MLChasentered the ‘show and tell’ phase of its three year $200 million Amazon project designed to build a strategic advice platform and to make MLC a business and outsourcing partner for financial planners.
Over the past 12 weeks, some 80 plus advisers have been taken on a tour of the Amazon wall (complete with a mural), which effectively describes the project using posters, as well as a tour of the area which hosts the 150 staff dedicated to the project.
There’s even a visitor’s book for guests to sign.
The ultimate vision of Amazon is “to build a strategic advice platform that will lead to the markets evolution to the optimal advice model – holistic financial planning”.
This means that while in the past, adviser business models have had to cobble together all the essentials for their business, including a platform provider, software for advisers, investment products and so on, the Amazon advice platform will effectively position MLC as the provider of these services.
Over the past two months, MLC staff have been formulating the design and strategy of Amazon, identifying the five stages of the project.
These include integrating the advice platform, advising effectively through e-delivery, integrating product and servicing platforms and delivering the foundations so that clients can see all their investments including insurance and banking products.
The final stage of the product is the journey, or rather, how to get advisers and clients to participate in the changes.
According to MLC Adviser general services manager Matt Lawler, while many in the industry are touting the phrase holistic financial planning, very few are actually defining what it means.
“There needs to be a definition before people will attach themselves to it,” he says.
MLC estimates that less than five per cent of the financial planning industry practices holistic financial planning, statistics which are at odds with the increasing demand by clients for a total planning solution that includes information on tax, budgeting, portfolio and risk management, estate management and capital debt management.
“Most people concentrate on investments when they should be concentrating on the whole problem. Holistic financial planning is less about product and more about structure. More time should be spent on strategy,” MLC distribution and wealth management chief executive Steve Tucker says.
Such a shift will see planners reposition themselves as a client’s financial manager and strategist, because they will take on tax management and cashflow management issues such as budgeting which are currently not integrated into the adviser business model.
The foundations of the Amazon project will become prototype for MLC’s interests in the UK and European markets, which are viewed as more similar to the Australian financial planning industry than Asia where the industry is in early development stages.
