Client Stories

About FM Mahar Financial Planning 

The team at FM Mahar advice have a client-first approach in everything they do. They are an ambitious and successful team who partner with their clients over the long term, advising and supporting them through important life changes and transitions.

The Challenge

For FM Mahar, being based in a regional area means that the talent pool for Australian team members is limited.

Prior to working with us, they had several unsuccessful attempts at hiring university graduates to work in their back-office. But they found that the ‘impatience of youth’ was hurting them, with ambitious expectations of salary and career progression creating high turnover in their team. This consistent ‘chopping and changing’ of staff created a culture of “it’s just easier if I do it myself”. The result of this was a backlog of new business and paperwork, with advisers being forced to wear too many hats to keep the business moving. 

The team at FM Mahar were starting to feel burnout, and something needed to change.

The solution

We secured a great team member for FM Mahar, who replaced an onshore team member with 10 years of financial planning industry experience. This new team member was the perfect fit and within the first few months, they were handling their role in its entirety. The success of their first hire saw them hire a second offshore team member only six months later.

The results

Working with 5 ELK hasn’t just made FM Mahar more profitable, but it has brought more stability to their back-office and kept their Australian team ‘sane’ by not forcing them to wear so many hats. Their onshore team are now focused on what they do best, with full confidence that their 5 ELK team are doing their job well.

About Hillross Horsham & Geelong

Hillross Horsham & Geelong are a highly experienced financial advice team, with over 25 years of industry experience. Hillross have a strong focus on community and are known for their highly personal and tailored approach to financial advice.

 The challenge

The ever-increasing burden of compliance saw Hillross Horsham and Geelong become bogged down by compliance and paperwork. Their business was growing strongly, but bottlenecks in their back office meant that client onboarding was slower than ever and their review process was also getting too labour-intensive. Their advisers were stressed by the extra burden they were being forced to shoulder and frustrated by how hard it was to ‘do business’.

The solution

As is the case with many businesses, their first 5 ELK team member hire became the first of many, as they unlocked the bottlenecks that were slowing down their business growth, while discovering how capable their new offshore team actually was. This saw their 5 ELK team start to take on tasks such as SOA research and paraplanning.

The results

Fast forward to today, and Hillross Horsham and Geelong no longer require outsourced paraplanning, as their 5 ELK team now do most of the heavy lifting here. Their offshore team are able to deliver over 60 ROAs per month for existing clients, on top of their daily administration tasks. It has also pleased both us and Hillross to see their 5 ELK team find and create further back-office efficiencies which have been implemented across the Australian operation as well.

With an increased ability for their Australian team to focus on growing and nurturing relationships, Hillross’ team and clients have never been happier.