Financial adviser administration software business, Marloo, has signed on hundreds of users across three jurisdictions just five months after launch, according to co-founder, Shakeel Lala.
Lala said the artificial intelligence (AI) based automated note-taking and client action-planning tool has been adding users at a month-on-month growth-rate of almost 50 per cent.
Launched at the Financial Advice NZ (FANZ) conference this April, the service has found support from a wide range of businesses from single-person operators through to large networks, he said.
Prior to building the software, Lala along with co-founders Hardy Michel and Ben Robertson spent six months sounding out financial advisers in NZ, Australia and the UK about the ‘pain points’ in the advice business process.
And the Marloo founders gleaned the “key insight” that advisers were spending 60 to 80 per cent of their time on mundane admin tasks – mostly in writing-up meeting notes – rather than working with clients.
While smaller firms clearly suffered from admin-overload, Lala said it was surprising “how many large groups struggle with paperwork”.
The AMP-owned AdviceFirst group (of some 50 or so advisers) is the largest Marloo client to date but bigger markets in Australia and the UK also beckon.
“We thought about this as a global product from day one,” he said.
Marloo has seven staff members – three in NZ, three in London and the Sydney-based Lala.
Earlier this month, the start-up completed a $4.6 million initial funding round – led by Blackbird Ventures – to help build-out the product further to include features such as statement-of-advice (SOAs) functionality.
According to Lala, some advisers are already using the Marloo output to create SOAs but software updates should make the process smoother.
Ultimately, he said the tool could provide real-time meeting feedback to remind advisers to cover off certain points with clients, for example.
Even in its current mode, however, Marloo appears to have hit a nerve as an advice labour-saving
“Most commonly, advisers are telling us that Marloo saves them about a day’s work every week,” Lala said.