In this episode of the Trusted Adviser Podcast, Rob speaks with Corey Wastle, founder of Verse Wealth, about rethinking the traditional Statement of Advice (SOA) and building a more client-friendly, technology-enabled advice process. Corey shares how Verse Wealth replaced long written advice documents with a “video-first” approach, combining recorded client meetings with a concise visual Summary of Advice.
The conversation explores how the model improves compliance, dramatically reduces paraplanning time, and enhances the client experience. Corey also outlines the firm’s end-to-end advice process, the role of technology and AI in scaling advice delivery, and his vision for a Client Experience Manager (CXM) platform that brings the entire advice journey to life for clients.
LISTEN
SHOW NOTES
Topics Discussed
- Reinventing the traditional Statement of Advice using a video-first model
- Why long, compliance-driven advice documents harm the client experience
- Combining recorded meetings with concise written summaries to meet SOA requirements
- The operational impact of reducing advice documents from 80+ pages to ~20 pages
- How video SOAs improve compliance and reduce paraplanning workload
- Verse Wealth’s structured client journey from the intro meeting to advice delivery
- Integrating values, intentions, and financial well-being into the planning process
- Using technology and AI to streamline operations and reduce manual work
- Building a Client Experience Manager (CXM) to digitise the client relationship
- The future of advice firms combining strategy, coaching, and technology
Episode Highlights
(Timestamps are approximate)
- [00:00] – Introduction
Rob introduces Corey Wastle and his work pioneering video-first Statements of Advice. - [01:26] – About Verse Wealth
Corey shares the firm’s background, team structure, and core client segments. - [02:33] – The Origin of Video SOAs
How Verse Wealth began experimenting with video-first advice delivery. - [03:00] – The SOA Spectrum
Corey explains the range from traditional 80-page documents to fully video-based advice. - [04:49] – Creating the Summary of Advice
How Verse reduced documents from 15,000 words to around 3,500 words. - [06:15] – Why the Model Worked
Implementation proved smoother than expected with minimal iteration required. - [07:22] – Meeting Compliance Requirements
How recorded meetings and documentation combine to meet regulatory SOA criteria. - [11:24] – Delivering Advice Clearly in Conversation
The importance of strong verbal communication in advice delivery. - [12:19] – Using the Summary Document During Meetings
Advisors reference a visual advice document while walking clients through strategies. - [16:41] – Removing the Authority to Proceed
Capturing informed consent through recorded meetings instead of written signatures. - [17:59] – Recording Client Meetings
How Verse records both virtual and in-person advice meetings. - [21:55] – The SOA Digital Folder
Using SharePoint to house all advice materials, videos, and supporting documents. - [23:05] – Solving the Paraplanning Bottleneck
Advice preparation time reduced from eight hours to around two and a half hours. - [30:01] – Verse Wealth’s Client Journey
The three-meeting process: Intro Chat, My Best Life Session, and Advice Workshop. - [31:10] – Values, Intentions, and Financial Wellbeing
How Verse structures deeper conversations around client motivations. - [37:22] – Technology Stack
Salesforce, AI, and integrated systems supporting the advice process. - [41:42] – Introducing the CXM Concept
Corey’s vision for a Client Experience Manager platform. - [43:09] – Demonstrating the Value of Advice
Helping clients see the progress they’ve made over time. - [51:22] – Getting Better to Get Bigger
Corey shares Verse’s philosophy on growth and building a sustainable advice business.
Quotes from Corey Wastle
“The traditional advice document has been more compliance-led than client experience-led.”
“If you simply record your client meetings, you’re already most of the way toward meeting the SOA requirements.”
“We reduced the average advice document from about 15,000 words to around 3,500.”
“Clients don’t need an 80-page document to understand their advice. They need clarity and confidence.”
“How you feel about your money matters just as much as what the numbers say.”
“If we lined up three clients today and asked what we’ve done for them over ten years, they’d remember only a small fraction of it.”
“We’re focused on getting better in order to get bigger.”
Key Takeaways
- Verse Wealth pioneered a video-first advice model combining recorded meetings with a concise Summary of Advice.
- Traditional SOAs often exceed 80 pages and 15,000 words, which can overwhelm clients.
- The firm reduced written advice to ~20 pages and 3,500 words while improving clarity.
- Recorded meetings capture many compliance elements naturally during advisor conversations.
- The new process reduced paraplanning time from eight hours to about two and a half hours.
- Client consent can be captured through recorded meetings instead of written signatures.
- Verse’s advice process focuses on values, intentions, and financial wellbeing, not just strategy.
- Technology and AI play a key role in streamlining operations and improving efficiency.
- Corey is developing a Client Experience Manager (CXM) to digitise the client journey and evidence the value of advice.
- The firm prioritises building a better business before pursuing aggressive growth.
Resources & Links
- The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au/
- Verse Wealth: https://www.versewealth.com.au/
- Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
- Connect with Corey Wastle on LinkedIn
- Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast
TRANSCRIPT
Rob (00:01.985)
Welcome Corey Wastle to the Trusted Adviser podcast.
Corey (00:05.324)
Hello Rob, thank you for having me.
Rob (00:07.447)
Thank you for joining me, Corey. I heard you speak at the FAAA Congress in Perth, here in Perth, last year and you started in a unique fashion. You said to the audience, I’ve got two presentations here for you and ran a quick poll. Do you want to hear about my paper cuts approach to marginal gains, the Dave Brailsford approach to improving things in your business? Or do you want to hear about video SOAs? And you’d prepped thoroughly on the video SOA presentation, and you said that to the audience at the time, and everyone’s voted for paper cuts.
But I came away thinking I’d love to hear both. So now we’re get to hear a bit about the video essay presentation that you had prepared because I know you’ve been an advocate and an early adopter of this approach. And I’m very keen to learn for my own purposes for our business, but also for all our listeners because we know we’re sort of stuck in the mire a little bit with the DBFO changes and everyone’s expecting reforms here that are gonna make the process of delivering advice a lot more streamlined than the really structured way we have to do it now. But you’ve really not waited for that, you’ve just jumped in and made your process of delivering advice a lot more client-friendly, perhaps. But before we get into that in deep detail, for listeners who don’t know you Corey, or haven’t heard of Verse Wealth, tell us a bit about your firm, number of team members you have, and the ideal client. Who are you targeting out there?
Corey (01:26.74)
So we’ve got about 30 on the team, Rob. We founded the business in 2015. The majority of our clients fall into two buckets. They are either high-income professionals, 35, 55, making good money, want to plan, want their money working for them. And the other bucket would be more of the traditional financial planning client, the pre-retiree. You know, they reach out with some version of, hey, I want to be set up for retirement. I want to plan for retirement. I want to know that I can retire. And obviously, the advice isn’t all about retirement, but that is a centerpiece to the strategy. So they are the majority of the clients that we look after at this point in time.
Rob (02:02.605)
Okay, and so I reviewed an interview you did a couple of years ago. You’ve been a regular sort of guest on shows such as this. It was about simplifying the SOA and moving towards that video-first advice delivery. Looking back now, so let’s say we’re two years gone from that interview. How accurate was your thinking you think at the time, if you recall what that was and what’s changed, what assumptions from back then have proven to be either spot on or have needed to be changed from where you were two years ago to today?
Corey (02:33.262)
Yeah, so I mean, when we launched our version of video SOAs, Rob, it was, I think it was late 2022. So we’re kind of, we’re close to three and a half years into this being a really cool part of our client experience. And a few things here, just for a little bit of context before I answer the question more directly. When I say video SOAs, I use the term very loosely.
Rob (02:46.402)
Yeah.
Corey (03:01.794)
The way I think about this is it’s essentially a spectrum, and at one end of the spectrum, let’s call it the left end, you have a video SOA, i.e., there is no written advice document and you’re relying on the video, i.e., the recorded meeting, to meet all of the regulatory criteria for compliance statement of advice. You can do that. Anyone can do that if they choose to. At the other end of that spectrum, we have what I would call the traditional SLA, which is where we were only a few years ago, looking at our advice document, thinking this is a real anchor point in the quality of our client experience. It is 80 plus pages. is full of duplication, unnecessary tables, and complexity. And it really does a poor task of communicating what the client’s doing, why they’re doing it, and the impact on their life, which is essentially the purpose of the communication from the advisor to the client or to the client at the point of advice. And the document should be there to help facilitate that, but the document historically has been more of a compliance-led document than a client experience-led document. So, one end we got the traditional SOA, up the other end we’ve got this concept of a video SOA. When we decided to incorporate video into our statement of advice, it wasn’t about just getting rid of the document and just having a video, it was more so about working out on that spectrum, where do we sit? Right, how much of what we need to communicate from a regulatory standpoint and a client experience standpoint, how much of that do we want confined to a document and how much of that do we want to leave to the reported meeting? So, you know, in our case, we’re probably somewhere in the middle.
Corey (04:49.134)
Well, we still have an advice document. Call the document itself a summary of advice as opposed to a statement of advice. And I can talk more about the mechanics and how we kind of built the product around that. But we still have roughly a 20-page document of those 20 pages, about eight or nine are just full pictures. The word counts come down from 15,000 words on average to three and a half thousand, so about 80%. But there is still a written document we think is an important part of our client experience and where we want to give advice. So that’s the first thing. The second thing around, more directly around your question, and what has shifted. don’t know, mean, hopefully you’ve got a similar experience here in running your firm, but so many of the ideas that you bring to life through projects and initiatives, they really just don’t go to plan.
Rob (05:45.516)
Absolutely.
Corey (05:46.061)
You know, and part of the process isn’t about, the process isn’t really about having an idea, putting the plan in place, and then reaping all the benefits. It’s more iterative. You put something out into the world, you test it with your clients, your team, marketplace, whatever, and then you learn, and you iterate and iterate and evolve, and the piece of artwork ends up being something maybe even distinctly different from what you had in mind originally. In the case of video SOAs, again, a loose term,
Rob (05:57.121)
Yep.
Corey (06:15.424)
It really hasn’t shifted much for us. I think of all of the large-scale initiatives we’ve put into the business, this has actually worked better than any other, where it’s had the least amount of implementation friction, and we have made the least amount of iterations post launch because it really has worked really quite smoothly from a client experience point of view, from a team point of view, and it’s worked from a compliance point of view. So there have been no wholesale changes, Rob, in these three-plus years to the process that we launched.
Rob (06:51.178)
As you say. That’s a rarity in business. You’re always testing and improving. And so nothing ever stands still, but to effectively have nailed it quite well initially and not have to change it a great deal from the outset says you’ve really thought that through before you launched it. Let’s get into some of the details there, if that’s okay, Corey. So you talk about, you call it a summary of advice, not a statement of advice, but there’s a technicality there that advice has to be called a statement of advice. So where does that sit? Does it sit in the video or does that sit in a written version of advice in that summary?
Corey (07:22.904)
So if ASIC knocked on our door today, Rob, and said, Corey, where’s the statement of advice for David and Susie? We would point them to a SharePoint folder called David and Susie Statement of Advice. So one of the learnings that I had in hearing Ben Martian and Fraser Jack in 2022 talking about this on a podcast was that the statement of advice didn’t have to be a written document.
Rob (07:49.59)
Yeah.
Corey (07:50.575)
It just had to be a document. That document could be a PDF, could be a Word doc, could be a PowerPoint, it could be a video, it could be an animation, it could be a TV show, hypothetically, saved as an MOV file or something like that, provided it met the criteria of what must go in a statement of advice. So in our case, we have this SharePoint folder called David and Susie statement of advice, and within that folder, there are a few different documents that work together to be a compliance statement of the main two are what I just referred to before, which is the summary of advice. So this is our advice document, and it really communicates the things that we think a client would want documented in terms of their advice, the impact of their advice, the rationale behind it, the process that we’ve been through, and the like, and nothing more. So that’s a really client-friendly, elegant, visually beautiful document. That works hand in hand with the recorded meeting to meet the essential criteria of a compliance statement of advice. So the things that are documented in there, they have to be captured in the conversation, the record meeting between the client and the advisor. And really one of the epiphany moments for me going back these two years when we seeded the idea and started to bring it to life was that if you just hit record on your client meetings, you’re kind of 80 % of the way there. Because, you know, in terms of what’s gotta go in that statement of advice, it’s things like, one, it’s gotta be called statement of advice. Two, it’s gotta say who’s providing the advice. So, advise our firm, licensee. It’s gotta have the client’s goals. It’s gotta have the recommendations and the basis of the recommendations, fees and warnings, product replacement information. Like, that’s pretty much it, right?
Rob (09:22.721)
Yeah.
Corey (09:49.624)
The advisor sitting in the client meeting, let’s just say I’m advisor, Rob, and you’re my client, and I explained to you, hey Rob, one of my recommendations here is a catch-up concessional contribution of $22,000. Now, Rob, I’m recommending this contribution because you’ve got these goals of wanting to feel ready for retirement, and should you choose to post 60, be able to reduce your working hours or move completely into retirement. So this is moving you towards those goals. It’s also reducing your income tax quite substantially by X amount. And we’re recommending 22,000, because that brings you down to this particular marginal tax rate threshold, where this is kind of optimal for you this financial year, and it keeps you within the caps. Now, a few things to note here, Rob, is that once that contribution goes into the Superfund, you can’t get it straight back out. It’s now preserved, and we need to be in a condition of release. This is what conditions of release. So we can’t take that money out and redeploy it to other goals and intentions that you’ve got between now and then. So just in the space of like 60 seconds there, have like, I’ve already met like 70, 80 % of the regulatory criteria for a statement of advice. So if I just record that, I don’t actually have to rehash all that in written form and give that to the client. It actually becomes a choice. Do I want to rehash that in written form? And if so, what parts of that do I want to rehash in what form?
Rob (11:24.588)
Yeah. So do you feel that any people listening that are advising clients might feel some reluctance around being as articulate and comprehensive in their communication, you know, that you just exhibited there? Do you think they might be thinking, I don’t think I could be quite as comprehensive in my communication as that. And perhaps I’m using the written form as a substitute for not being able to cover things so well, the way Corey has explained. So, did you get any of your team thinking like that, or did they feel as though the summary was kind of their reference point? Because when people are presenting information, they’re often referring to something so they can remember what to say. So, is the summary of advice that you use, is that what they’re using as their reference point? And then the verbal communication of that is what really meets that SOA requirement as long as that meeting’s being recorded.
Corey (12:19.822)
Correct, yes. And that summary of advice document, you know, and I know that we’re not gonna have a visual component to this, Robert, while we’re here, I’ll just pull it up on our screen so you can eyeball it. That document is used, okay. So that document, the summary of advice document is used as the primary reference point in the meeting between client and advisor at the point of communicating the advice.
Rob (12:33.706)
I’ll share this bit visually, don’t worry. This will become part of our promo.
Corey (12:48.718)
And I say primary because it’s not the only visual reference point. So the advisor will have other things open. They might have Salesforce, our CRM, open. They might have the Australian Super Website and the Balance Fund open as an example because that is the current superannuation product they’re in, and we might be having a recommendation to move them to something else. And that something else might be up on the screen as well. But all of those things don’t necessarily have to be captured in detail in this particular document. We have an agenda for this particular meeting, and there is a criteria that needs to be met, i.e., the things that need to be said and covered in this meeting. The test really is when we get these files audited.
Rob (13:21.58)
Yeah. Sure.
Corey (13:41.455)
Could we do that externally, annually, for every year? And they’re looking at how compliant this particular process is and what we’re missing? And our compliance has improved over these three, three and a half years on the back of this particular process. So, you know, the document itself, Rob, in terms of like the content that we actually have in here, first things first, as you can see, it’s highly visual, you know, there’s a lot of pages that are just images. All these images are of real clients. On the front, you can see Patrick and Angela. You got the table of contents is in there. Who’s providing the advice? So this is an example of that question you ask yourself when you go through the process of building your own version of video SOAs: what do we want to have in the document? And what do we want to make sure that we consistently communicate verbally in the meeting to the client. So in this case, this page here of who’s providing this advice, there’s only about 25 words on this page. It’s got the advisor’s name, it’s got the name of the firm and the car number, and it’s got the licensee. N-I-S-L. So we don’t have to have that…
Rob (14:56.896)
Yeah, sure.
Corey (15:01.228)
… written down in this document. But if we didn’t, we would need to make sure that in every meeting, the advisor communicates like, this is me, I’m Ali Fordham, this is my AR number, I work for Verse 12, this is the car number, this is our licensee, this is the AFSL. We think that would be formulaic and that doesn’t enhance the client experience, but rather detracts from it. So in that case, we’ve just got it documented.
Rob (15:05.216)
Yep. Yeah.
Rob (15:23.818)
Yeah, totally makes sense. I don’t suppose that photo is in fact those people that you’re actually going to be, you don’t ask them to send a nice photo of themselves to put in their advice document, do you? That would have been like, wow, that’s next level. This is next level already, but that would have been amazing.
Corey (15:33.058)
We don’t know, but we have. Yeah, that would be operationally very cumbersome and quite expensive.
Rob (15:42.039)
Challenging. Yeah, no, it’s impressive. And you say, it’s clear, it’s easy to read. It actually almost reads like a website where it’s actually quite clean and easy to read with visuals. So I can see how that’s a much better client experience than a very text-laden advice document that people have to read, which they’ll struggle to get through and often wouldn’t even bother with. And look at the executive summary and really just take the word of their advisor and whatever they heard in the meeting as being the way in which they take that advice. So yeah, that’s impressive. We’ll certainly capture that piece and share the visual for people who are listening in and want to see what it looks like, that’ll appear on our LinkedIn page. So thanks for sharing it. So tell me, sorry.
Corey (16:23.864)
Thank you.
Rob (16:41.61)
Was just gonna add there, like now we’ve got the document in front of us. Just a few things to note here. Like this example, this page right here, help us help more people. You can leave a Google review directly from this page. This is essentially marketing promoting Google reviews. So you click that link and it will take you straight to our Google reviews. This page here, know, refer a friend and get a seriously awesome thank you gift. You know, we’ve built a digitized client referral program. We can introduce a friend in about 30 seconds, even less.
Corey (16:56.848)
And you just get there straight from your advice document. And you might know that there’s no authority to proceed to the next page in the document. So it’s not illegal. Exactly right, yeah. What you need from a regulatory standpoint is informed consent.
Rob (17:05.066)
Yeah, because the client’s giving verbal instruction.
Corey (17:14.624)
And if you get that verbally, where we go through the device, and I say, hey Rob, we’ve taken you through everything that you’re doing here, and why you’re doing it, hopefully that’s really clear. How are you feeling about that? Are you happy for us to move forward and begin to get these things in place? You say, yep, sounds good, Corey. There’s informed consent. We’ve captured that on video. We’ve got that on file. And we don’t need to send the document off and wait for it to be signed. We can actually get to implementation the same day.
Rob (17:42.477)
So let’s be very clear here, when you say video SOA, are you recording audio only in the meeting, or do you have literally a camera set up in your meeting rooms, videoing the clients, and they’re on screen, and therefore you can capture their consent, not just audibly, but actually can see their body language.
Corey (17:59.447)
Yeah, so we have a visual component to every client meeting. So firstly, every client meeting is recorded, whether on Microsoft Teams or in person. About 85 % of the meetings at Versa on Microsoft Teams. So we would be recording both the advisor and the client and the screen. That’s all very easy. We all know what that looks like. It gets a little different and a little more complicated when it’s in person. So what the advisor will do is they will still have Microsoft Teams running.
Rob (18:15.82)
Yes.
Corey (18:29.43)
At the meeting, they will say, hey, we’ve got David and Susie here today. They’ll turn the camera, like physically turn their laptop to point the camera at David and Susie, and David and Susie will say, hey, yep, that’s us. We’ve acknowledged that that’s who’s in the room. And then the camera will typically face.
Rob (18:44.929)
Yep.
Corey (18:48.876)
The advisor and the advisor will be sharing their screen as well in the meeting room, and that’s getting captured through Microsoft Teams. So in that case, you get a little less of the client’s visual, but it is still recorded, and you have the full audio, of course.
Rob (19:06.838)
Sure, yeah. And was that always the way for you at Vers Wealth, Corey? Were you always pretty much online, advice delivery, virtual? Because obviously, you know, we all had an experience of that with COVID here, but were you always set up that way?
Corey (19:21.454)
Pre-COVID, we were already doing, probably anecdotally, Rob, maybe three-quarters of our meetings online. More of the meetings that are done in person for new clients, they’re doing that relationship with the advisor with first, we’re having more of those life values-based conversations in person together. But when COVID hit, we were already set up to deliver the experience online. And of course, a few more people opted to engage online during and post-COVID.
Rob (19:54.52)
Yeah, for sure, no. You would have made a nice transition for other firms who might have been struggling with that change, but you were already there, which is terrific. Tell me a bit about this digital folder structure you describe that covers the SOA. You’ve covered the fact that SharePoint becomes effectively that SOA, a place where it sits, and it’s a combination of things that sits inside that folder, but anyone that’s looking from a compliance standpoint can go to that folder, the David and Susie SOA folder, and that contains which parts of that model remain core today? I suppose, actually, let’s park that question because I kind of think you’ve covered it pretty well.
Corey (20:38.732)
Yeah, well, maybe just to add a couple of items to that, Rob. So there is a summary of advice in that Fairpoint folder, along with the recorded meeting. And again, that folder is called David and Susie statement of advice. We also add a few other things to that folder, not from a compliance standpoint, but from a client experience standpoint. So in there, we will put PDSs, not because we have to, but just because it makes sense to put all these things in one place for the client. With the modeling and projections show. We will typically record a video, the associate will for the client, walking them through what those projections look like, how on track or off track they are based on their goals, and what we call intentions, what their financial future might be looking like based on these assumptions. And that video gets dropped into that folder as well. So they can watch that before the meeting, after the meeting, it’s ever accessible to them. We also dropped in there the slides from the session, and anything else that we think might be helpful for that particular client. Maybe there was a bunch of investment research done for a particular client that makes sense to drop in there. Again, just for convenience from a client experience point of view, we’ve got the ability to drop those things in there if we want to.
Rob (21:55.15)
Yeah, so given that everyone else who hasn’t maybe gone as forward thinking and progressive as you have, do you think your process will change very much on the back of DBFO reforms? Do you think you really kind of just stepped ahead of that? What if anything? I mean, we don’t know what the forms will finally look like, but assuming that there’s some move away from the very structured way advice has to be conceivably created now, do you think your process will change very much if those reforms come through?
Corey (22:24.718)
Well, we need to see what they look like when they do come through. So, not really. I haven’t given a lot of bandwidth, to be honest. Rob, we’ll see how that plays out. And once we have clarity on it, we’ll deal with that. And part of the reason I haven’t given that a lot of air time in my own mind is this isn’t really a problem for us to solve in the business anymore.
Rob (22:26.573)
Sure. But do you get a sense of that?
Corey (22:48.14)
Not only have we solved the problem of having an advice document that we really didn’t want to give to clients, we wanted to shield them from it, but also we’ve solved the operational paraplaning problem as well. We’ve gone from an advice document taking on average eight hours for a paraplanter to prepare to two and a half hours.
Rob (23:05.515)
Yeah.
Corey (23:05.88)
So, you know, we’ve got plenty of challenges to focus on solving, to get our time and energy. And at this point in time, you know, this isn’t one of them. Will we make it better at a point in time in the future? Of course, we will. Will that incoming legislation perhaps give us a better environment to be more aggressive about innovating and focusing even harder on the client experience? I hope so. But we haven’t, we don’t have any pre-planning around that.
Rob (23:33.365)
No, sure. So then, tell me a bit about the details around that you say you’ve solved the power planning problem. And that’s for many businesses, that is a number one issue for them in terms of capacity constraint there. So the summary of advice is being prepared by an associate with the advisor, or is it still a power plan and doing that summary work? How is that process undertaken in your business? Because we know the video components obviously the advisor in the room and having their recording capture some elements of the SOA effectively that go into your SharePoint folder. But who’s doing that front-end summary piece?
Corey (24:07.768)
Yeah, so operationally this looks very similar to most firms, i.e., advisor meets with client, associate may or may not be present in those meetings and conversations. Client agrees to get advice, we need to put the initial advice together. The putting of that advice and those strategies together is largely done by the associate with the guidance and support and direction of their advisor. It is the associate’s responsibility to put that advice strategy together and send that to paraplanning. Paraplanning will then prepare the summary of advice, typically quite quickly. They will send that back to the associate, saying, hey, it’s done. I think it’s ready to give to the client. The associate will check it, if there’s any back and forth between the associate that will happen to make sure that it is as it should be, and then it gets given to the advisor to take the client through the meeting.
Rob (25:00.833)
Yeah. Who’s doing the wealth solver, product comparisons and the XTools Plus cache modeling or whatever software you use for cache flow modeling? Who’s doing that? Be it the Paraplane or the Associate?
Corey (25:12.59)
The associate is doing the modeling and the cash flow planning, and they are giving all of that to the paraplanner. So the way we have built the paraplanner role is we’ve built the paraplanner role based really on inputs and outputs. It is not a role adverse that requires a high degree of expertise and financial planning knowledge. We have tried to construct it so that as the paraplanner you get essentially everything you need to be able to take the data and the information and put that into the advice document with some work around and then get that back to get that back to the associate. So we’re not relying on the power plan in any meaningful way to influence or curb the advice.
Rob (26:00.907)
And do you have in-house team doing that paraplaning component or do you have offshore team supporting you?
Corey (26:06.136)
Well, they’re in-house in the sense that they’re versed teammates, but that power planning component work is done in the Philippines.
Rob (26:12.33)
Yeah, okay. So they’re on your team, but they’re actually from the Philippines. Terrific. So do you have any tracking? This might be a bit of a challenge because it just occurs to me that do you track the way in which people digest that video or that audio at the end of the process? I mean, you’ve had a good conversation. They might be able to then go back and re-listen to what you’ve recorded. They’ve got access to their own digital SOA folder. Do you get to see whether they’re doing a full rewatch or they’re skipping or sharing information or do you not track that? You’ve covered off your obligation, you’ve had the conversation. Most people would be much like this. They’ve had the conversation, they’ve understood what’s required, they’ve got the summary there as a reference point. They’re not having to go back and rewatch things to listen again, I guess.
Corey (27:00.792)
Yeah. Your instincts are right there, Rob. Firstly, we’re not surveying in any structured way the clients to see how they’re engaging with the recordings post the meeting. My sense is very little, if at all. We’re not getting any anecdotes from clients saying, I went back, and I’ve rewatched the whole meeting, and now that I’ve watched it, I’ve got these other questions that is just not feedback that we have gotten along the way. think most of the, I think back to more of the traditional SOA that we had, post giving the advice to the client and taking them through it you would often get a number of questions from the client a few days later, a couple of weeks later, because what they would do is they would see the advice document and its length and complexity. It feels naturally little overwhelming, and you have this kind of default tendency to go, actually, I want some clean air to read through that properly, to digest it before I sign off on it. And because it is so long and convoluted, naturally there’s a lot of questions that you would often get. All advisors know that experience of getting that email from your client, hey, Rob, loved our meeting last week, we’ve taken the time to read through your statement of advice, we’ve just got these 27 questions, and the response might take about four hours to answer them all. Typically, you’ll get them back in for another meeting. That is, it’s that bit that we have really largely absolved ourselves of because they get the advice document and it isn’t long and it isn’t convoluted and it isn’t full of jargon and duplication. So because it doesn’t have those traits, it just instills people with a sense of clarity and confidence. So, yeah, cool, I get it, this makes sense. It’s kind of what we expected. Great, it was communicated really well. Let’s just keep moving.
Rob (29:07.338)
Yeah, that’s terrific. It’s a point that everyone who listens to this would relate to subsequent questions when there’s a lot of stuff to wade through, and some people will wade through it and come back with a litany of questions. I want to talk about your technology stack, because I know you’re very progressive in the way you build out your processes and use technology to support that. I listened to your episode with Peter Wallen the other day, which I thought was really interesting. We’ll talk to that. But I just want to come back a step, just to the sequence of events when a client does engage with you. So at what point are they getting some idea of the kinds of things that you’re gonna be covering in the advice? Do you have a kind of a strategy meeting at some point before that final? Okay, let’s record this and capture it for the purpose of being the SOA with the summary of advice attached. So, can you just walk us through that sort of, is it a one, two, three meeting process or is it, how does that work?
Corey (30:01.742)
So the first thing that happens is they book in via our website. They book in what we call an intro chat. It’s free, it’s 30 minutes, it’s on Microsoft Teams, and it is run either by an associate or by an advisor. Very quickly, that meeting is split into two 15-minute buckets. The first 15 minutes is, hey Rob, thanks for reaching out. Tell me bit more about why you’ve reached out. What are these primary motivations? What are the primary challenges that you’re dealing with? And that conversation really is designed to help the clients feel understood food, and to really it’s really about problem definition more than it is about goals and aspirations right we just there it is
Rob (30:37.644)
Is there a pre-screening process before that, Corey? Yeah.
Corey (30:40.226)
There is a complete online questionnaire via a type form that we call a financial life snapshot. And we use that to filter people in or out of that intro chat as well. We’ve been getting hundreds of leads a month for a number of years, which sounds fantastic and it is, but it also creates its own operational challenges too. So we’ve consistently tried to iterate and operationalize that volume of leads in this volume of intro chat. We understand why they’ve reached out.
Rob (30:49.868)
Sure. Yep.
Corey (31:10.23)
Feeling understood and if we can help them we’ll say hey look we can really help are you happy for us to talk you through how we do things here at Verse and the process and what to expect and so it’s some great expectations for you before you dive into the more formal part of the process and that’s where we’ll talk about our purpose our process what the meetings look like what we go through and why the services some loose expectations around fees and provided we’re all aligned and they’re feeling confident, we’ll book them in for two meetings with a financial advisor and they’ll pay a small fee to cover the cost of those two meetings. It’s a loss leader. It’s designed to get commitment from the client as opposed to being a profit-curing exercise. The first of those two meetings has caught my best life session. We’re not talking about advice strategies, really their money at all. We’re talking about them really intimately. So the framework we’ve built, which is digitized, client leads, so the advisor leads the client through three conversations. Firstly, their values. Secondly, their intentions. Thirdly, their financial well-being. So the values are what’s most important to them in their life, and at the end of the day, whether they realize it or not, this is what the money is actually for. And we say to clients, you might be making great money, saving plenty of money, doing well financially, be really well off, but if your choices aren’t leading to contentment and satisfaction for you, you’re not making the right choices. If you’re not making the right choices, we’re probably not giving you the right advice. That’s why we start with your values. So it might be family, health and wellbeing, and freedom or security, adventure, community. And that just becomes a reference point for important trade-off decisions through the planning process. But also beyond that, it’s not just for the advice, it’s actually for the client and them and their life. And to give them more clarity around what matters in their life and how should they orient big important decisions in their life, so that we get their values, then we get their intentions, you might call them goals. Things they’re planning to do or achieve, they wanna travel, they wanna retire, they wanna sell the business, they wanna work less, they wanna have kids, all these things. They are the things we strategize around, plan around, and model out. And voyant is what we use for the modeling. French well-being is how you feel about your money. They answer a 27-question quiz, which takes on average four minutes to complete, and it gives us this really rich insight into how does someone feel about different aspects of their financial life. So it’s questions like, Rob, how do you feel about how you currently spend money? You might answer that as great or okay, not great. Rob, how aligned do you feel with your spouse around your money? And this enables the advisor to not just be a strategist, but to be a coach and to help people shift perspectives and behaviors and to bring couples together on the journey together. Not just in terms of like what’s happening with the money, but emotionally as well. So that happens in the My Best Life session, and then we have a workshop session. And this is kind of the first point in the process where we kind of put the advisor hat on and say, all right.
Rob (34:05.174)
Yeah.
Corey (34:15.086)
Clients, David, Susie, we’ve really got to know you guys, what’s important to you, what you’re trying to achieve, how you’re feeling about your financial life. We’ve got all your resources now. Now, what we’re gonna do in this workshop is we’re gonna paint a picture of how we see you at this point moving forward financially. What are the things that need to be prioritized? What kind of advice? Are we gonna give you? How are we gonna sequence that? And we’re gonna dive into some of these topics and strategies to give you a sense for them and some education around them. So you’ve got a healthy level of clarity around what kind of advice you’re gonna get and what we’re gonna be focusing on. And in that meeting, they get a client agreement at the end of the digital document. They can sign it in there or after. Once they sign it, that’s when we move into the advice production part of the process.
Rob (35:01.418)
Right, so the, as you say, the loss leader at the front end, you’ve covered those two meetings, the My Best Life meeting and the strategy meeting, with effectively a fairly nominal upfront cost to sort of connect them to the process and make sure they’re committed, but really only at the point of that end of that second workshop.
Corey (35:10.562)
Yeah.
Rob (35:21.612)
Well, you’ve done a bit of strategising. Are they committing to having you then prepare the advice more thoroughly? And the final meeting then is the one we record it and it goes into their SOA folder.
Corey (35:32.014)
Correct, yeah. And that final meeting, as you referred to it, it’s in some ways an extension of the workshop. It’s not taking the workshop, but rather than being more general and conceptual and saying, here’s exactly what we’re doing. Remember we spoke about this concept around concessional contributions? Well, here’s what we’re doing with that in mind and why we’re doing it. Here’s it all documented for you. So you’re kind of filling in some of the gaps.
Rob (35:59.147)
Yeah, no, in fact, the point you’re making about tracking people’s wellbeing as well over, know, getting them to assess that is something that we’ve adopted as well a number of years ago for the same reason you have, which is to find how they feel about their finances, not just about what looks on the balance sheet, on the household balance sheet. So yeah, I can totally relate to that. And it’s a meaningful part of what we do. We know the clients stick around for that. It’s the bit that they kind of talk about when you say, what are we doing that’s of most value to them? It’s all qualitative. It’s all about peace of mind, confidence, feel like I’ve got a plan, and we want to track that feeling because that’s something that matters a lot to our clients, as we know. Tell us, yeah.
Corey (36:32.962)
Master, master, master everyone. How you feel about these things, you carry them every day.
Rob (36:39.092)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it’s the greatest value we offer. And people don’t start coming to an advisor for that reason. They think they’re coming for a logical reason about saving tax and getting their affairs in order financially. And they do come for that reason. There’s a logical reason, but they stick around for that more qualitative experience. And we know that firsthand as you do. So tell us about your technology stack. Tell us a bit about what you’ve talked about, Voiant being the modeling software. What component technology do you have that’s kind of making this process work? Obviously, you are recording, I’m sure you’re doing file notes electronically now with AI and so on. So just give us a bit of a laundry list of the things you’re using that actually make this work so seamlessly for you.
Corey (37:22.734)
Salesforce is the serum. Having said that.
Rob (37:27.34)
So it’s a Salesforce FSC straight off the shelf from Salesforce and you’ve customised that with a developer support.
Corey (37:33.633)
It’s Salesforce FSC with Wealth Connect over the top, which was the CreativeMass product. CreativeMass was bought out by GBST a couple of years ago. So we are actually in the process of re-engineering our tech ecosystem because in a lot of ways we’ve kind of outgrown our tech infrastructure.
Rob (37:41.504)
That’s right.
Corey (37:59.315)
We’ve had five years of really solid, consistent growth. And we have in the last two months, slowed that growth down so we can better operationalize the business. And that starts with what we refer to as data and tech. So being able to centralize our data into one spot, to clean it, and to organize it. And at the same time, look at the ecosystem of tech tools we have and find the tools that enable us to remove manual entry enabling tools to more conveniently speak to each other, a little bit of integration to enable us to better leverage AI. Both within the Salesforce environment, in the Microsoft environment, and a lot of that comes back to how do you manage data? Is your data spread out across a bunch of tools, or is it clean, organized, and centralized in one spot? If it’s the latter, things get quite easy from that standpoint. So I was on that podcast with Peter Warnum and Fennura recently, because we’ve been working with them for the last six to seven months, and they have supported us in building a tech roadmap, and we are now in the early amounts of implementing that roadmap and part of that involves moving off this Wealth Connect version of Salesforce into Salesforce FSC and then doing some of our own customisation on top of that. So we’re actually, we might even be only days away from choosing a Salesforce implementation partner to help us with that build, which is a pretty big job. And it’s been a job to work out who that implementation partner is, to scope it appropriately, and the like. So, you know, these are all things that are in front of us
Rob (39:40.075)
Yeah.
Corey (39:51.617)
Over the next 12 to 18 months. And part of that tech roadmap is to build our own software, which is to build what we call our own CXM. So we have coined the term CXM for the advice industry. I’m not sure they know that yet. Hopefully, over time, they do if we’re successful, but CXM stands for client experience manager, which is a of a variant on CRM. And this is a digital home for the client experience. So this is designed to be software that brings their financial life to life outside of their meetings and their typical interactions with Verse. So they can engage with their values, their financial wellbeing, their intentions, what they’ve achieved, how on track they are, how off track, what their finances look like, what their portfolio looks like, their progress, the kind of advice they’ve been getting, what they need to do, i.e. action items, what we’re doing for them when that next meeting happening really is a digital home for the client experience outside of the meetings but also in the meetings it is a place to collaborate between the advisor and the client and it is our hope if executed well the the CXM will also enable us to not only elevate the client experience but also really evidence the value of advice. I mean, you guys have run a successful firm for very long period of time. If we lined up three of your clients today and said, hey, what’s everything Rob and the team have done for you guys over time? You would know, but they probably can recall 5 % of the things that you’ve done and that they’ve achieved. You might be able to reel off 15 goals, but they come up with three and they’re probably three that have happened in the last 12, 18 months. So clients naturally are in this state of, all right, well, what’s next?
Rob (41:28.001)
Yeah, sure.
Corey (41:42.433)
And what have you done for me lately, and can be a little oblivious to the actual long-term impact and transformation that has taken place over a long period of time. So this will help evidence that value, which makes advisor life easier as well in communicating that value. So, an example of that Rob would be we capture intentions for clients, i.e., goals, and though they have no more than five at any one moment in time, let’s call it five. Those five are on the CXM. They can see that it’s travel, and here’s what the travel looks like, and here’s that one track they are as an example. But they can also click a button that says achieved, and it will show them every attention they have achieved since they started working with Verse.
Rob (42:26.539)
Yeah.
Corey (42:27.026)
If they have been with us for 10 years, there literally might be 25 intentions on that list and they will be able to eyeball all these things and it will help them recall these things. hang on, that’s right. Honey, when we started with Burst, we never even had an emergency fund. Remember that?
Rob (42:43.244)
Yeah.
Corey (42:44.844)
Yet we had credit card debt. I had completely forgotten about that. That Europe trip, yeah, we’d wanted to go to Europe for 15 years, but we never felt like we could. We did that. These things are long forgotten about. Same with the advice, the strategies, the value, all these things. This will become essentially like a storyboard of your experience with this as well to help evidence the value of VR, the relationship, and the advice.
Rob (43:09.364)
Yeah, I love it. I love the idea of the CXM and digitizing that because we capture that currently in what we call our progress update report, but capture every goal they set, every bit of advice we gave that relates to those goals. And we have the history like you described, not in digital form though. I mean, it’s really capturing it and being able to record it over time. It’s that periodical change of goals and capturing all the history to be able to give them that experience. And people, all as human beings want to feel a sense of progress and being able to reflect upon both the balance sheet progress they’re making, but also the goals they set and what’s been achieved. What a wonderful way of kind of, as you say, reinforcing the value of advice delivered.
Corey (43:45.881)
Yeah, definitely. Because it is both the quantitative and the qualitative, as I would say, the intangibles and the tangibles. So it evidences both of those. Based on different personalities and characteristics, some people weight value more so to the intangibles, some also weight it to the tangibles. And it gives them a healthy dose of both of those. Rob, I’m not sure whether you’ve had a play around with any of this AI software creation tools. Lovable is the one that we’ve used to build a prototype. Because we’ve built a full scale prototype of the CXM. It really has blown my mind what you can do with AI. How quickly?
Rob (44:29.995)
Yeah.
Corey (44:32.418)
Without any experience, you can begin to build software. At the very least, build the front-facing UX, user experience. Joining all of the pipes from a data and security point of view at the backend is where the complexity and risk are. But there is so much you can do with tools like Lovable at this point in time. And when you start playing with it and learning, it naturally sparks ideas around, actually, hang on, we could…
Rob (44:38.892)
Yes.
Corey (45:01.274)
In terms of working out how to navigate a cashless scenario like this for a client or employee share scheme, we could just build our own software. We could just build our own tool for this. And it literally might take you two hours to build your own tool, just with AI prompts.
Rob (45:15.777)
Yeah, you sit there and literally… I haven’t tried them, but I’ve heard of and Replet is the other one that kind of gets a lot of publicity as well. Just sitting there and actually verbalizing your requirements and telling the software what it’s telling the tool, what it is that you want to create. And I’ve heard similar experiences, people have done exactly what you’ve done there, Corey, and actually just been able to quickly mock up a version of what they’re trying to build. And then as you say, there’s bits to go behind that around the security of the infrastructure and the integrations and so on. But you know, you’re working with Peter obviously at FNURA, you know, a terrific guy, domain level experience and understanding, which is great, not just coming from outside the industry, but really understands our business model. You said Salesforce FSC is kind of the engine, has been the engine. It will continue to be Salesforce FSC beyond. So you’ll move away from the Wealth Connect version that you’ve kind of been carrying from the Creative Mass days. And… Is it a Salesforce application that does that sort portal experience? Are you using the natives portal experience that works with Salesforce? Because Salesforce is a platform you can plug almost anything into. How do you see that working in the actual client engagement piece?
Corey (46:29.39)
So the short answer to that is we’re not quite sure yet. We haven’t chosen the software in which we’re gonna build the CXN. Lovable is great for quick prototyping. And we’ve got a really solid prototype to build from. However, we haven’t determined what is the software that we’re actually going to build this product on. I think it’s unlikely at this point, at least from what I know, which isn’t a deep level of knowledge here, Rob, I don’t think it’s going to be built within the Salesforce environment. It will sit outside the Salesforce environment, but the data will need communicate really consistently and conveniently with cell phone.
Rob (47:13.165)
How do you feel about building something that is proprietary? Are you kind of contemplating that in the process of thinking about how you’ll build this to say, want to have something that is built for purpose, like fit for purpose, a CXM that is a unique sort of proposition. No one’s done that to my knowledge either. How will you think about that in context of thinking, if we’re trying to integrate with other firms in future, if we do acquisitions or do you think about it, is that a consideration for you, Corey, thinking about how do we make sure we don’t go so far off the reservation here that we’re creating something that is so unique and different that it doesn’t now represent what the industry looks like? Is that a concern, knowing that as people join you, they’re going to come with their own level of experience, they’re going to go, well, this is different, I’ve never seen this before, and having to kind of retrain them with what you’ve done? Or is that not really a factor if you think it’s going to be this good? What we’re creating, it is kind of new turf and therefore we think people are going to follow this direction we’re taking anyway so we’re happy to be the first movers here.
Corey (48:18.082)
I think that’s a good question. However, I don’t put a lot of value on the thinking or the approach. Our thinking is based on how do we deliver the best client experience we possibly can for verse clients and how do we create the best team experience we can. And we view the CXM as really elevating both of those two things. And in terms of, you know, people coming into birth as teammates and needing to relearn things and retrain things, then any good tech is actually really simple it’s fully in those types of stuff. You know, we’ve given the prototype to the entire company and given them a framework for feedback. Instead of giving us all the feedback, you know, what do you love? What do you not love? What would you add? What’s missing, et cetera. And we’ve incorporated that into the, into the prototype. So I don’t have any reservations about this tool being easy to use. If it’s not easy to use, we’ve failed.
Rob (49:19.99)
Yeah, sure.
Corey (49:20.972)
One of our principles around our tech is around simplicity. It’s one of the values of the business, make it simple. If you can’t walk in on day one adverse with no training at all and navigate your way around the CXM, then it’s too complicated. And it’s the same from a client perspective as well. So we’re not trying to lead, we’re not trying to forge a path that others will follow. We’re just trying to build the best business we can and give people the very best client experience we can and we’re following our own nose.
Rob (49:55.182)
I love that framing as you say, it just gives you that constant North Star to say if it’s making it better for the client then we’re all for it and that’s really what we’re guided by not by what the industry is doing or what people are saying from externally but we just, it’s not, it cuts through the noise really fast doesn’t it? It’s about just saying where the tune is for us is about what gives the client a better experience. How do we make our lives efficiently able to deliver a great client experience and so I love that framing, it makes a lot of sense to me. So let’s roll forward then. Let’s go a couple of years from now, you are in the process of sort of done the wireframe, you’ve got the UI sort of shaped. Finura sounds like they’re a key partner for you in terms of helping to determine how you go and build this CXM. What does Verswoth look like in two years from now if you were looking at the crystal ball.
Corey (50:53.12)
That look like in two years. I don’t think we are substantially bigger than we are at this point in time. We will have a slightly larger team, but the reason I say that is our focus at the moment is on getting better to get bigger. We’ve got hopefully many decades in front of us and we’re trying to build the very best business we can and building the very best business we can typically doesn’t mean building it as fast as we possibly can.
Rob (51:21.133)
Yeah.
Corey (51:22.452)
So growth is hard, as you know, and it creates so many challenges. It’s also the fun part. But in our case, we’ve got to make sure that as we grow, we protect the client experience and we protect the culture and the people. And we will only grow to the extent that we can continue to do both of those things. So this tech transformation is a big part of setting us up for the next five years of growth beyond that. So we fast forward two years, we’ll all be different. We will have our CXM which hopefully will have really elevated the client experience. We will have a much improved yet still very much imperfect tech stack and tech ecosystem with a much more functional serum. We will be leveraging AI really consistently in every role across business. Certainly think that will be one of the dramatic shifts over the next two years is how integrated is AI into almost everything that we do. We will have agents deployed in Salesforce. We have built many agents across the Microsoft environment as well.
Rob (52:35.883)
Yeah, sure.
Corey (52:47.15)
We will build a more robust leadership executive team as well where we’re in the process of looking to appoint a CTO that will internally lead the tech strategy and development including the product development of the Cenextent. And it’s my intent that we have continued to build our brand in the marketplace, both in the industry but with consumers as well. we get consistently get better and better at attracting people that want advice and need help and attracting the best talent the industry has to offer. I know that’s probably a pretty vague answer, Rob.
Rob (53:26.469)
It’s not it’s a thoughtful answer because I can tell by the way you looked up, you know and people thinking they’re looking up and thinking about what looks like and it was actually a really thoughtful answer and it’s a it is a compelling proposition that you’re you’re describing and I Just want to say I really like the point you’ve made there and I want to restate it You said we want to get better to get bigger It’s not about getting bigger first and I think there’s a real temptation to get bigger without focusing on getting better and as you say, other, the better bit should precede the bigger piece because I just interviewed Alexander Kitchen and he’s on an episode, the episode just prior to this one. He won the IFA Excellence Award in 2025 and he spoke of this building a great engine. He said, many people are focused on polishing the car. He said, we’re focused on building a great engine before we worry about putting polish on the vehicle. And I thought. It’s a very similar concept to what you’ve just described, Corey, which is we want to build a great engine. We want to actually be better first and always looking to be better before we worry about getting bigger that goes with that. it’s building a platform for growth as opposed to just focusing on the growth piece first. So I applaud you for what you’ve done. I actually got a great deal out of this episode. get a lot of episodes, but for me and our business. This is one of the most insightful conversations I have had about the specifics of how to deliver advice very operationally. I’ll be saying to all of my team, have a listen to this one. They listen to a lot of them, but this one is one they need to listen to, Corey. So I want to thank you again for joining me today on the Trusted Adviser Podcast.
Corey (55:06.978)
That was very kind of you, Rob, and I appreciate you having me on.
Rob (55:10.445)
Thanks again Corey, appreciate it.