How looking inward helped this adviser hone his path

Back in his high school days, James Marshall of Brisbane-based financial advice firm Stratus Financial Group knew that he wanted to work in something numbers-based or technical in his future career but was not exactly sure what that was.

It wasn’t until he began a degree in finance and became involved with the university’s economic and finance social club that advice came onto his radar.

During this time, Mr Marshall says that he heard from all sorts of different people in the finance world and went out of his way to talk to individuals about their work and careers. “Experiencing as much financial success as one could as a university student, I then worked out that financial planning was going to be my home,” he says.

He first started working as a paraplanner in a self-licensed financial planning and accounting firm before making his way to a paraplanning hub for one of the big four banks. After ‘doing his time’ working through the volume of financial modelling and plan preparation, Mr Marshall says that basic financial planning strategies became drilled into his brain.

His next move was to Stratus Financial Group, where Mr Marshall remains to this day. “When I was in that interview with Stratus, I remember being asked at the time what would [make me say yes] to accepting a role,” he says.

“I remember responding along the lines of, ‘If I do want to take that advice career path, I will be supported in that,’ and the answer to that was obviously yes.” He notes that Stratus and other mentors in the profession have provided him with great support but looking inward has also been key in helping to identify potential areas for improvement. “All the way through my career, and I still do think about what gaps do I personally have that I need to fill to be a better adviser, or director, or business owner,” says Mr Marshall.

In line with this view, he previously worked nights at two different universities in Queensland with the goal of developing his presentation skills alongside a growing passion for education.

At last year’s ifa Excellence Awards, Mr Marshall was named Holistic Adviser of the Year. “To deliver on that holistic advice piece, whether it’s adviser or firm or otherwise, it really is a team effort to get that actually implemented and to actually get that to work,” he explains.

“It really was an external validation, if you like that what we’re doing ... is recognised as something as something that embodies the holistic advice approach we have when it comes to dealing and interacting with our clients and providing them with what they need.”

Status of Stratus

Stratus commenced as a sole adviser business in 2001 with no revenue, and since then has grown to become a three-adviser firm with a focus on three distinct client categories: executives, business owners and medical professionals.

In his role as a director and an adviser of the firm, Mr Marshall says that he has been entrusted with serving Stratus’ clients, team and business.

“In addition to just advising clients, I’m responsible for developing the business, setting and implementing the business strategy, marketing to prospective and existing clients, and then educating and developing our team as well,” he adds.

On the defining features of Stratus and what makes it different, Mr Marshall highlights three key areas. Firstly, he says that the firm operates and provides its advice collaboratively.

“Where a client has a need that we can’t address, we bring a professional party into the relationship to address that need,” he explains.

While noting that other firms also claim to do this, Mr Marshall argues that this often means providing a referral to a professional partner rather than actual collaboration.

“We see our roles as really being that central point of contact and being the client’s personal CFO,” he says.

Secondly, Stratus has developed and vetted a panel of professional partners who are able to provide advice to the firm’s clients in areas that it cannot.

“For example, we’ve got a number of executive clients and they might be on an international secondment or spent time overseas, and our professional partner network extends to the likes of tax advisers in other jurisdictions around the world,” says Mr Marshall.

And finally, the firm has specialization in a number of key areas where its clients need advice, including international taxation management as well as employee share schemes.

“That can often be an overlooked area, or not fully considered as part of a client’s strategy, but there are real benefits in getting that part of the strategy right for clients and how that interacts with other parts of their financial world,” Mr Marshall suggests.

Every quarter, Stratus holds a planning day where its whole team comes together to work on the business. Mr Marshall says that the firm is always looking to improve what it delivers to its clients and how it runs its internal processes.

Involvement in peer groups and coaching through Slipstream have also proved to be a valuable resource for Stratus through the sharing and implementation of new ideas.

Mr Marshall, who has been involved with two Queensland universities for more than a decade, has also sought to bring his passion for education into developing the Stratus team.

“We’re big supporters of our team when they’re looking to formal education, and I also run a number of masterclass-type sessions for the team on a regular basis,” he says.

“We take time out and we’ll go through a technical topic, technical detail, or we’ll run through a client case study where we’ve done something, and that’s to develop everyone’s knowledge and awareness, and we run that for the whole business.”

We are living in a digital world

On what he sees as the biggest challenge currently facing advisers, Mr Marshall points to the “very digital and interactive world” we now live in. “The financial planning process has been slow to pretty poor experience from the client side of things and the client interaction. I see that as a bit of a challenge for us all to work through,” he suggests.

“Over the past year or so, what we’ve been doing at Stratus is we’ve been progressively going through all of the types of meetings that we would run with a client and actually converting them into more a presentation-style meeting rather than more a document or a word document-style meeting.”

This means using a lot more presentations, from the initial prospect meeting through to regular review meetings, with a focus on doing things in a more visual format.

“What we’ve been finding is that now, on our side, it’s a lot easier as an advice team to present those meetings to clients,” says Mr Marshall.

“The feedback from clients is that they’ve been saying how much easier they find it to understand what’s going on and they’re not distracted about what might be coming, because they can see it in the document we have on screen.”

Expanding on this digital focus, Mr Marshall also believes that there is a great opportunity to develop a better integrated and more digital client experience, which he says is now beginning to roll out with what some product providers have been investing in.

A ‘bright’ future for advice

Identifying as an optimist, Mr Marshall predicts that the outlook for the broader advice industry, and Stratus, in particular, is positive. “We’re always looking to improve and redefine our process and client delivery, and we’ll be continuing to do that,” he says.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve really focused as a firm and redefined what our ideal client actually looks like, and we’re not afraid to refer on non-ideal prospects to other firms.”

Additionally, the firm has built up a team that Mr Marshall describes as “brilliant”. He also notes that seeing this team develop and progress further over time is exciting and positive.

As for the advice industry, he acknowledges that there has been a lot of change in recent years which all advisers have been forced to respond to.

“But I see that’s now all in the past, so I think, as a profession, everything again looks pretty bright,” says Mr Marshall.

“We know the demand for advice is growing, we’ve seen supply being reduced by adviser numbers being down and the large institutions exiting. I think we’re seeing product providers invest more money into engagement tools that we can use with clients and we’re seeing overseas product providers looking at Australia as well.

“I actually don’t think there’s been a better time to be in the advice profession than now.”

Jon Bragg

Jon Bragg is a journalist for Momentum Media's Investor Daily, nestegg and ifa. He enjoys writing about a wide variety of financial topics and issues and exploring the many implications they have on all aspects of life.