What can advisers learn from intra-fund advice?

There is a “tremendous opportunity” for advisers to learn from intra-fund advisers in superannuation when it comes to using technology, according to Midwinter.

Speaking to Money Management, Steve Davison, chief commercial officer for Midwinter, said the firm had been working on technology regarding intra-fund advice for superannuation funds.

A proposal within the Quality of Advice Review was to allow super funds to play a bigger role in giving financial advice to its members and expand their services.

Davison said there was elements of this that financial advisers could implement in their work with consumers.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for advisers to leverage some of the innovation in the intra-fund space and learn how that can be applied for simple cases, that can very much apply to the personal advice that advisers provide.

“That can be anything from the client being able to self-serve, through to a digital fact-find to modelling retirement outcomes, the client portal that can track progress. These tools are already in the marketplace and advisers have the opportunity to use them and literally put themselves in their clients’ pocket so to speak.”

The reason advisers had been holding off from implementing these technologies, he said, was they had been stymied by all the regulations following the Hayne Royal Commission.

“It depends on the business model, some advisers might have 100 clients who are quite happy paying fees and that’s a good business model for them so maybe they don’t need to change those sort of things.

“But the industry has also spent the last few years responding to COVID-19 and to the outcomes of the Royal Commission so they haven’t had a chance to think about organic growth.”

Davison was hopeful that Quality of Advice Review would give advisers an opportunity in its final report to focus on organic growth by serving more Australians.