.jpg)
As one of the Directors and Financial Advisers at Everest Wealth, Ashley Pickett and the team have carved out a unique niche: serving younger wealth accumulators rather than the traditional retirement demographic. As a high-volume business charging fixed fees to clients early in their wealth creation journey, every minute counts.
Marloo's document generation capabilities have transformed Everest Wealth's operations, slashing Statement of Advice (SOA) creation time from eight hours to just 45 minutes, and helping the business serve more clients.
“I would see about 10 clients per month through to the SOA stage at the moment, with Marloo I can see 12 clients per month. So a 20 percent increase in the clients we can help”
For Everest Wealth, the statement of advice is where document generation delivers the biggest impact. Previously, a paraplanner would spend a full eight-hour day creating a compliant SOA. Now Marloo generates it in minutes.
"It's literally 15 minutes for the document to be made. Then about half an hour for it to be amended and customise it to a standard that looks like a very nice, presentable document. So in total that’s potentially 45 minutes compared to eight hours."
Now Ashley and the Everest Wealth advisers can have an SOA sorted by end of day, rather than waiting two weeks for it to be funnelled through various workflow channels.
“Where the largest value sits for us is in being able to generate that SOA within a couple hours of the client meeting, then getting that client booked in to present it a week later. We can strike while the iron’s hot, while they're still excited about the strategy and they're looking forward to getting everything ready.
Before Marloo, turning around an SOA in this timeframe was impossible. The need to wait a couple of weeks for the relevant prep work, so a paraplanner to create an SOA, and therefore the need to recap the advice delivered to the client before a productive conversation could begin, has historically been seen as an immovable constraint of advice. Marloo dramatically reduces the turnaround time between strategy meeting and advice presentation. As a result, the advice presentation meeting becomes less of a recap of what we discussed last time, and more of a productive implementation conversation, with the topics discussed in the strategy meeting fresh in the minds of both adviser and client. Now,advisers using Marloo for SOAs can produce better experiences and outcomes for their clients.
“It used to be ‘let's catch up in a two to three week time frame, and then, I'll refresh you on everything we've already agreed upon today’. By the end of the meeting, your client’s drained because you’ve given all that information again. Marloo makes it a far more pleasing client experience.”
At $400 per adviser per month for unlimited document generation, versus roughly $250 per SOA to a paraplanner, Everest Wealth saves approximately $2,100 per month per adviser generating 10 SOAs, in paraplanning costs alone. The broader FTE savings across file notes, fact-finds, and other workflows throughout the business add significantly more value on top.
For Everest’s clients, the efficiency Marloo gives it is everything. “We're not trying to cut time for its own sake, we're redistributing it to strategy work that actually builds the client’s wealth in a purpose driven way.”
What’s your favourite Marloo feature?
It’s templates. A while ago, I was wondering if Marloo could do a fact-find. So I uploaded an example fact-find and said, ‘can we generate this as a template’? Within five minutes, that template was generated. That in itself, is amazing, but the ability to then generate a fact and find, if I don't like it I can jump straight back into the template, change it slightly and make it my own. That is where the value lies, being able to customize it on the fly to what suits me. Because if I then had to send an email off to someone to get them to change it by the time they've responded, I'm probably bored of that project.
How accurate have you found Marloo?
I’ve actually tried to trip it up with some of the common mistakes I’ve found other tools make. I'd say things like 'I earn 100k or about a 100' because other tools wouldn't catch that it meant $100,000 per year. Marloo immediately came back with: 'Ashley earns $100,000 per year. I was like, ‘okay, that's pretty damn incredible’ – basically whatever you give it, it is accurate to a T.
For a firm targeting younger clients you have distinctive branding. How does Marloo help with maintaining Everest Wealth’s branding and style?
I’m quite particular in that sense, I want specific font sizes and types, and I want it to be the exact same across the company; not people choosing their own fonts. The uploadable template guide allows that to pull through into all documents with certain heading types and font sizes. Even the exported documents follow Everest Wealth's naming conventions, with the date, meeting name, and document type, ready to drag straight into their file sharing software without manual renaming. The ability to add the logo in the header and footer and things as well makes it look more legitimate from a company perspective. It makes every single document look so much more succinct.
How do you see Marloo supporting future business growth?
It gives company-wide consistency. We can customise it to how we want it written and worded as a company. It gets generated across any type of adviser in the business. As we scale, that standardisation is invaluable. Every new adviser we bring on immediately has access to the same calibre of document generation, the same templates, the same efficiency. That's how you grow without losing quality.
How has Marloo upgraded your file note taking?
If I had an initial meeting back in the day, I would have to spend about 45 minutes making and amending a file note to a point where I'm comfortable all the information is accurate, then I’d spend another 5 minutes drafting up an email to send to the client. So say 50 minutes in total post the initial meeting process. Now, with Marloo it's not even pushing 10 minutes. Everything is now done so I can review the file note to make sure it's accurate. Send off the email template that Marloo has also generated for me, off to the client. That's that done. That's out of my mind. I can then focus on strategies for my client.
What made you choose Marloo over other tools?
The ability to ask Marloo questions sealed it. In the ‘Ask Marloo’ tab, I could type "What was Ashley's story? Give me five dot points of what Ashley should do" and it immediately comes back with incredible responses. That's when I was like, okay, they're different. The test demo showed accuracy, but the intelligence showed possibility.
