The WealthTech Insider

What if you tried to design the worst possible advice industry on purpose? Pete Worn and Danni Le Grande run Charlie Munger's inversion trick over Australian advice, working through the six rules from Pete's latest Code & Capital:

1. Make sure nobody agrees who the customer is
2. Insert as many ticket-clippers as the law allows
3. Regulate the supply until it collapses
4. Make the living pay for the dead
5. Appoint a dozen umpires who don't agree
6. Demand Ferrari software at Datsun prices

The catch? Every rule is real, and none of it was built by a villain. We close on the only move left — subtraction — and what advice firms can actually take away to get better.

Two commencement speakers got booed off stage for telling rooms full of graduates that AI was an exciting opportunity. Danni and Pete start there — Gloria Caulfield, then Eric Schmidt — and ask the more useful question: what happens when the people most certain AI is inevitable are the ones who carry none of the downside?

The downside lands somewhere else. On the graduate. On the PY advisers now vibe-coding their way to relevance out of pure job insecurity. On the associate half-joking that the file-note agent has already replaced them.

Danni and Pete translate the backlash into what it means for advice firms: why "token maxing" measures inputs instead of outcomes, why the boss's behaviour sets the whole firm's relationship with AI, and what Finura's Tech Health Check data reveals — that the firms rating their tech change "very successful" have the weakest integration and advice-production scores underneath. Leaders declare victory; the plumbing tells another story.

The takeaway isn't anti-AI. It's that you can be better than big tech: reinvest the efficiency in your people, not just the bottom line — and tread gently, because rolling out an agent is the same change-management problem as any big tech project. There are still real people behind the scenes.

#wealthtech #technology #peterworn #dannilegrande

APRA's late-April letter on AI was addressed to Banks, Insurers and Super Trustees. It wasn't addressed to AFSLs — and Pete Worn reckons that distinction will matter for about six months.

In this episode, Danni and Pete unpack Pete's latest Code & Capital on what APRA's AI letter signals for the broader advice industry, and what ASIC is almost certainly preparing in the background.

They cover:

• Why AI isn't "just another technology" — and why deterministic thinking gets you into trouble fast
• The four areas APRA put on notice: cyber, governance, supplier risk, change management
• Why boards are flying blind on AI literacy, and why the vendor lunch-and-learn is now a regulatory red flag
• The fourth layer of due diligence no one was doing before — and why it changes everything
• Fresh data from Finura's latest Tech Health Check: only 57% of licensee-aligned practices run due diligence on tech providers, and 48.6% of practices admit they can't explain every app in their own stack
• Claude Code in production, frontier AI vendors that can't answer DD questions, and the systemic risks no one is mapping
• Australia's surprisingly low AI trust scores, UHNW clients refusing meeting recordings, and what Scott Galloway calls "the biggest brand problem of any technology in human history"

A practical, sometimes uncomfortable look at the gap between how fast advice firms are adopting AI and how slowly governance is catching up.

#finuragroup #dannilegrande #peterworn #ai #technology

Pete's latest Code & Capital landed in inboxes the week after the federal budget — and his frustration was raw. In this episode, he and Danni unpack what the proposed capital gains changes mean for Australian software founders, and why the advice tech sector is uniquely exposed.

CGT effectively doubling to 33–47% (versus 20% in the US, 14% in the UK, zero in New Zealand). A $5M exit going from a $1.18M tax bill to $2.35M. 27% of our labour force in the public sector — the highest in the G7. Pete declares his self-interest upfront: he's one of the founders this is aimed at.

But the conversation is bigger than any one company — it's about who'll bother to build for Australia's 15,000 advisers when Silicon Valley won't, and when Singapore and the UAE are rolling out the red carpet. Plus: why the practice owners listening should think twice before haggling their software vendors on price, what offshore PE ownership of super admin tells us about the future, and Pete's wife Catherine's surprise cameo. A productive rant — with a constructive ending.#wealthtech #technology #federalbudget2026

Canceling Adobe shouldn't feel like escaping a hostage situation — but it does. Fitness First, Foxtel, gym memberships, subscription perfume (yes, really), and a lot of advice tech vendors share the same playbook: make it easy to sign up, and brutally hard to leave.

In this episode, Danni and Pete sit down in person (a rare one) to unpack the latest Code & Capital newsletter — Breaking Up Is Hard to Do — and ask why so many software companies still prey on apathy instead of earning loyalty. They draw on 37signals' "easy on, easy off" philosophy, Basecamp's pause-and-price-lock approach, and David Heinemeier Hansson's idea that every business is a referral business — and cancellation is the moment that decides whether you get a promoter, a boomerang, or a detractor.

They ground the conversation in Finura's Technology Health Check Scorecard data (n=279+ Australian advice practices):

• 73% of firms aren't fully happy with their current advice CRM
• 81% don't run an RFP when choosing tech
• 37% skip due diligence on new vendors
• 49% don't have a comprehensive understanding of their own tech stack
• 33% have zero integrations

They also look at what AI-driven MCPs will do to vendors whose entire retention strategy is "hoard the data," why transparent pricing beats coupon-code chaos, and what practice owners should take from all of this — because if you're running an Advice business, your clients are judging you on exactly the same things.

Pete's tip: design your cancellation experience like a marketing exercise. Danni's tip: audit your vendor contracts before you need to leave — check the exit terms, not just the onboarding pitch.

https://finuragroup.com/

#technology #financialadvice #wealthtech

Danni went to New Zealand for a week and the AI world lost its mind. Pete catches her up on the news that matters — starting with Anthropic's "Mythos," a model so powerful they refused to release it publicly after it uncovered up to a million vulnerabilities in major software in a matter of days (cue Jurassic Park: "scientists were so obsessed with whether they could, they never stopped to think if they should").

Then the conversation shifts closer to home: Perplexity is now letting US consumers plug their bank accounts, stocks and health data into their own Bloomberg-style dashboards, and OpenAI just quietly acquired Hero — an AI financial planning startup.

Pete and Danni unpack what it means when the world's biggest AI companies start muscling into personal financial management, why regulation is the only real moat Australian advice has left, and the uncomfortable question every practice owner needs to answer: if your service is purely digital, what exactly are clients paying you for?

#technology #wealthtech #financialadvice #ai

https://finuragroup.com/

Mark Zaglas is back. Our most downloaded guest ever returns to go a level deeper on what's changed since last year's "Stagnation to Scale" episode — and a lot has changed. Encore Advisory Group has been acquired by Evidentia, Mark has launched his Big Six Insights series, and the industry is facing an inflection point where the pace of change has doubled but the margin for error has halved.

In this episode, we unpack the rise of the COTO (Chief Operating and Technology Officer) — a concept Mark has coined for advice businesses that can no longer treat operations and technology as separate functions. We dig into why so many firms are still running on rusted sales engines, why confidence is the barrier nobody talks about, and what it actually looks like to unrust your growth capability in 2026.

We also flip the script — Mark interviews Danni on what she's seeing with AI in advice practices, from foundation models to purpose-built agents, and why the firms winning right now are the ones mapping their processes first and applying AI to the right jobs second.

Plus: the client who showed up to a review with their own Claude-generated financial plan, why operations is like an escalator you never get off, and Mark's 5P growth engine audit you can do in 90 minutes this quarter.

If you enjoyed Stagnation to Scale, this one picks up exactly where we left off — and goes deeper.

Take our free Technology Health Check at finuragroup.com to see where your practice sits.

#finuragroup #technology #dannilegrande #encoregroup #financialadvice

Pete's latest Code & Capital sparked a big conversation — why are Advice Practices still tempted to rip out their CRM when the data says it rarely ends well? Danni brings the receipts from Finura's Technology Health Check: only 17% of Practices are actually planning to move, barely half use their CRM as a source of truth, and 80% don't even run an RFP when choosing new tech. We also dig into the real risks of Advisers building SOAs in ChatGPT, why clients are now using AI to check their Adviser's AI, and whether we're breeding a generation of professionals who can't think without a chatbot. Plus: Amdahl's Law, the $30 billion CRM switching industry, and why tidying up your shop beats chasing shiny new tools.#finuragroup #peterworn #dannilegrande #technology

In this episode of The WealthTech Insider, Danni Le Grande and Peter Worn unpack a deceptively simple question that opens a much bigger conversation: why do so many AI tools have human — and overwhelmingly female — names?

What starts as a light observation quickly turns into a deeper discussion about trust, subconscious design choices, and the risks of anthropomorphising technology in professional environments. From “Sophie the assistant” to “Colin from compliance”, Danni and Pete explore how naming AI shapes behaviour, lowers scepticism, and may lead us to over-trust systems that are still fallible — particularly in regulated industries like financial advice.

This isn’t a culture-war debate or an anti-AI rant. It’s a grounded conversation about awareness: how AI is being designed, why familiarity matters, and what professionals need to keep front-of-mind as human-like software becomes embedded in daily workflows.

#finuragroup #technology #ai #dannilegrande #peterworn

Most Australians have critically low financial literacy, yet the advice industry is sitting on a golden opportunity to change that—and unlock billions in advice demand. Marcus Field from Iris sheds light on groundbreaking research that reveals the true scale of Australia's financial capability crisis and how a strategic shift in education, regulation, and advice delivery can turn unmet needs into national productivity.This episode exposes why financial literacy has declined despite access to more information than ever—and how societal, educational, and industry blind spots are exacerbating the problem. You’ll discover the seven mega-trends transforming advice by 2030, including the demand for lighter, scalable guidance that reaches millions more Australians. Marcus shares concrete frameworks for redefining guidance versus advice, tackling the persistent money taboo, and embedding financial well-being into workplaces and schools.We break down the critical role advisors and employers can play in closing the financial literacy gap—especially for women, pre-retirees, and the next generation. This episode reveals how agencies and fintechs can leverage trust, education, and targeted digital solutions to turn financial capability into a sustainable, scalable revenue stream.Perfect for advice professionals, fintech innovators, and industry leaders committed to societal impact and growth—this is your blueprint to help millions get financially savvy while transforming your business. The opportunity to shape Australia’s financial future—and profit from it—is here. Will you take it?Download IRESS's full research report a thttps://info.iress.com/thebiglift and learn how redefining guidance could be the game-changer your firm needs now. Don’t miss this vital conversation on a national challenge with a profitable solution in sight.https://info.iress.com/thebiglift