AdviceFirst is a leading financial advice service in New Zealand. Its Chief Operating Officer, Georgie Miles says the shift to Marloo’s AI-powered meeting assistance has helped advisers maintain their personal touch while improving efficiency.
“We needed to find a mechanism which would help us support the collection of data, but allow advisers to provide a quicker turnaround for clients."
With Marloo actively monitoring and taking notes, Georgie says advisers now have the space to focus more on the client during client meetings.
“It helps our advisers focus on the conversation, rather than writing everything down.”
Georgie says she chose Marloo over generic alternatives like Microsoft Copilot because it’s finance-focused and New Zealand-specific.
"Marloo focuses on the financial advice aspect. The templating isn't just a summary of the conversation – it's a summary as we want it to be, in terms of how it drives the rest of our processes and automation. Plus, Marloo has been trained to understand Kiwi-isms, place names, and general things. If you think about something like a 'bach', it gets interpreted correctly, whereas other systems may interpret it as something different."
While Marloo has enhanced AdviceFirst's client meetings, it has also - unexpectedly - started driving professional development, too.
“It's created a lot of self-reflection. Our advisers are asking themselves 'How well did I do in that call? Then they're having conversations with Marloo asking 'Were there areas I could have improved on?' It's creating curiosity and reflection around different aspects of their practice.”
AdviceFirst have seen admin processes speed up since implementing Marloo.
"Clients are actually noticing the difference because we're so much quicker to get that summary back to them.
Georgie says the idea of manually taking notes without Marloo is now outdated, and many advisers agree.
“When we were trialling Marloo, I asked one of my team who was participating in the trial, what they’d do if I took Marloo away. They said, 'I'll pay for it myself."
How did your team adapt to using AI technology?
With any kind of change, they were apprehensive in the beginning. Many people hadn't even entered into the AI realm, so there was a cultural change management process. The risk was they'd think it's going to take their jobs, but it's actually enhancing their relationships with clients. We rolled it out in phases, and as soon as the first group got it, the others wanted it.
How has Marloo improved your client service delivery?
The turnaround time has been incredible. The templates allow us to create something really quickly, and advisers can respond back to clients with a summary, their actions, and what they're going to do in no time at all.
What's been the unexpected benefit of implementing Marloo from your perspective as a COO?
It's created a real team connection. We've got a Marloo chat group where we share insights and ask questions. When people are using the same tools, you start to align your processes much more. It's become common ground across all our business units, even though people specialise in different areas.
How would you describe working with the Marloo team?
They are very accommodating and want to build a product that we love. You can see that comes through in the questions they ask, and they listen really well. What I particularly appreciated was that Shak from the Marloo team wanted to be in on all our ‘go-live’ meetings, when we were implementing it. He wanted to connect with the people using it so they could see a human being and passion is behind the system. It wasn't just 'here's a system' – those kinds of things put people at ease and create trust.
What's your outlook for Marloo's future development?
Right now it handles one conversation at a time, but we're looking forward to features that help pull out key points from previous meetings, for the client journey we've set out. We're also excited by the potential for enhanced compliance checking and professional development features.
