When Peter Jacob started Alphington Private Wealth four years ago he decided to ignore how financial planning practices usually worked.
His background was in investing and private banking, and in building his new business, he took the view that everything should be structured to put the client first.
“I set up Alphington without the baggage of knowing how financial planning does things; I ignored that and worked on how we can do things for the client first,” Jacob says.
“We are very proactive, contacting clients quarterly, or a lot even monthly, and every client has an annual review that we make sure is topical and relevant.”
His bespoke approach, which also includes a presentation-style approach to statements of advice, has paid off.
In an effort to understand his clients better and introduce new innovations, Jacob conducted an anonymous client satisfaction survey by Business Health.
“I wanted to do an assessment to see what the clients were thinking and connect to the things that really matter and improve them,” He says.
“Most clients will get upset when service is not good, so while they might complain about price, I’m happy to argue them on that, but if service is poor we can’t argue.”
Top quartile
Alphington’s results were in the top quartile in eight out of the nine categories. This was an outstanding result which validated Jacob’s approach, but also defeated the purpose of the survey which was to improve the business.
“I asked Business Health what I should use the survey for instead,” he says. “The guy said marketing.”
Alphington is now using the client feedback to orchestrate changes to improve their service.
He uses an example of a recent client who came looking for advice. Their previous planner had only focused on investments, without looking at something as simple as their superannuation.
To this effect the review has led him to refining his approach.
“We’ve introduced an interim review for higher-level clients. It will be different and revolve around something like surplus cash,” he says.
Jacob is also introducing client education to improve client knowledge.
“That’s had a great response,” he says. “The clients know we are the expert, but also that they need to have a good understanding of what we are doing, so we have a client-friendly written document; the most recent was on superannuation.
“We are doing things because they are valuable to the client, not just because they justify fees.”
Refocused on recruitment
The one element where Alphington did not rate as highly was support staff. Jacob says he has now refocused on recruitment in this area, making sure staff are the right fit and will provide the highest level of service.
Alphington also approaches new client relationships seriously. Jacob will knock back clients if they are not a good fit for the way his company works.
“We aren’t working for a product or a major institution … so we aren’t particularly cheap, but not expensive either,” he says.
“Size knocks people out almost by default as they do not want to pay the fees, but we also knock people back because of style.
“We work with professionals who are reasonably expert in their own field but don’t know as much about investing. We also work with a lot of professionals who are in the finance sector – accountants, CFOs, fund managers, superannuation managers – which surprises me, but I hope that’s an endorsement.”
