Tella rolls out significant changes to MyDash and Newpark

At the core of Tella Group’s recent significant changes is technology to widen its advice business management.

As part of the move, the group’s MyDash platform is now called Intella, reflecting the change from being just a mortgage customer management relationship (CRM) program to a full advice platform, Andrew Chambers, Tella co-founder and chief executive says.

“It’s a full advice business in a box that is powered by AI to do the administration that sits around an adviser – advice records, applications, loans, insurance policies, claims, task management and client pipelines with integrated Workspace for emails and calendars.”

Chambers says it is the foundation of the business. “Intella is a native AI platform taking advisers’ information and doing the work for them. It allows us to layer everything from compliance right through to the integration of commission management.” 

He says the development of Intella has allowed the group to move more of its advisers in the Newpark network onto the platform for supervision – a request that has come from the main banks around the supervisory role.

Tella bought a controlling share in Newpark a year ago from SHARE. At the time Newpark worked with 200 advisers who settled more than $2.5 billion in mortgages each year and also provided advice on insurance and investments.

“Intella provides a advisers with a better way of providing holistic advice,” Chambers says. “A single platform, a single source of information and multiple strands of advice for a single client. It doesn’t yet have a KiwiSaver strand, but Chambers says it is coming this year.

The platform allows advisers to grow their business and become more efficient in the way they operate,” he says.

To enhance the platform further, Tella Group is working on e-lodgement with some of the banks. “We will start looking at the finance companies and hopefully over time it will work into risk and investment as well.”

Chambers says on the one hand Intella is saving time for all parties but importantly it is also closing the door on fraud issues. “Direct connection to bank statements takes out the email chains and protects advisers a bit more in terms of cybercrime and fraud. That can’t be achieved without a platform and the technology.”

AI agent

Within Intella sits AI agent Stella, which sits on Tella’s Sydney platform.

Stella was developed when Tella saw many advisers were using open AI platforms to create documents and it had no idea where they were stored.

It is encouraging advisers to do all their work in Intella so it can ringfence what is held in its database so it stays in its database.
Stella will file documents, create an email, book a meeting. ““We’ve set up Stella to be as complaint as it possibly can be. It’s like having an assistant in your home,” Chambers says. 

Meeting critical

As technology frees up advisers’ time spent on admin, Chambers says the first meeting with clients becomes critical.

During the Covid period Tella saw more remote conversations between advisers and clients, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but now more time needs to be invested in clients upfront, he says.

“That flows downstream to a much better outcome. As the initial client meeting can now be recorded an adviser can be thinking more about asking the right questions straight away. And that drives the whole process in terms of what AI can do, understanding the client and looking at options. Advisers need to spend less time on their keyboards.  

It also means advisers need to be above average at human relationships.

Advisers need to have a strong hand on the relationships they have, know their clients well, the family, the circumstances, be able to read the room, the body language and understand the psychology of advice and money in terms of what they are doing, Chambers says.

“Without being too rude to advisers, AI is doing a good job of suggesting what that advice should be,” Chambers says.

Newpark and a refresh

Another significant change is the expansion and refresh of Newpark as an advisory group. The old Newpark brand was first rolled out in 1999 and Chambers says it needed a “bit of a rethink”.

“We've done a lot of work on culture this year and where we want the group to go. We don’t want to be a low-value offering as an aggregator – here’s  a CRM, here’s quality assurance, here's accreditation for banks.

“We want to move it away from that to advisers paying a bit more, but getting more focus around education, growing the right way, full coverage in terms of compliance, and then also reintroducing risk and investment alongside mortgages.

“It’s about making sure we're able to work with full-service financial advice businesses”.

Chambers says it is a hybrid model, but it is a high trust model and understanding that is important.

Next year’s theme for Newpark is Owning the Trusted Adviser Role – knowing where the technology is going to fit versus what an adviser’s role is going to be as a financial adviser.

Finding the right advisers

While most aggregators are keen to increase their adviser base, Chamber says Tella Group doesn’t want to lift its core business at any cost.

“The group has seen decent growth, but we want advisers to be part of our ecosystem, part of our training and education, using our compliance, turning up at events, so we'd rather not grow to 500 advisers just because of the number thing.

“We'd rather grow because we're getting the right people. We lost a few advisers in the past year, but we're not unhappy about it. We don't really want advisers at all costs, we want the right ones.”