Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Yellow Brick Road Holdings Limited (ASX:YBR) CEO, Matt Lawler
 
 
Carolyn Herbert: Yellow Brick Road Holdings Limited (ASX:YBR) is a full service wealth management company with a goal of bringing quality financial advice to all Australians. I’m Carolyn Herbert and joining me at the CEO Sessions in Sydney is the company’s CEO, Matt Lawler.  Matt, welcome to FNN.
 
Matt Lawler: Thanks Carolyn.
 
Carolyn Herbert: Can you start by giving us an introduction to Yellow Brick Road?
 
Matt Lawler: As you said, Yellow Brick Road is a wealth management company and our goal, as established by our Executive Chairman and founder, Mark Bouris is to give quality affordable advice to all Australians. So we saw an opportunity in the marketplace that not every Australian was getting good quality advice. In many respects, financial planning was actually the exclusive domain of very wealthy people, or retirees. And we felt that the 25 to 50 year old market was not really getting the quality of advice that it deserved. And that was why the company was established, that’s what Mark is very passionate about and that’s what all our people are very passionate about.
 
Carolyn Herbert: What makes you different to other providers?
 
Matt Lawler: I guess many providers in the marketplace are leading with a very specific product. So they’re more interested in the product transaction than they are in looking at the customer, from a holistic point of view. So we look at the customer in a broader way. What are they trying to achieve, what are their hopes and their dreams? And then we use our expertise and our knowledge, about all of the financial services products, to see what products are suited to the client.
 
Carolyn Herbert: So as an example, how do your loan products compare to say that of the big banks?
 
Matt Lawler: Mortgages are our core offering obviously, because in the 25 to 50 year old space, that is the biggest financial services issue that they’re dealing with. So our offering in that space, we do a couple of things. First of all, we can broker the market, which means that we can access all of the lending products that are in the marketplace. But we very specifically brand our own products under either Yellow Brick Road brand or Vow, which is our other customer acquisition business.
 
We branded in our brand and we’re always trying to position that at the leading edge of the pricing, amongst the four majors. So we want to be competitive with the four majors, because they are currently 85 per cent of the marketplace, and we know many of our customers will have loans there. We want to make sure that we’re very competitive in that space.
 
Carolyn Herbert: How have your new products addressed gaps in the market, what has been introduced and what is planned?
 
Matt Lawler: As I was talking about, we’re not just interested in the transaction of a mortgage with our clients. So we’re trying to understand what does a 30 to 40 year old, what are the issues they’re addressing in terms of their financial services? So once we’ve dealt with the mortgage, which is their core issue, we’re then starting to have a look at what are some of the other things that they need to address. Things like insurance, things like savings and investment savings, but there’d also be superannuation as well.
 
So we’ve specifically designed products that are very easy for this market to take out. A good example of that is our new life insurance product, called Loan Protect. It is a relationship that we have with MetLife, which is one of the world’s largest insurers. That is a very easy product for someone to take out, immediately after they’ve taken on a big debt in their mortgage. For example, $400,000 is the average mortgage that an Australian will take out at the moment. That’s a huge debt. We want to make sure that if anything goes wrong, they’ve got enough life insurance to put in place. That’s a very simple thing to do, it doesn’t take a long time to do, but we want to make sure that’s in place for them.
 
Other things that we do, we offer full financial planning as well. So if clients want their full circumstances reviewed, we also do that with the client as well. That will take a little bit longer, because we need to review the whole market, but the client can actually pick and choose which service they’re looking for.
 
Carolyn Herbert: What’s the company’s client acquisition strategy?
 
Matt Lawler: Many people will know Yellow Brick Road from some of the advertising we do, and our involvement in the Celebrity Apprentice. That’s a very strategic investment for us with our partner Channel Nine, who also is a shareholder. What that allows us to do is to get the Yellow Brick Road name out, to as many people as we can. But also to make very clear what it is that we can do, and what the personality of the company is. Mark Bouris is very important to that, but over time, we’re transitioning that to a relationship with Yellow Brick Road.
 
So we generate leads out of those advertisements and that presence that we have on the show. And then also, we’re also building businesses in the local community through our Yellow Brick Road branches. But also through a recent acquisition we did, called Vow. Vow is a group of self-employed brokers that exist all around the country, managing under their own brand. And we’re growing those businesses all the time, in terms of the numbers of branches we’ve got, and also the number of brokers that work under Vow. So that gives us a really broad catchment area to talk to clients.
 
Carolyn Herbert: Taking a look at the company’s financials now. What were some of the highlights from your FY2015 results?
 
Matt Lawler: One of the big achievements for last year was the commitment we gave to the marketplace, to be underlying profit. And we were able to deliver that at $1.3 million. That was a big goal for the company, because we’ve been in growth phase for the last few years. 2015 was a huge year for us, we bought two companies, we’ve integrated those companies. And now we’re really focused on in 2016, now we’re really focused on growing the business.
 
Carolyn Herbert: Matt finally, what’s your outlook for FY2016?
 
Matt Lawler: For us it’s growth and innovation. So with the investment that we’ve made in Celebrity Apprentice, our leads are the highest that they’ve ever been. So that means our branches are talking to a lot of customers. We expect a lot of those customers to do business with us in either mortgages or insurance. So that augers well for our growth in the next couple of quarters. And of course, we’re still innovating in terms of the products and services that we’re taking to market.
 
We’ve got two products that we’re launching this month. And we’ve also recently launched Guru, which is a robo-advice tool that we’ve launched, which will give customers a better understanding in engaging what financial planning can actually do for them. And we’re really encouraging customers to go through that Guru experience.
 
Carolyn Herbert: Matt Lawler, thanks for the update on Yellow Brick Road.
 
Matt Lawler: Thanks Carolyn and thanks for having us.
 
 
Ends