Removing barriers the Decimal point

Jan Kolbusz is the kind of technology professional manager who admits he would most likely have seen out his days in senior management if he didn't live in Perth.

But with few such top-level roles in Western Australia, Mr Kolbusz has decided to go it alone, hoping to add his company Decimal Software to a list of successful Perth-based companies that would easily feature in a financial services technology hall of fame, if one existed.

Decimal is offering an online product that automates much of the fact-finding that burdens financial advisers in the heavily regulated sector.

If successful Decimal, launched this month after two years of development, will continue a strong line of local innovation in the sector that started with master fund developer, Sealcorp, in the mid-1980s.

Bought by St George Bank, Sealcorp developed Asgard. Later success stories JDV, once part of Hartley Poynton, and Sanford, both developed major online broking platforms in 1990s that were used by much of the retail industry.

A former Sealcorp employee, who left as Asgard's chief operating officer (operations and IT) two years ago to help form boutique investment advisory firm Stripe Capital, Mr Kolbusz has used his experience in the sector to develop his product.

Decimal has also raided the Sealcorp family for key people in its small workforce.

Former Sealcorp marketing head and WA Business News 40under40 winner Fiona Kalaf has joined up after spending time at Commonwealth Bank and HBF. Another former senior Sealcorp staffer, Peter Yin, heads the operational side of the business.

All have experience in the service provision end of the financial advice market and Decimal has used this to develop a solution to one of financial planners' and wealth managers' biggest headaches - filling in forms.

"The documentation is intimidating," Mr Kolbusz said.

Rising regulation to protect consumers has resulted in a huge obstacle for those providing financial advice, the Statement of Advice, which must be filled in before financial planners and their peers can actually start to offer advice.

Mr Kolbusz said the problem for advisers was they had to undertake a significant amount of work before they actually signed up a client, making such an investment in time risky and potentially unproductive.

He said Decimal did much of the hard work by taking some simple data, such as salary and age, and then automatically filling out the form using Australian Bureau of Statistics demographic averages that best matches the small amount of information provided.

Using an engine that can carry out up to 50 million calculations, it creates a range of options the user can then narrow by refining the information provided.

The system will be offered for free to advisers, or they can pay a licence fee to provide consumer access to the system via their own websites, allowing potential clients to experiment by providing limited information.

While consumers will get some form of limited feedback, the adviser will have a starting point from which to start consulting.

Mr Kolbusz said the system would help advisers with the first step in gaining clients and was not designed to provide online advice.

He said the process was aiming to take away the biggest barrier for advisers and clients getting together - the need to fill out forms with sensitive information.

"We are not tempting people to be self-investors," Mr Kolbusz said.

"You can't build technology that totally supersedes professional advice.

"Decimal doesn't make decisions for the advisers, it doesn't present preferences or prejudices, it takes away the arduous work.

"We just do the bit that a computer can do well, and that is where we draw the line."

Decimal is funded by WA-based angel investors unrelated to the sector, and Mr Kolbusz said the business had had between six and 10 people working on the project for two years, aiming for an industry wide solution rather than attempting to develop for a specific niche.

He said this approach allowed for a mass-marketed version, which would be cheap for individual users. The free adviser service would be carry advertising as its revenue stream.

The interface was built to be functional for non-tech savvy users, reflecting the advisory demographic as much as the potential consumer market.