The Aussie wealthtech firms that are 'most innovative'

The annual list of the world's most innovative wealthtech companies was recently released, with several Australian firms making the cut.

Iress, GBST, Practifi, Lumiant, and Ignition Advice were all on the list, which was selected by a panel of industry experts.

GBST chief executive Rob DeDominicis said it was a "huge year for GBST's growth and innovation" with the company acquiring a digital and hybrid offering from Advice Intelligence as well as Salesforce-based adviser practice management offering, WealthConnect.

"Our goal is to provide cutting-edge AdviceTech that helps eliminate the advice gap being experienced globally by significantly reducing the cost of advice. In doing so, we hope to make quality advice more accessible to a broader range of people," DeDominicis said.

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Over the past year, GBST onboarded over 20 clients to its Equate product, which offers online tools and calculators to credit unions, banks, lending institutions, and other financial services organisations.

GBST also renewed a five-year contract with an Australian Tier 1 financial services organisation for its wealth management administration platform, Composer.

Practifi chief executive Adrian Johnstone told Financial Standard that the company aims to be the "operational backbone" of an independent advice firm by offering a "fully integrated ecosystem" including sales, opportunity management, CRM, and ongoing relationship management.

"We've seen hundreds of billions of dollars of new relationships now being managed on Practifi," Johnstone said.

Lumiant chief executive Blake Wood, who took over from co-founder Santiago Burridge last year, said 2023 was a transformative year for Lumiant, achieving several milestones that strengthened its leadership position in the advice engagement space.

For example, Lumiant acquired Genivity and its HALO Assessment and introduced the Lumiant Academy and its inaugural course the 'Lumiant Advice Experience' that equips advisers with best practices and strategies to elevate the financial advice experience.

In addition to this, Lumiant formed strategic partnerships with Dennis Moseley-Williams, Concourse, and Tru Independence to expand its reach to a broader audience of advisers.

"Ultimately, we want to support advisers in delivering truly transformational, highly personalised, and meaningful advice experiences to as many clients as possible," Wood said.

"That means we need to continue to develop a platform and digital experiences that go beyond the traditional investment-centric and goals-based planning experiences and look for ways we can improve a client's overall wellbeing. Designing compelling, engaging, and transformational digital advice experiences that help define, co-create, and guide clients to live their best lives."

Wood also pointed out that with fewer advisers joining the industry, it will become more challenging to replicate the experience of comprehensive advisers, especially as the industry continues to get wrapped up in the excitement of AI and other technological advancements.

"... as good as the robots are, financial advice is still intrinsically about relationships and getting clients to articulate what matters to them. Co-creating a plan that truly motivates them to take action, using tools that guide them outside of their meetings and portfolio balances," he said.

"And that's what we're about. We're here to support and enhance that human connection to ensure this essential component of financial planning isn't forgotten in our lust for technological advancement."

Ignition Advice global head of strategy and corporate services Andrew Baker said in Australia the company was pleased to play a role in assisting the Quality of Advice Review and ministerial review process to reach a strongly supportive view regarding digital advice in meeting government objectives.

Internationally, it has five major financial institutions as clients in UK / Europe with customer reach of 200 million people.

"Ignition's mission is to work with financial institutions around the world to close the advice gap, enabling them to deliver advice to many more of their customers in a fast, scalable, low cost, compliant manner," Baker said.

"Our UK and European clients are already experiencing the benefits of dramatically expanding their advice capacity, and Australian institutions have the same opportunity as they build out their future state digital advice propositions."