In this 14th episode of Above the Treeline, I sit down with Kim Lykissas, co-founder of Cadence Communications, an independent advisory and managed services firm based in Sydney, Australia. Cadence helps banks, insurers, and pension funds optimize their “essential communications ecosystems” which is everything from compliance-driven customer communications to experience design, content governance, and brand alignment.

“We saw a need for a truly independent voice, one that wasn’t tied to a print bureau, a large corporate, or a software vendor,” Kim says.

Both Kim and his business partner, Dave Robinson, came out of Computershare, a global financial systems provider also based in Australia. Their vision for Cadence is to help organizations modernize their customer communication stacks with neutral, experience-first strategy, not vendor bias.

Digital Adoption, Regulatory Change, and the Decline of Print

Australia and New Zealand are experiencing a dramatic shift toward insourced, digital-first communication models. Much of it is being driven not just by consumer behavior but by regulatory modernization. Governments are updating rules that once required physical delivery, clearing the path for secure digital channels.

“Consumers are saying, I don’t want all this paper,” Kim notes. “And once governments free up the rules, everything changes.”

Add to that postage inflation, environmental pressure, and rising digital literacy even among older consumers and the result is an accelerated transition away from print.

Cadence’s clients such as banks, insurers, and superannuation (IRA) providers — are increasingly buying and operating their own CCM software platforms rather than outsourcing to print vendors. It’s a regional pattern that may soon define global best practice.

The Print Service Provider Crossroads

Kim and I dug into a topic that hits close to home for many of my readers: what happens to U.S. PSPs as transactional print volumes drop by another 50% or more?

“If your view of the world of CCM is composition, you’re legacy,” Kim says bluntly.

He sees a “last-man-standing” race among print providers and only those who become ultra-efficient in print and invest in advanced digital capability will remain relevant.

Trying to grow digital capabilities organically within a traditional print operation, he warns, is “hard work” and often too slow to compete with digital-native solutions.

Instead, he points to examples like Broadridge’s acquisition of Signal where investment in digital expertise fast-tracked transformation.

CX Has Left the Basement

Customer communications used to live deep in IT a function of operations and compliance. Not anymore. Today, ownership is shifting toward Chief Customer Officers, Growth Officers, and CX leaders, signaling the convergence of RegTech, MarTech, and Data.

Cadence research shows that 70–80% of customer touchpoints in financial institutions are transactional, not marketing. Those moments, Kim argues, define the customer relationship far more than a marketing campaign ever will.

“If you’re relying on two marketing messages to build the relationship, you’re missing the point,” he says.

AI and the Real-Time Future

The conversation naturally turned to AI not as hype, but as trajectory.

Kim foresees a world where every interaction is real-time, personalized, and orchestrated by automation far beyond today’s batch-based CCM.

Humans will stay “in the loop” for trust and compliance, but AI will handle orchestration and insight at scale.

The Most Valuable Data Point

Asked which matters most: postal address, email, or mobile number, Kim didn’t hesitate:

“Mobile. Email has a limited life. Everything’s moving to mobile.”

It’s not just a device shift, he suggests, but a cultural one: mobile is becoming the universal endpoint for both identity and interaction.

Andy’s Take

As digital continues to take hold, insourcing is a competitive threat that is not being viewed seriously enough in the U.S. and Europe.

While regions like Asia-Pacific/Oceania are advancing toward customer-owned orchestration, more advanced U.S. print service providers are expanding their platforms to retain customers by adding digital capabilities, but still ultimately they are tethered to print.

For now, the market in the U.S. remains “print + digital,” not digital-first. But as U.S. regulations, like the “Improving Disclosure for Investor Act" advance, and digital communications become the default across more industries, the evolution of insourcing in Asia Pacific/Oceania will be worth watching.

As enterprises bring orchestration, preference management, and content control back inside the firewall, those PSPs that continue to hold onto print as a part of their core value proposition will risk losing strategic visibility and with it, their influence over the customer communication value chain.

The next decade will determine whether North American PSPs can evolve from manufacturers to enablers or whether insourcing will quietly rewrite the rules of engagement as it has Down Under.

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