exported or transferred to a new advisor or lawyer? Are there any ongoing storage or transfer fees if the client has left the advice firm but the client wants to retain access to their records?

and what happens in that scenario.

Inherit Australia (37:14.684)

Yeah, so are actually two scenarios here. One is the client leaving the practice or the actual practice leaving Inherit, which we also consider as an option. Obviously it never happens when somebody leaves Inherit, but we still need to consider this option. For a client leaving the practice, what we do is basically grandfather the account. So the client still can log in from the Inherit main website, not via the advice practice, because obviously they’re not a client of the practice anymore.

Rob (37:22.295)

Sure, let’s talk through both.

Inherit Australia (37:42.088)

They have a retail only access to all their data. just looked yesterday, we actually doing it for 10 years now. 2016 we started, so we have records 10 years old already. And the idea is that the data is kept virtually forever with the inherit. If client wants to basically use Life Vault to change, to manage their information, they can pick up a retail subscription directly with us.

Rob (37:54.477)

Wow.

Inherit Australia (38:10.064)

starts from $5 a month, something nominal just to keep the data going. If they decide just to have a read-only access, we don’t charge for it because we stole the information anyway and we have the client access. All clients can actually nominate a new advisors if the new advisor is within inherit and then we move that transfer that account to the advisor. The other option if the whole practice is living inherit, it’s also important for advisors to take care of their clients, then all the clients are grandfathered into that.

Rob (38:32.086)

Okay.

Inherit Australia (38:40.368)

retail option, they have retail and access to their data, or they can pick up a retail account on Nominate and Widow.

Rob (38:47.253)

Okay, that’s good, that explains it thoroughly. And does ever a client ever hear about you and come to you directly without an advisor and say, I just take this myself through this process?

Inherit Australia (38:57.596)

So we actually looked at it when we started, a retail option. We thought about offering this at this point in time, we decided to go only via the advisors and basically if a client arrives to us directly via even phone call to our office, we usually basically ask them where they’re at. We look for an advisor within the area and normally I basically.

get in touch with the advisor and get in touch with the client and get them together. And then the advisor actually win a new client for financial planning or accounting outside of inherit, but they can just facilitate the estate planning for the client.

Rob (39:32.27)

Okay, great. And perhaps relate a scenario for me for advice firms that are working with you that wants to embed this into their process. Who on the team typically owns that sort of relationship? Because someone probably finds out about you, they want to be the kind of the first mover on that practice to use Inherit. So are they the ones that typically owns the platform process initially, gets everything organized, and what training is required?

for them. What does a 90 day plan look like if someone, some advisor hears about you, listens to this podcast and says, okay, I want to contact these guys. Who kind of typically owns the process within the practice that you engage and what does that first 90 days look like?

Inherit Australia (40:18.128)

Yeah, I can pick it up. Okay, yeah. So the first, usually the first approach will be from an advisor or a senior partner in the firm, because they usually have the authority to make decisions. And we sometimes have administrators, but it’s pretty rare. And what we do is we have a 14 days free license, they can log in and start a license. Usually they talk to us before they actually start the 14 days.

We are a local firm. There’s a phone number you can actually call somebody pick it up. It’s not talking to big corporate in the States. And the idea is that within the 14 days, this advisor, whoever started within the firm, usually run at least one client, sometimes actually themselves and their own family, sometimes a staff member or a friendly client. We try to make them run one client through at least the health check and maybe start the data collection within the 14 days so they actually get a taste of the application.

Past the 14 days, they usually introduce us to other employees and other partners within the firm. They make a decision to continue the project and they set up a project to create a branding, to look up the API and actually implement it within the firm. Within 30 days, they usually are gonna have a training. We provide one hour training free as part of the deployment of the platform and they’re gonna have a training for the team.

Obviously, if they are from Victoria, we’re gonna drive and see them at the office, interstate, sorry, it has to be remote. And within 30 days, they’re gonna have all the stuff logging in, either directly to the heritage via Microsoft login, if they use Microsoft, which is a preferable way in our view. And they’re gonna have the API connected, they have the branding already set up. At day 60.

they usually go in to implement it into their advice process. This is really important, especially for the other advisors, not the lead advisor that actually approach us, because they’re usually the one that actually driving this project. For the other advisor, it’s really important to have it embedded into the advice process, or they have it into the client interview for new client and existing clients separate. And we basically make it part of the process.

Inherit Australia (42:38.746)

of the financial advice. It’s not just a footnote in the SOA, it becomes part of what the practice does with clients. By day 90, they’re probably gonna have, depending on the size of the practice, two, five, 10 estate plans already done. With lawyers, they’re usually gonna have a selected lawyer that they prefer to use, usually within their state or territory. And they’re gonna have a number of clients that already are using Live Vault. So they completed the entire workflow we discussed before, and they already have their

Documents in there and they can see actually how many clients are using live vault so they can monitor as client progress through the process That’s about three months of basically deployment

Rob (43:17.995)

Yeah, yeah, great. Now that’s, it’s obviously comprehensive and you can get people up and running in short time. In 30 days they’ve kind of got their API access, they’re fully branded and up and going with training. tell me about, and perhaps Chris, take this one, what changes have early adopter firms seen in terms of client engagement, kind of cross household retention, intergenerational relationships, what have you seen there? And how do firms measure the ROI on doing this work?

for their clients where typically they’ve just simply referred it to a lawyer.

Inherit Australia (43:50.66)

Yeah, that’s a very broad question and there’s a lot that can be said but certainly the feedback from advisors is that, in fact we’ve got a very big advisor in Melbourne that does a lot of this and the feedback that we get is that they see a lot of, there’s a wow factor from the client, just the advisor asking questions

Rob (43:55.948)

Yeah.

Inherit Australia (44:17.392)

without giving any advice, the client sees the advisor as somebody who’s knowledgeable. That’s one of the transactions that happen in the process. They see the advisor being very knowledgeable. there’s a deeper sense of trust in that relationship. There’s a transfer of the advisor just being a financial advisor, but being a wealth advisor. So that’s one of the main changes.

Then there is a desire by the client to refer their family to that advisor. We’re starting to see that now with advisors who really see the importance of estate planning. They bring their other family because there’s that trust that’s been built. in fact, we’ve had one advisor that, I can’t mention their name, but you know who I’m referring to, referred their parents, the parents referred to their children, the children are now referring to their friends. So the advisor,

started with a mum and dad estate plan and now I’ve got about five or six plans that they’re doing and charging for but they’re now talking to them about their wealth and their financial investments and what they’re going to inherit and how that’s going to be inherited because one question we do ask on the platform is how that wealth will be transferred? Is it going to be transferred through a company, a trust or physically transferred? And so that enlivens the conversation between the parents and the children and the children and the advisor.

So we’re seeing advisors who are very progressive using the estate planning not only to strengthen their relationship with the client, but to all cross sell their existing services to the family of that client, which they never had the opportunity to do before. And I think importantly, those advisors see the value of having a seat at the probate table when the advisor’s gone, right? Because typically what happens is the kids just want the money. They don’t care where the money’s been invested or held or managed.

and the advisor is largely shut out of that process. The children may be the executors, they go to a solicitor, the solicitor sells all the assets, the funds under administration that the advisor has been working with for many, many years, which provides a core part of their business, just evaporating. And so that succession transfer, that wealth transfer is a business risk to advisors if they don’t address it. And so I think advisors who are very

Inherit Australia (46:40.348)

active in this space see that opportunity to add value to their businesses as well as enhance the relationships with their clients by using estate planning as a bridge to address not only a need but also an opportunity within their practice. It’s also just to add is also we see an advisor seat as the best interest of clients because advisors actually have the deep understanding of the investment structure, the asset structure, the entities, all the stuff they’ve been working with.

Rob (46:55.659)

Yeah, I can.

Inherit Australia (47:09.702)

clients for decades maybe to build and protect and make sure it starts effective and then make sure that the transfer is as effective as the structure was when they set it up maybe 10 or 15 years ago. Now we make sure that these assets are moving to the next generation in the most effective way.

Rob (47:26.637)

Yeah, I can totally see that. mean, one thing that we’ve done in our practice for a number of years now is have a series of question sets and a runway of things for people to ask questions of clients. And often young advisors are anxious about having life experience enough to have a meaningful conversation with a client. They don’t know how experienced advisors can sort of ask all the sort of natural questions that they would have of a client. But we’ve got this process that enables people to sort of ask questions of a client.

and what clients really value most of all is being asked great questions and someone listening and taking note of what that client wants their life to look like. And your platform does something just exactly the same as that. It takes people through a process where someone with relatively low levels of experience on estate planning can really ask really meaningful, important questions that actually takes the client through that entire process. And it’s not just wills and powers of attorney. When I’ve been through the process myself,

Inherit Australia (48:09.53)

you

Inherit Australia (48:19.206)

you.

Rob (48:23.991)

family trust deeds, company constitutions, all of that information is actually captured, stored and centrally located now. So it’s one place to go for all that record keeping. So I totally get it how people that go through this process, they do have a much more complete view of the client’s world. And the client gets that, as you say, had that conversation about what they want their money to do, how they want their trust assets to where they want them to go. And so it does build that bridge as you described Chris to.

the family beyond the mum and dad client perhaps. So I think it’s totally makes sense to me as well. So in interest of time, we’ve gone off for a while and you’ve covered a lot of ground, really comprehensively covered what you guys are doing there today. But look forward to say five years, Christmas 2030, let’s say 2030, so five years from now, we’re in early January, 2026. If everything goes right,

What has Inherit Australia become for advisors and their clients? And how has it changed the typical advisor, lawyer, client relationship? If everything goes right, looking back from five years from now, what has happened that it’s all gone well for you guys?

Inherit Australia (49:35.216)

I might jump in first and then hand over to Raph. think I came back from the UK because we’re looking at a UK firm joining our panel to do with UK inheritance tax. One thing I noticed there is that they’re more progressive in the area of estate planning or succession planning as they would put it. And we think that that will probably be for us the industry that the financial planning industry will migrate to.

Obviously in the UK they don’t have lump sums, they have a lot of pensions. So they need to provide more value. And we think that with the erosion and the risk to advisors through AI and clients using AI, they need to look at providing other services, other means of connecting with their clients and holding their clients to the practice. And I think what we will expect to see is that the AI threat to the financial planning community

will be a driver to a platform like Inherit because you’re actually having conversations, you’re talking to clients, you’re actually asking them questions and no AI system can probe in the way that we’ve designed the system to capture that data.

Rob (50:49.293)

So it builds a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the client. And ultimately that is the, I think people say, what’s your value to a client beyond that initial work you do around strategy and tax and superannuation and so on. But it’s actually about having a trusted person that can be a guide when things come up, be someone that knows the family intimately, not just mom and dad now, but more broadly the family. And…

that relationship is the thing that people continue to come back for, isn’t it? Having someone that they know they can trust and is accountable for the advice that’s being given too, because good luck trying to get an AI to be accountable for the advice it gives. you know.

Inherit Australia (51:25.072)

Yeah.

And I think the other thing too is that we talked about the client and the business, but the feedback we get from advisors is that they say, look, this is really interesting. I don’t have to do a ropher or a compliance node or an SOA or, you know, I can just sit and have a conversation with a client and really get to know them and talk about their family and talk about what they want to do. And I find it really satisfying and refreshing. So advisors who do use it.

Rob (51:53.036)

Yeah.

Inherit Australia (51:57.4)

love that to have that conversation. It’s a bit of a break from the routine and the tediousness and the compliance driven framework within their financial planning practice. So there’s mutual benefits I think. Yeah. Yeah, well.

Rob (52:10.825)

Agreed. Raph, what about you five years from now? What’s happened and what’s looking like that’s made it a success?

Inherit Australia (52:17.884)

I’d say we have another anecdote. When we started, when Whiskey formally inherited 2020 over COVID, we talked to venture capitalists in Sydney and he told us that in their firm, they debate if financial advisors will actually exist in 10 years time. That was five years ago. And since that five years, we actually see only growth of demand for sound financial advice, which is more than financial advice, it’s more like family advice.

Rob (52:45.078)

Yes.

Inherit Australia (52:45.82)

People are looking for advisors that know more than just which stock to pick next time they change the superfund. They just want to have somebody to basically make a phone call when they have a problem. Okay, want to do something like that. We want to restructure who do we call. And we think that this trusted financial advisor, trusted family advice…

is basically there’s a shortage of it and the demand will always rise to get this service and using estate planning as a beachhead into becoming a family advisor is a very good strategy for advisors because we see that happening already in the field.

Rob (53:27.179)

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And the point you’ve both made there is that if you’re just having conversations about markets and bonds versus shares and what’s going up and down, that’s a pretty tedious conversation and very little value add to offer there. But here is a conversation that clients want to have if the questions are good questions, that questions are well thought through and it’s a thorough understanding of the family dynamics, all the potential issues to help make sure the family are a last legacy people want to leave.

is a financial problem for their kids to sort out and actually brings the kids into conflict. I mean, that’s not a legacy any parent wants to leave. So this structured process enables advisors to work their way through that conversation really thoughtfully, methodically, and have a really meaningful conversation with their clients in things that really matter to clients, things they can control now if planning ahead is done. So I applaud you on what you’ve done, guys. It’s an impressive platform. I can see big things for what the…

Inherit Australia (53:59.078)

Yeah.

Rob (54:25.601)

You’ve got big dealerships now that actually seeing what you’re doing and have approved the use of Inherit Australia. So I just want to say thanks again for joining me, Chris Hill and Rafael Cohen on The Trusted Adviser podcast.

Inherit Australia (54:38.076)

Thanks very much. Thanks, Rom, and thank you listeners for listening in. Thank you.

Rob (54:42.562)

Thanks guys, appreciate it.