Ep 22: Turning around business quicker feat. Wendy Fisher, Progeny

In this episode of the AdviserTech Unplugged podcast hosted by moneyinfo’s MD Tessa Lee, we were joined by guest Wendy Fisher, Regional Manager at Progeny to discuss the processes of adopting and implementing new client facing technology in a progressive and expanding planning firm with big aspirations.

When Progeny adopted moneyinfo right at the start of the pandemic, they had to think on their feet. Wendy explains the implementation process, and how she tackled the challenge of getting buy-in from all internal stakeholders in the business; by offering continual training, making the portal part of every touch point with clients, and engaging the moneyinfo support team to understand the inner workings of using the functionalities of the portal.

When Progeny initially launched their portal, they bulk uploaded 2000 clients in the first 24 hours which demonstrated they had big intentions and were going to be a real trailblazer for moneyinfo longer term, showing how the roll-out of a new piece of tech can be carried out over a much shorter timeframe than may be anticipated.

Tess and Wendy discuss Progeny’s newly published survey: ‘Planning to Pass it On’, which explores the multi-generational transfer of wealth, the future of wealth technology, and giving access to clients’ children’s information, allowing family groups to plan for the future.

Progeny conducted the survey as they wanted to understand more about the plans people have around inheritance and intergenerational wealth transfer, how they communicate about it, and how they feel about what is often a very emotive subject. They asked three generations (Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial) about their attitudes and expectations for receiving an inheritance or gifted wealth and how important this may be to their financial outlook.

The key findings were really insightful and focus around five areas: intentions around wealth transfer; communication; emotion; expectation; and aspiration. They found that the majority of people are intending to leave an inheritance or pass on money to the next generation but beyond this, very few – only 17% - had a formal plan to do so. And only 3% had worked with a financial adviser on this.

Tune in to the next insightful episode of the AdviserTech Unplugged podcast to fully explore these interesting topics in more detail and get a detailed summary of the ‘Planning to Pass it On’ survey findings.