So, we had 36,000 financial advisors in Australia. Now we have 15,000. With the change in regulations in Australia, they were very, very hard and very, very fast. So, what that actually has done is with the clients now there's less advisors to give the advice. It is a world at the moment where we're seeing a lot of new clients coming in with higher wealth than we've ever seen due to the fact that there's less of us being able to help people and service people.

The difficult part with the new regulations is they're looking at limiting us to 300 clients plus households to service those people correctly. Because if the client is paying you a fee, they have expectations of time of reviews, indications of discussions and so on. And how can you give that personal, one-on-one service that the client expects and pays for if you have many hundreds or thousands of clients in that area?

So, that's one of the most difficult parts in our business now, because if a client comes in with more wealth than one of your clients existing, what do you do with those lower-value clients? So, in my practice at the moment, that's where I've expanded by bringing in my son as an advisor and he's now servicing my clients, Bayley. They don't have the same level of wealth, the same level of requirement of service, but also the lower amount of revenue to our practice.

And what that also does is give him the ability to learn with those clients and grow with those clients, given their age, given their balance, given their future direction in life. And he can then service them in that area, whereas I can then service my clients that have higher end wealth, higher expectations and higher requirements for their financial advice and strategy.

So that's one way that we in our practice have adjusted with regard to that requirement. And I have another lady who's an advisor, so that gives us around 900 clients that we have available through that process for new regulation of servicing your clients correctly, getting paid a fee to service them but not having access so you can't service your clients correctly.

The hardest bit is when you've got an existing client that's been with you for a number of years, many, many years, and they always say, “Roy’s my advisor, Roy’s my advisor.” And when we have to transition them to one of the other advisors, it is a difficult point. I always still say, “The friendship can stay.” But then if I ask you about work, you have to then say, “No, we need to talk to the other person in the office who's your advisor.”

What I'd actually say as part of that process is that, “I still cast my eye over what is going on, and I do have meetings with my advisors once a week to make sure that the clients that they are servicing that used to be in my portfolio are still on the same trajectory and still working the plans that we implemented many years ago.”

We know enough these days to talk to their accountant about strategic information with capital gains taxes, minimizing tax, adding value into their retirement fund. These are things that sometimes accountants don't go down that path. We talk to their solicitors and be more strategic about their wills and power of attorneys and how they want their money to go if some tragedy was to happen in that area.

So, when we're talking about those different levels and then we discuss the fee that we will be charging, the client can see the value that we're actually adding to their connection because this is an area that they don't know about. And they're releasing that to us as the financial advisor. And one of the last ones that was very heavy in our practice and why we have a lot of that back-office work is each year the client now must consent to paying us fees both in the wealth management and also their retirement management, but not only for us, but also for our dealer group or licensee.

And we have to send those forms out, and the client must sign them within 30 days, exactly what they paid me and the commission for this year and what fees they're going to pay for the following year. But what it did for the industry is it made us more professional. It gave us the opportunity to now hold our heads up very high in regard to education standards, the professionalism and making sure that we were servicing our clients to that level.

I'm 48 years old and didn't really want to go back to school, but that was one of the mandates that was a minimum requirement. So, I did do that, and I qualified and got my university degree. The other standard they brought in was to give us a national exam to make sure that all advisors were up to speed.

With changes of regulation, a lot of different countries would see that coming with what Australia has done and the United Kingdom. And with that presents difficulties if you're not prepared for the future. So, if that was to change in any other country throughout the world, these are some of the parameters that I would say today to focus on and then try and set yourself up so that if that change did come through, you've already prepared for that future change in that requirement.

With my relationship with members with MDRT, I get to share some of the values that we've had changes in the regulation within Australia. I pride myself on letting people be aware of what our industry has gone through in Australia. My recommendation there is, it doesn't matter where you're from, speak to one of your members from one of these countries to just see how much it did change their practice, change their own personal struggles with regard to change in regulation because it was daunting.

But reach out to your fellow members because the people who have gone through it can give you their experience, which will then assist you to go through the process. It was pretty cool to come out the other end.