Julio Cagigas sits down for a chat with David McLean, former professional football player and tech savvy financial adviser. David has effectively harnessed technology to build a successful business, long before COVID forced us to. In this podcast, David shares some of his favourite technology platforms and how he’s implemented them to efficiently and effectively service his clients – both nationally and internationally.
Julio Cagigas:
Good afternoon everyone. My name is Julio Cagigas and I'm the New South Wales/ACT state manager here at MetLife. Today I'd like to introduce you to David McLean. David is an ex professional rugby league player that started working in the financial services over 16 years ago. Four years after starting in the industry, David opened his own practice, Titan Financial Planning, which has been running ever since.
Julio Cagigas:
Over the last 12 years, David has grown the practice organically and now employs another five people into the business. David, welcome along.
David McLean:
G'Day Julio. How are you?
Julio Cagigas:
Good mate, good, good. Thanks for joining us. Dave, just to start off, can you tell us a bit about how you started in the business and what your practice looks like at the moment?
David McLean:
Yeah look, absolutely. Julio, I think if it gets a little bit noisy, it's because I'm in my COVID office at the moment. The neighbours decided to chop down some trees which is perfect timing, right? Yeah, we kicked off our business or our little Titan Group in 2004, starting with a mortgage business. Originally we were in a joint venture with a sports management business named Titan Management. We've since bought those guys out.
David McLean:
We kicked off our financial planning business in 2008. Like you said, we've grown it organically ever since. I've got five staff members on the financial planning side of the business and there's three on the mortgage side of the business. We've got a little bit of niche still with the professional athletes and sporting guys, so that's a little bit of a niche that we've had since we've kicked off the business. And yeah, outside of that, majority of our business now is centred around some cumulators.
David McLean:
We've got a really young client base. The average age of our client's about 39. Typically speaking, young families, usually middle management or trades. Mom and dad with two kids type of thing, and have a need for holistic advice which is what we provide, so everything from cash flow management to risk advice, wealth creation, the whole box and dice. That's a little bit about a bit of a top-down view as to how our business is now.
Julio Cagigas:
David, just talking to you in the past, I know that you've got clients pretty much all around the country. In the past, I know that you've had offices around the country as well and I believe you still have three offices, three office locations at the moment. Can you tell me a little bit about how you deal with interstate clients?
David McLean:
Yeah, absolutely. We've now got two permanent offices. One of the Central Coast of New South Wales in Erina, which is nice and handy to where I live in Terrigal, and another office down in Norwest, which is in the North West part of Sydney, in Baulkham Hills. We had a permanent head office in Darwin. That's geographically convenient, right?
David McLean:
And we probably let go of that permanent space up there three years ago now. The reason for that is we found through the use of technology that we were just able to deliver the same sort of service and not be up there as often. We use a casually let office space now through Regis up there in the Paspaley building up in Darwin's CBD, and we fly up there probably around six times a year now. Five or six times a year, and spend four to five days there at a time, just using the casually let office up there. Technology has played a huge part in us being able to service our clients.
David McLean:
We've got clients all over the country. Well, in a lot of the world these days, in terms of expats, particularly athlete playing sport in England and France and things like that. I mean, we had to embrace technology pretty quickly if we're going to service all of those clients. Obviously it'd be difficult if you're servicing clients geographically all over Australia, the world, if you're not embracing technology. Zoom, we've been using for four or five years now, to conduct meeting. Before this whole pandemic, if you said that you were going to set up a Zoom meeting with someone, most of your clients would turn around and say, "Excuse me? What is Zoom?"
David McLean:
Now it's the new Google, right? Everyone's Zooming everyone now, so it's become part of the vernacular almost. Zoom has been a really important part of our business and will continue to be an important part of the business obviously. Even before COVID took place, we were doing around 70% of our meetings on Zoom. That's played a really, really important part in terms of how we conduct business and I guess the demographic ... Demographic I should say, that we deal in, lends itself to I guess conducting business in that way. Being a younger demographic, those guys tend to adapt to technology really well. It's nice and easy to set a platform to enable to do business that way with those guys.
David McLean:
It was a really easy transition for us, really. I mean, there's other technologies that we can't decide if we're going to operate business as remote as we do with a number of different clients, then need other technology as well, but they have to enable you and complement what you do. Things like Adobe Sign and those type of things. Yeah, we've really tried to build our offer around technology, yeah.
Julio Cagigas:
So, mate, can we just dive into that a little bit more? As you said, you've got clients around the world. And obviously Zoom is a massive part of your business. What other areas, as far as technology, have you implemented into Titan to make sure that you're able to deal with clients efficiently, and also importantly, that the client is getting a really good experience?
David McLean:
Yeah, absolutely. Zoom's probably the biggest thing for us. We use Adobe Sign, as I said, so that makes things a little bit easier in terms of documentation execution and things like that. There's not everything that we can have signed on Adobe Sign, but some of the big platforms and whatnot are coming to the party with that. Colonial, which is one that we commonly use is one of those, and there's others. It makes life a little bit easier for us.
Julio Cagigas:
Sure.
David McLean:
We use a lot of Google technology. We use G Suite which plugs in really nicely to enable us to operate the way that we do. Things like Calendly, so when we send our snapshot reports and reviews and all those type of things, the clients, they've got access to our website where they can jump on and book their own meeting times and whatnot at a time that suits them, through our website.
David McLean:
That plugs in. I mean, Calendly's been around for a little while now and it's quite commonly used, but it provides some real efficiencies in terms of diary management and things like that. We also use a piece of software called Zapier or Zapier. It's a bit of a connector which brings technology together in the backend. For example, through the use of Zapier, if someone jumps online and books a meeting then that'll automatically set up a Zoom meeting, that'll land in my calendar, it'll send them email reminders. It triggers a chain of events. That really helps.
David McLean:
And then, what else have we got? Everything's cloud based, so we don't run servers or anything like that. I guess being in the position that we were, in relation to being able to work remotely, when the pandemic hit and COVID-19 hit, for us in the office, it was just a matter of being able to pick up our laptops and go home, really.
David McLean:
It was business as ... Yeah. Business as usual. We don't have any hard lines into the office. Even our phone lines are run through Zoom. So, if you dial the office number, you're dialling a number which is channelled through our Zoom software, so that enables us to be ... We could be in five different locations and the system will intuitively call people in an order in which we set, depending on a hierarchy and all those different things. Yeah, it wasn't too difficult in relation to when COVID hit, in terms of the way that we can conduct the business.
David McLean:
I think another really cool piece of technology that I enjoy using, and we get a bit of a giggle out in the office, and I think you've met her, Julio.
Julio Cagigas:
I have.
David McLean:
Is our little office assistant, Evie. Evie is a virtual scheduling assistant. She's a really good judge of character, as you would know, Julio. Evie is a plugin that sits within our Gmail that we run our email system through, and we can copy Evie into emails and ask her to set up, for example, if I was sending you an email, trying to arrange a time to catch up, I would ask Evie to arrange a time with Julio to set up an online meeting and then she'll intuitively go in and ... She. I'm speaking like she's really human right.
David McLean:
Evie will go in and set and liaise with you, backward and forward on the email, set a time, and send you an invite, put it in my diary and set up a Zoom meeting all at the same time. Evie literally saves us hours every month toing and froing with clients in relation to sit meeting times. It's a pretty cool piece of Artificial intelligence.
Julio Cagigas:
It is, mate. Yeah, I certainly had the pleasure of dealing with Evie and you wouldn't know you're actually not dealing with a human, the exchanges I've had with her. Very efficient straight away, sets up the meeting, it's all in there. And yeah, like I said, you wouldn't have a clue that you're actually not working with a human. And I know you've mentioned before previously around the cost that is extremely efficient for you as well. I definitely want to look out for you.
David McLean:
Evie costs, to give you a bit of insight on that, Evie costs about $15 a month.
Julio Cagigas:
Wow.
David McLean:
It's incredibly cheap. Incredibly cheap. We have a laugh in the office sometimes because people actually will contact us or we'll talk to clients and they'll say, "Oh, we haven't met Evie before. Have you got someone new in the office?" There's not many people that actually think that Evie is a piece of artificial intelligence. Pretty cool.
Julio Cagigas:
I'd love to see their faces when-
David McLean:
I'm sounding like a massive tech geek-
Julio Cagigas:
... you tell them.
David McLean:
... now, aren't I?
Julio Cagigas:
Just a little bit. That all sounds really good. I'd like to see people's faces when you tell them Evie's artificial intelligence. Dave, just on some of those things that you've just spoken about, just touch on one around ... Which I haven't really heard many advisers use this, is around getting the client to book the meeting in themselves into the diary and so on. Firstly, how long have you had that in place? And two, the second part of the question is do you find yourself having to do a lot of chase up with clients, or is that like an education piece, you've had it in place for a while, and now people, they're comfortable jumping on and doing it themselves?
David McLean:
Yeah. We're finding that more and more, clients are engaging with the technology piece. We have a lot of our meetings booked through Calendly and look, I mean, you can't just set it up there and expect people to intuitively know it's there, and jump on and book their meetings. We've got to communicate that with them and all those type of things. Come review time, we send out an email and reminder emails. Another piece of technology we use, which is a piece of technology ... We're part of the IOOF family, and we're licensed through Millenium3, and one piece of technology that IOOF have been investing heavily in is a piece of tech called their Wealth Report.
David McLean:
When it comes time to review, we'll contact them by phone and email and ask them to jump online and book in a time. At the same time, they get access ... Clients have got access to a portal within the Wealth Report, so this is for existing clients. And they'll jump on and check and update their details and almost do the fact finding for us, in terms of their updating their details and those type of things.
David McLean:
In that technology as well, it's evolving. We're using less piece of technology as the centrepiece of how we deliver advice. So, for example, when we conduct fact finding meetings, whether they be review or new clients, all done on the Wealth Report. The reason we're using this is in terms of client interaction and experience, it's really cool. We can build out scenarios and show them various outcomes on the spot with clients and produce a nice sexy looking Wealth Report at the end of that, which is a little bit more engaging than probably the traditional things that we as an industry run with.
David McLean:
It's a really intuitive piece, and look, the future of that is where we see that heading in the future is that we'll be able to deliver on outside of the fact that it acts as the fact finding piece, and client engagement piece, and there's definitely tiles showing them different insights and benchmarking and all those different types of things. It integrates with XPLAN which is fantastic. We, over the next 12 months, are hoping to be delivering totally digital statements of advice through there as well, which will be really cool, and be a new way of delivering advice to clients. Yeah, so whilst we're using it now, we think the future of how we deliver advice will be no that platform as well.
Julio Cagigas:
Dave, you've touched on the future somewhat there. Knowing you and the technology side of things and how much it interests you and how much you believe in that to run a successful, efficient business, have you given any thoughts around what the next three to five years may look like for you and your practice?
David McLean:
Just getting back on the digital piece, the delivery of advice, I would hope that within the next couple of years that we're delivering all of our advice in a total digital format that's really interactive. Another thing which is maybe further on down the track is the virtual delivery of advice where clients ... I mean, not all clients will engage in this sort of thing, but it brings a little bit of fun I guess into what we do, is people will be able to deliver advice in a virtual setting where people will sit there and put on the goggles, and be able to run through their advice and what the future looks like and whatnot in a virtual world, I guess. We see that happening in the next three to five years.
David McLean:
But I think in terms of who we are, in relation to financial advisers and those type of things, look, in our opinion, if you're not embracing technology, we're of the opinion the place for financial advisers in relation to delivering the technical aspect of things, but I think technology will pick up a lot of that slack. I think where we want to drive our business and where I think advice will land in the next five years is, we will be more behavioural coaches.
David McLean:
Sure, there's always going to be that technical side of things, and a machine can't replace all the knowledge and deliver all of the advice in terms of what we do now, but I think that technology will pick up a lot of that void. I think the shift in paradigm is that we need to be more behavioural in the way that we deliver advice, and coaching, I guess, for want of a better term. The industry's heading that way now anyway, but I think there'll be a greater focus over the next five years or so, in terms of how we deliver and what we're there.
David McLean:
Because I mean, at the end of the day, I mean we still have to have all the technical knowledge and all those types of things, but at the end of the day, I'm of the opinion that 70% of what we do is relationship with our clients. I think there'll be a greater focus on that moving forward, where traditionally there may have been, if that makes sense.
Julio Cagigas:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to trying on those goggles and see what that looks like, Dave. That should be pretty interesting. Look, just talking to you through this and knowing you and you've mentioned things your meetings are through Zoom and you've gone into some detail around some of the technology you've put in place and so on, I can't help but think one of the questions that some advisers out there that are listening to this might be thinking is around the sort of people buy from people with all the technology in your business, what are your thoughts around that?
David McLean:
I think you're absolutely right, and that's going back to I guess where advice is heading. People will continue to buy from people and that's why I think a big majority, or 70% of what we do is relationship, right? What we need to do is not be afraid of being brave and use that as a tool to help us deliver and improve on those relationships we've got.
David McLean:
Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're ... Machine and technology will never replace the fact that there's always going to be that human element to advice, but I only think that is the need for that is only going to get greater as technology picks up the slack for some of the things that traditionally speaking advisers have had to deliver on, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I don't think ... People will always buy from people. That's absolutely correct. We've just got to, I think learn to use technology to be able to enhance those relationships and a bit more productive, and use that technology to help deliver better outcomes for clients. I think that'll only help strengthen the relationships we've got, not take away from them.
Julio Cagigas:
Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense to me, and one of the things that ... Well, one of the issues in the industry at the moment is the cost of giving advice. So, by using technology and being more efficient, I think that's going to help with the outcome there. Like you said, at the end of the day, people will deal with people but it's what we use behind the scenes and so on and technology to make it as efficient as possible, yeah?
David McLean:
Absolutely.
Julio Cagigas:
Dave, is there anything else that you'd like to touch on as far as the technology side of things? I know we've gone through a fair bit. Is there anything else that you think, "Oh, I'd be really keen to let people know about?"
David McLean:
I can't think of any other tech that we're focusing on. I think we've got enough in there at the moment. I've always tried to be a little bit of an early adapter with technology. My wife is our practice manager and I know when new technology presents itself, I think, "That'd be really good in our business" and she goes, "Oh no, what's coming now?" Look, if it doesn't improve our business by 20%, then we don't adapt it.
Julio Cagigas:
Dave, thanks for your time today. For everyone listening, I hope you got a bit out of listening to Dave and some of the initiatives that he's implemented in his practice over the years to make it more efficient, and I think also from listening to Dave, very importantly, also a better client experience. Once again, thanks for joining us, Dave.
David McLean:
Thanks Julio. Cheers mate.
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