Strategy Steps co-founders and directors, Louise Biti and Assyat David, have sold the business to a software and online learning business, leaving them to focus on their aged care advice and consulting activities, and setting up Strategy Steps up for a new phase of growth and development.
Biti and David will continue to provide up-to-date technical content for Strategy Steps’ online knowledge and strategy tool, Desk Caddie, for the next six months, and they will continue to play a consulting role to the business as its new owners, KnowIT Group, bed down the acquisition.
Desk Caddie was acquired by Strategy Steps from its creator, Deutsche Bank, and developed into service now used by about 4000 financial planners. KnowIT chief executive officer Wayne Wilson says the potential for Desk Caddie to be expanded to include online learning for both financial planners and consumers was a major attraction of the deal.
Biti (pictured) says that she and David want to “free up our time more to be able to focus on the opportunities arising from Aged Care Steps”.
“Wendy [Tyberek] and Wayne have a company called KnowIT, which is a software and product services company. And when we see the challenges and the opportunities of what Desk Caddie can really achieve, what we think it probably is looking at needing is being able to have a better software platform that can integrate into the way financial planners give advice and their advice systems and to be able to be more seamless.”
Biti says it became clear that Strategy Steps didn’t have the time or resources to take Desk Caddie to the next stage.
“It’s all falling into place nicely at the right time,” she said.
Working closely together
“For the next six months, though, to make sure we have a seamless transition, our team at Strategy Steps will continue … to be working very closely with KnowIT to share some of our experience and learning, but we’re going to make sure we’re still managing content for the next six months and updating and maintaining it as well.
“But we think it will grow under KnowIT’s leadership.”
Biti says that the extent of legislative change that is happening in financial planning is affecting both the way advisers deliver advice and their remuneration, and how they approach strategic planning.
“It’s going to challenge advisers to have to sit back and really think about everything they have learned in relation to strategies and client goals and objectives,” Biti says.
“Take for example, the superannuation changes and the $1.6 million transfer cap. If we look at some of those things, it’s going to change the way advisers give advice, it’s going to change their perception of the strategies that are out there and how they implement strategies.
“Where we saw that gap eight and a half years ago for advisers having good stepped-out processes for how you decide whether a strategy is appropriate for a client, what are the actions that you take, are going to become more and more important.”
Technology reinvented
Wilson said KnowIT started at the beginning of 2016 to look for “businesses that we cold acquire and further develop”.
“We were trying to find businesses that had a good technology base, but needed to be reinvented with new technology; that had some distribution but plenty of distribution upside if we could enhance and further develop the product; and [we thought] it would be really nice if we could look at that product and take it into aligned businesses’ verticals – not just one vertical like wealth, but perhaps take it into the accounting space or the legal space or the real estate space,” he said.
Wilson said the case for providing access to financial information and knowledge online is compelling. He said recent research has found that 68 per cent of people have never used a technology provider to obtain financial services, but in five years’ time, 48 per cent of those people will be using a “digital service” for their financial services.
“And in 10 years’ time, 20 per cent of people will use a fintech-based service for all of their financial services,” Wilson said.
“Digitalisation is absolutely driving everything that’s happening and so for us, this opportunity with Desk Caddie and Strategy Steps is a digitisation play. And we hope to make it more connective, more accessible and to work in different architectures and ultimately in different verticals.”
