Evolving from a social media platform to help younger advisers network and learn, XY Adviser has now grown up and will change its name to reflect its target of global growth.
Founder and chief executive Clayton Daniel tells Professional Planner he’s not a fan of the original name which doesn’t accurately represent the platform.
“It’s sort of a no-name name. The sort of name you put in place in a holding position for a company. That was totally fine when we were a hobby, but now we’re pretty clear on what we do so it’s time to adopt a new name which we can defend globally.”
US firm XY Planning Network is an example of one of the encumbrances for trademarking and the group is close to securing a name it can use internationally.
“With a global mandate on our shoulders we need to be able to accurately say who we are and what we do and be able to move into different countries without worrying about stepping on someone else’s toes.”
The XY Adviser name was established to connect the learning experiences of advisers from generation X and Y.
“We were either early 30s or late 20s when we started the company and now we all have children or are married and are getting close to 40. The concept of targeting a userbase or community based on age isn’t really relevant to what we’re doing.”
Humble beginnings
The network was co-founded in 2014 with Daniel, Ben Nash, Ray Jaramis and Adrian Patty, starting with an online blog and community presence on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“The way we started was just as a hobby, as a way for us to get better at financial planning rapidly,” Daniel says. “The concept of advisers sharing with other advisers is not new; it has been around for decades and it was simply when our age group went through this process of needing to learn it just so happened social media was adopted.”
It wasn’t until the start of 2020 it launched an online platform which now boasts over 6,000 members from over 20 countries.
“It made sense for the sharing and learning to move into a social media environment which then led to the growth because a lot of want to share and learn from one another, and it was in an environment that people were used to using so the adoption was quite high.”
Passion meets dedication
Daniel previously worked as a tax account and financial adviser but says he wanted to get into the technology game while staying in the advice industry.
“I didn’t have a strong enough opinion to create some piece of tech that was going to revolutionise financial planning. I’m not that smart, but can I create an environment where advisers can share with other advisers? Yeah, I can do that. Ultimately it tied in my passions for financial planning and technology.”
