Paul

I'd like to introduce Mark Lewin, who was a financial advisor at Markson Financial Planning, and is now the owner of Back Office Hero. Great to see you this morning, Mark. Morning, Paul,

Mark

Thanks for having me.

Paul

Now, I think it's fair to say we hear a lot about the expected benefits for advisors in outsourcing. Now, this could be either their paraplanning, bookkeeping, HR or their investment solutions. How were you managing your investment solution?

Mark

I was running model portfolios. I have a background in investment markets. And it was almost like a passion of mine to put those portfolios together. But deep down, I knew that I couldn't spend the time and the I didn't have the expertise.

Paul

You  mentioned you ran into problems with your investment solution. Tell me about that.

Mark

Now, we had a major incident here, probably in 2017, when our best performing Australian share fund was put on, not only hold, but redeemed by Lonsec, after the four top managers left their business to start up their own boutique. So, we virtually had to stop the business for five weeks, as we wrote Records of Advice, assemble the paperwork, and moved all of our clients out of that one managed fund and into its replacement. And I never want to do that again. So we made a move to managed accounts and haven't looked back

Paul

It's not an uncommon story. And obviously the efficiencies of managed accounts, can certainly avoid that issue that you had with that particular fund.

How did you gain efficiencies?

Mark

We needed to outsource the investment piece. So the real efficiency started to occur in about 2017 -2018. We had outsourcing working, we understood and utilised XPlan and the investment piece was outsourced.

Paul

The pivotal question is once the move to managed accounts was done. What did the business look like? And did it actually achieve the efficiencies and the benefits that you expected? It would?

Mark

Absolutely, the business changed completely. What we're all trying to do as financial planners is deepen the client relationships.

Paul

Any final thoughts?

Mark

Look, if you're considering moving to manage accounts, prepare yourself. You will be a big winner.

‍