I became involved with Super Myway as a result of my work as a financial adviser. At the time I had more than 100 clients with SMSFs and these were all administered by a various collection of accountants (about 20 in total). The biggest problem with this arrangement was a fundamental lack of access to information. For example, a client would call and ask what they had concessionally contributed to their SMSF. This would then require either myself or one of my staff to manually review the clients SMSF cash account, sum the contributions and report back to client. This exercise could take up to an hour (depending on how active the Fund was (both from an investment and contributions view point) and how many members there were. This was an extremely inefficient, manual and laborious process that was also prone to embarrassing errors that we were rarely thanked for. There were many other examples of this type of activity. So I wanted to find a SMSF administration platform that provided access to real time information across items such as contributions, pensions and estate planning (along with a host of other items), that was quite a bit more cost effective than the standard accountant arrangements and that also put me at the centre of the client relationship (so that I did not loose clients to non-aligned third parties). So I started using Super Myway’s adviser SMSF service known as IDS Super. I like the service and the technology so much, I then became a significant investor in the business and subsequent to this, I then joined the Board. The objective of Super Myway is quite straight forward – to provide exceptional software to the financial services industry to improve lives. Over time, the business has developed a number of technology platforms, however, the primary focus of commercialisation has been on SMSF.

Financial services business that specialises in direct equity wealth management.

I became a financial adviser in May 2000.Prior to that I had been working as a Chemical Engineer. A lot of people have expressed some surprise at this career change - but really, both professions involve a lot of analysis and communication of outcomes - so in my estimate, they are really not that very different. My real drive in becoming a financial adviser was a strong interest in the process of investing and understanding what made a good investment versus a poor one. My first impressions of the financial advising industry were quite poor. I was genuinely amazed at the lack of analysis rigour. As an engineer you have a duty of care to calculate and analyse the things that you were proposing. Failure to do this sufficiently could kill someone. Whereas in financial advice, it appears to be much more about the ‘vibe’ – whatever that may mean to the individual adviser at the time the advice is given. As such, from the get-go I saw this lack of rigour and discipline as an opportunity to do better and possibly raise the standard associated with financial advice. I am an advocate of direct investing. I have never warmed to the idea of selling managed fund product to my clients and abdicating investment responsibility to a faceless fund manager. To me, if a client wants a financial adviser – a portion of that ‘want’ is to do with the idea that they need someone who can actually analyse an investment (Balance Sheet, P&L, Statement of Cashflows) and provide a recommendation about why a particular company may or may not be worthy of investment. In terms of my investment business – it is called R. M. Black Morgan Management (RMBMM). RMBMM is a CAR of Patersons Securities. The business is more commonly known as Patersons East Perth. RMBMM is best regarded as a boutique investment management business (which I think means that we are quite dynamic in our provision of financial services – there is no cookie cutter approach).

This is where I started by Advisor career. I started during the depths of the Tech Bubble and to say it was a 'baptism by fire' was an understatement. But it taught me so much about investing - especially what not to do. But it was tough and I remember due to daylight saving we would have to be in the office at 6.00am. To wake up, I would take a fully cold shower - this went on for at least 6 months until my body clock had adjusted.