New whitepaper: The future of technology and data in enabling advice

Download whitepaper now.

Financial advice is a service valued by many Australians, and while many more are interested in seeking advice, it is currently not accessible to all. One of the main reasons for this is many Australians find the cost of advice prohibitive.

A major contributor to the cost of advice is the cost of compliance and the complexity associated with delivering the core functions of running an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) – such as governance, revenue processing and the management of fee disclosure statements.

HUB24 believes it has a role to play in addressing this challenge by developing solutions that help licensees be cost effective and to meet their compliance obligations.

To do this, HUB24 has been working closely with a number of forward-thinking advice collectives in Australia. They have confirmed the considerable and increasing cost and effort that goes into core licensee functions, additionally the time and development resources needed to solve this problem which erodes their capacity to focus on other areas such as assisting practices to grow and to be more profitable.

This white paper covers the following sections:

• Advice front and centre: We explore the growing demand and crucial role of financial advisers in helping Australians looking to meet their financial goals.
• Mind the gap: Historically, it has been large institutions such as banks who have provided advisers with support and delivered core functions such as governance, compliance, and revenue processing. The true costs of these functions were hidden and cross-subsidised by product margin. However, recently we’ve seen advisers shift toward boutique and mid-tier licensees. There’s now a ‘gap’ between how costs were historically managed and the new reality. Advisers and licensees are also looking to pioneer new solutions for compliance monitoring and supervision.
• Challenges for licensees and advisers: Last year, HUB24 worked with several forward-thinking advice collectives to get their input on using data to solve advice challenges. This segment of the report outlines feedback from advisers on:
  • The onerous process of gathering and managing data required to meet compliance requirements,
  • Costs of monitoring advice, governance, risk, compliance, reporting of Key Risk Indicators (KPIs) and auditing,
  • Need for consistent compliance solutions and collaboration across the industry,
  • Access to quality data,
  • Finding ways to deal with unstructured data, and
  • Digitation of advice practices.
• Stepping up to the plate: How is HUB24 preparing to integrate and interpret data and to help enable more accessible financial advice? This section also outlines some innovative technology solutions and insights from a licensee’s perspective.
• The future state:  The next five years will continue to see massive reorganisation of the pieces of the puzzle that make up the Australian financial services industry. How might the industry evolve?

 Download whitepaper now.