Updates
Dear FPW Adviser Community,
I hope everyone survived the end of financial year. It always is a busy time of year, no matter how prepared you are it seems!
We have wiped the slate clean and have spent the past few weeks doing our FY24 business plans, setting KPIs and working on our 90 day plans. I always believe that planning instils a shared sense of responsibility with your team and ensures the team is more proactive rather than reactive, not to mention more operationally efficient. As you know, this year will be transformational. We have done a lot of planning and are now ready to move from the design phase of our National Firm strategy to the execution phase where we will start the build of our target operating model.
Part of our new target operating model build includes evolving Lead Adviser, with the purpose of the program being to:
o Invest in and build the capability of our people,
o Drive efficient business processes and systems,
o Release capacity in order to better service existing clients and attract new clients,
o Ensure a superior client experience and deliver greater client value, and
o Build and grow profitable advice businesses.
We will run new Lead Adviser training which will comprise two-day introductory training workshops for new advisers and those who need a refresher, and a series of deep dive masterclasses. These will replace the Share, Learn, Grow forums. We will also be building a new Lead Adviser portal which will house all the support material and a series of videos to help share knowledge and showcase advisers in action. We will continue to run Adviser Days and Technical Days, again with the focus of building capability in our people. During the course of the year, we will also be redesigning the Lead Adviser technical program to focus on the advice needs and issues facing our ideal clients i.e. HNW, business owners and family office clients.
I hope you enjoyed our first series of videos on engaging with clients in volatile markets. Thank you to the advisers who gave up their time to share their experiences and wisdom on these videos. Please let me know if you didn’t receive this email and we can resend. As we go to press, we are about to run our next Growth Masterclass on pricing principles which will be delivered by John Woodley. Thank you to Terri, Louise and John for all their hard work on getting these workshops up and running.
I also want to remind you about COCO, FPW’s Community Collaboration chat room. COCO is a Microsoft Teams based chat room designed for advisers and support staff to tap into the collective wisdom of the FPW Advice Community. It enables you to share and shape new ideas with each other and ask those questions that you know someone in the community must be able to answer. Your invitation to join COCO was emailed to you a while back. If you need a new invitation, please just let Caroline know via [email protected]. COCO is only available to advisers and support staff in the FPW Advice Community
On a final note, I encourage you to please click through to read the full updates from the various areas on this email. It is vital that you are up to date on all that is happening.
Technical and Compliance
Monitoring & Supervision
Audit Results
We are now halfway through the year and this is how we are tracking:
| Score | 2021 Result | 2022 Result | 2023 YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infringements per file | 2.14 | 1.79 | 1.92 |
| Average score per audit | 10.65 | 9.76 | 10.23 |
Annual Review of Marketing and Other Corporate Authorised Representative Responsibilities
At this time each year we undertake to review websites and social media as a separate part of our Monitoring & Supervision framework. This year we have expanded the matters we will be reviewing to include other aspects of compliance that don’t neatly fit under one Authorised Representative but are a shared responsibility with the Corporate Authorised Representative. Questions we will be asking in addition to a review of websites, social media and marketing include:
o Conflicts of Interest
o Outsource Arrangements
o Your Cyber Response Plan
o Your Best of Breed Due Diligence
Service Review
For some time now we have been working long and hard with HUBConnect using their ability to leverage AI along with data captured from the XPLAN Key Information to confirm details of service delivery and EFDS compliance. We are now at a point where we will be reaching out to you to fill any gaps identified. As you are aware, records stored in XPLAN allow us to show we are meeting those legislative responsibilities as well as the requirement to hold records of that compliance. Using this methodology allows us to focus only on exceptions so that your time and ours is not taken up in investigating matters that don’t warrant any investigation. We will be in touch as and when required.
Conflicts of Interest
We have formalised the policy that currently sits in various parts of our business that deal with how we treat Conflicts of Interest. This policy does not introduce anything new in terms of responsibilities or process, but rather captures these responsibilities in the same format as any other policy. You can check this out here.
Privacy Policy for Authorised Representatives
The concept of a Privacy Policy for clients has been well understood for some time. This policy for Authorised Representatives, has been drafted to formally set out how Fitzpatricks Private Wealth Pty Ltd deals with your information. It includes the types of information, the purposes for which that information is collected, used and disclosed including where we might share that information offshore. This policy can be found here.
If you have any questions, comments or feedback on these matters or any other, please reach out to Professional Standards so we can assist and/or provide further clarity.
Preventing theft of super
With the significant increase in scams involving identity theft and SMSF, please be are of the actions taken by the ATO when certain actions are initiated.
https://www.smsfadviser.com/news/22313-ato-warns-of-rise-in-smsf-identity-fraud-and-investment-scams
Technology and Operations
Advice Technology Committee initiatives
We are working on the following initiatives that have been prioritised by the FPW Advice Technology Committee (representative group of advisers, support staff and FPW SMEs):
1. Online fact find
We are working with IRESS and our Advice Technology Committee members to implement the online fact find within the XPLAN Client Portal. The committee members have been testing the online fact find over the last couple of weeks and we have been actively seeking their feedback and liaising with IRESS to get any anomalies rectified. We will launch this functionality once testing has been successfully completed. Expected release date will be by the 1st September 2023.
2. Execution only service wizard
The purpose of this wizard is to assist businesses with efficiencies when instructions are provided by a client for an execution only transaction. Expected release date will be by 1st September 2023.
3. Xplan client menu refresh
We are currently reviewing the interface within the client menu in XPLAN to ensure it is more intuitive and streamlined. We are expecting to release the updated interface by 1 September 2023. More details to follow in the next update.
Please feel free to submit any advice technology related ideas you may have by clicking here. These ideas might relate to improvements to existing technology solutions, e.g., XPLAN, or new technologies. The Advice Technology Committee will then assess, endorse and prioritise ideas for implementation.
Investment
Disclosing buy/sell spreads
We have streamlined the wording used to disclose buy/sell spreads for underlying investments within managed accounts. These improvements assist disclosures in this area and account for the many versions of managed accounts used by FPW Advisers. This information is for your awareness and no action is required by you. See the Xplan wizard for more details and contact [email protected] if you have any queries.
Adviser Services
Education Pathway Survey
It is Fitzpatricks expectation that an approved degree, qualification or pathway is completed by no later than 31 December 2024. This survey will equip us with the knowledge to be able to assist you to meet this deadline. By completing your approved degree, qualification or pathway by 31 December 2024 this will keep you and your business safe.
FPW Webinars
Please register to ensure you have a placeholder for our upcoming FPW webinars. A reminder CPD is assessed for all FPW webinars. If a webinar is deemed eligible, CPD points will automatically be added to Authorised Representatives of our Licensees who have attended 80% of the session.
| Date | Time | Topic/Presenter | Registration Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wednesday 25th October | 1:00pm QLD 2:00pmNSW/VIC/ACT 1:30pm SA 11:00am WA | Professional Standards | Register here |
Further details on the next two webinars are as follows:
Growth Masterclass – Principles of Pricing
Please join us for our first Masterclass session on Pricing Principles hosted by John Woodley. During the recent 10-3-Now meetings conducted around the country, we found that most businesses in our community are very focussed on organic growth. It is therefore fitting that we continue our focus on pricing for value. This topic will be a refresher of the session John ran at the Adviser Day earlier this year. As John shared during the Adviser Day, if you don’t get your pricing philosophy right, it creates future problems for your business. We will record the webinar and make it available on line so you can review it in detail. We look forward to hearing more from John and sharing the opportunity with everyone to take a deeper look at pricing.
Xplan Client Portal (Online Fact find)
In this session, we will demonstrate the use of the Xplan Client portal for the online fact find and how to enable this functionality for your clients.
Marketing
Pre-Conference Tours
For those advisers who have registered for the Osaka Conference, make sure you consider the addition of a Pre-Conference Tour to enhance your Japan experience. For more information on the Pre-Conference Tours, please click here.
