Video From performance to purpose: becoming a Wellbeing Maximiser

(00:01): Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to day two of Aegon's Financial Wellbeing Live sessions. I'm delighted today to be joined by Dr. Tom Mathar, who heads up our behavioural research team up in Edinburgh. Tom does extensive research working with a number of academics and faculties around the world of behavioural research. And today's session centers around much of that research and the role of the wellbeing maximiser. And Dr. Tom will define that in more detail for you. As always, we will wrap this up in a festive bow of CPD and ensure that link is made available to you. And that will be credited for half an hour today, further session tomorrow.

(00:46): For those of you who weren't here yesterday, my name is Justin Towlson. I'm one of the sales directors within the Aegon Group. So thank you for supporting again today. And for those who weren't here yesterday thank you for attending. There'll be opportunities to pose questions through the chat bar, and we'll pick those up at the end of the session, and then we'll make appropriate follow up with any material and support thereafter. So, with no further ado, I'd like to pass you over to Dr. T, and I'll let him run through today's session with you.

(01:17): That's great. Thank you so much Justin. And thank you everyone for dialing into this session here in Financial Wellbeing Week. I'm conscious that for many financial wellbeing may sound like cushions and candles but I hope to be able to offer a bit of method and systematic-ness, so to enable you to think this through systematically and apply financial wellbeing for your advisory firm's benefit as well. I am hopefully sharing slides now and run you very quick through the agenda.

(01:51): We have four objectives today, there's just three showing here. We're first looking into why people get financial advice in the first place, and you might think that's a stupid question, but I want to get under the skin of this a little bit. We're then looking into financial wellbeing, what it is and why you want to apply it.

(02:10): And at the heart of today's presentation will be a focus on how to deliver financial wellbeing. Perhaps you've seen me speak on tools we're developing at Aegon. Today I want to focus on something quite simple and, and potentially, you know, banal. And that's good questions that you can ask at different points in the client relationship so as to improve the wellbeing agenda and on that path to wellbeing maximization rather than performance maximization.

(02:41): So let's dive right in and let's look into why people seek financial advice in the first place. Now if you ask people, you know, why, why they, why they get, why they seek financial advice, of course, you know, you get a hardnosed answer and it's because, you know, it's things that are here on this page. You know, it's because I needed help with estate planning or with retirement planning, or I had insurance needs, et cetera.

(03:08): And that sounds plausible, of course. And of course, that's an objective or utilitarian reason for why people seek financial advice. But then when you meet a client first time, they hardly ever say something like this, I want to accumulate a portfolio of 2 million pounds by age 60 by doing X, Y, and Z. okay. Now, if this is what the clients want, and granted, you know, in some cases that may very well be the case, then technical knowledge and solid communication skills are all an adviser needs. And in fact you know, this is what we often assume a client wants. Chris Budd, who I'm interviewing tomorrow, by the way, when we're speaking about market volatility and how to address clients in times of market volatility Chris, obviously also is the chair and founder of the Institute for Financial Wellbeing.

(04:02): Now, according to Chris Budd, 95% of objectives identified in suitability letters is along the lines, is along the lines of, your objective is to beat inflation with our investments by accessing our portfolios. okay. So, frankly, in my view, that is missing the point because oftentimes clients want something else, and you will be aware of this because you're meeting clients and clients when they present their objectives or when they, you know, discuss why they are here meeting you why they're wanting financial advice. They're often expressing goals in much more wellbeing or quality of life oriented ways. Okay. Yes, money is important, but they need the money to satisfy a deeper need. So there are, again, utilitarian you know, reasons or issues underlying these statements, but they're also more subjective needs. And I think this is really, really important to bear in mind and to consider in financial advice because financial advice won't be successful or will be missing the point if these things are not being addressed.

(05:16): Another thing is that as well, that there are emotional reasons for why people seek financial advice. So we have sort of wellbeing and quality of life oriented goals, but there are also emotional reasons underlying the, the, the arch or the desire to involve a financial adviser in the financial plan. So these could be things like this, what we have here on this page to save time or to reduce complexity. And, you know, I've done some research, but it's also overwhelming to, to offload unpleasantries, to increase confidence, to validate choices, to overcome analysis paralysis. okay. All these things are really, really important to understand. They are emotional reasons for why people seek financial advice. They go far beyond the utilitarian or hardnosed reasons that perhaps we typically think of when we seek to understand, or when, when we think about why people want financial advice.

(06:15): Now, I well, we at Aegon came up with this contrast of the performance maximiser versus the wellbeing maximiser. And I will say, granted, this is perhaps a bit of an unfair contrast, but it helps me develop that argument. Performance maximiser is that classic alpha type adviser that you know, many advisers have grown into. And that arguably also many clients and prospective clients have been educated is financial advice about so it's about performance. So the, the performance of a policy portfolio versus a benchmark portfolio, it's about asset allocation, investing assets in line with risk appetite, and capacity for loss and health span, and all those, you know, objectively measurable things. And then of course, to offer all this at a really good sort of cost point or value for money, you know, considering the amount of work, considering the, the skill and knowledge that goes into creating investment plans.

(07:20): We are offering this at a, at a really good cost point, okay. The wellbeing maximiser, on the other hand, is someone who doesn't so much focus on investment performance, but considers the plan's longer life goals, okay. Their ambitions, their emotions, considers their values, considers their biases, considers all those things that essentially make us human. In fact I use this term, human centricity a few times, you know, that this is a kind of human centered advice. And when you take a step back and look perhaps at consumer duty you see that we are being nudged that way to become more human centric, if you will. So, in fact this is, this is my interpretation going off a tangent here very quick, but it's perhaps useful to sort of contextualize where we actually are and why this is so relevant.

(08:17): We have in my observation, had two major reforms in financial service regulation in 2008, or the immediate aftermath of 2008, we moved from product centric to customer centric. So before 2008, it was all about the, profitability of the product. It was about the features, it was about their, the risks associated with it, et cetera. Then we moved, we all know why, in the aftermath of 2008 to customer centricity. So it was all about we need to convey and we need to educate around those risks so that clients know this. And it's not just some, you know, us sort of experts in the field who understand that. And with that also, you know, we have the rise of customer research departments and inside teams within the big service providers, we have the rise of behavioural science, et cetera. And now what is happening, I think is a shift, a further shift from customer centricity to human centricity.

(09:17): What I mean by that is that it's no longer good enough to consider the client, the recipient of a service or the recipient of a product, which is what you do when you reduce the human to a customer. But we've got to appreciate that that customer has emotions, has beliefs, has values, has vulnerabilities, has context factors. All those things enable him, enable them or, or, or impede them. And it is something that we've got to consider when we are creating financial products or indeed financial services or when we are creating a plan for our, clients. okay. So the wellbeing maximized, I think is some, someone who understands that, who understands that need for human centricity, and who on top of all the more sort of like hardnosed functional technical components of financial advice, also has a lot of human centered knowledge and skills from psychology, from behavioural science, perhaps from neuroscience, et cetera, okay.

(10:22): To work with these things and consider all those things when building a long term financial plan. Now, I guess, you know, the point in essence is this, that many of the tasks a financial adviser would've done in the past, things like asset allocation, stock picking, et cetera, many of these things have become automated. And for a large number of households, these automated solutions to a sort of good enough job, and hence, the adviser isn't needed that much anymore for that investment part. The adviser is much more needed to educate and coach the client and the ambition to meet long-term goals, okay. The fact is, our lives are so much more complicated nowadays compared to a generation ago. We live longer, healthier lives. We don't typically live this three stage life anymore comprised of education, career, and retirement. We have more transition points need to reeducate, need to take time out to take care of an elderly relative redundancy as a result of AI or robots, et cetera.

(11:25): Advisers of the future will help clients with financial advice they have to make to meet their long-term goals and help along the way with all those trade-offs that people have got to make that, as I say, I'm not just financial trade-offs, but there are trade-offs where, you know, a financial component has to be traded off with impacts on quality of life today as well as tomorrow and beyond. Now, I think many advisers get that but perhaps this is my observation anyway, many perhaps lack the confidence or lack the methods and means to think this through systematically. And that's where our concept of financial wellbeing comes in, because we offer exactly that, a lot of systematic-ness and method when thinking through long-term goals. Now, we have, perhaps you have seen this before, developed this understanding and this definition of financial wellbeing. And this is not to say that this is the one and only definition of financial wellbeing, but of course, when we did come to join that debate on financial wellbeing, it's been a hot potato for the last four or five years or so.

(12:30): When we did come to that, we felt that perhaps a few aspects are being underappreciated when, typically when we talk about financial wellbeing, we look at short-term needs and financial resilience, really. Okay. And what was missing in the discussion was, well, the long-term component of financial planning, but also mindset, mindset components, okay. And that this is really what you see there on the right hand side of our model of financial wellbeing, where we say, you know, you cannot have a high degree of financial wellbeing if you do not have an understanding of the things that make you happy, okay. The things that give you joy, the things that give you gratification, the things that give you relaxation on the one hand, on the other hand, the things that make you feel useful, that make you feel worthwhile, that make you feel competent, et cetera, those things.

(13:20): You cannot have a high degree of financial wellbeing if you are solely focusing on the pressures and needs of your present self, okay. You also have to have some sort of connection to your future self and have a vivid and concrete connection to what the needs requirements. But also, you know, day in, day out everyday life of your future self might be, and be sort of intrinsically motivated to that. We see as people who have that long-term mindset, that long-term mental time horizon, they show a completely different type of financial conduct. We look into social comparisons because there's a lot of research to show that how much you possess is less important than how much you think you possess in comparison to others. This is brought to life beautifully with a study that comes out of Switzerland that shows that life satisfaction is lower in those parts of the country where there's a high registration of Porsche and Ferraris.

(14:17): Okay. These upwards, that's the point. These upwards social comparisons that can really bog us down. The problem is we cannot not compare, but we can compare more wisely. And that is something that you as an adviser can use very much when, for example, referring to role models or when providing better comparisons so as to encourage certain type of financial conduct. The question also is, in as far, what intrinsically motivates you, what intrinsically drives you is translated into a long-term financial plan, and what quality that financial plan exists, if at all it does exist, okay. Is it just in your head? Is it in Excel sheet somewhere? Is it something you've written down that are reworking regularly, et cetera? And then lastly, we look into a strong mindset in times of crisis. We think this is quite important because crisis, of course, is something that well, in a way, we've, we've become used to, and we've had our fair share of crisis political crisis, economic crisis, financial crisis.

(15:18): Chances are that amongst your advisers as a group, that would've been the odd sort of personal crisis, be that illness or divorce, et cetera. The point is that I mentioned it before, we live longer, healthier lives. It is almost inevitable that we will experience some sort of crisis along the way. okay. The question is, at the moment when crisis hits you, not if, but when it hits you, how are you both financially but also mentally prepared for it? And do you throw everything overboard? Or are you sort of, you know, long-term thinker who with a sort of, this too shall pass attitude, and I concentrate on the things that are in my control, and I forget about the things that are not in my control? Again, an adviser can do tremendous amount of work here to support that, that type of mindset.

(16:01): Now, what we've done over the course of the summer actually we've interviewed 10,000 people. They weren't Aegon customers. It was a nationally representative study conducted in the UK. So representative across the genders, across the age groups, across the regions across the fact, you know, whether they have an adviser or if they do not have an adviser, or if they only occasionally work with a financial adviser. And that allowed us to measure the financial wellbeing situation in the UK. okay. So how financially well is the UK And we could ask the questions in a way that allowed us to quantify these these money and mindset building blocks that I've brought up. So we see five money building blocks and five mindset building blocks, and we ask those questions in a way that allows us to assign up to 10 points to each of those blocks.

(16:55): And what we see when we ask those questions, is that in the general public and general, the average number of points you would expect that kind of is 51. Yeah. So it's right in the middle, as I say, it's the average. So it's comprised also of 25 mindset points and 26 money points. But by the way, there was a bit of good news actually in that statistic because we are doing this now for four, five years, and we found that both the money and mindset situation hasn't changed as much as perhaps we would've expected following you know, the cost of living crisis. We were right in, or perhaps just at the end of when we conducted that study. So, so it was quite you know, hopeful, perhaps optimistic even.

(17:45): But the really interesting point, I think, is that we can, of course, contrast the financial wellbeing situation of the general public with the financial wellbeing situation of those who have a financial adviser. And what we see is that the financial situation, financial wellbeing situation of those with the financial adviser is better compared to the general public, but it is perhaps not as much better as you would expect, especially on the mindset side. okay. So when you look here, we have combined at 70 points comprised of 38 money points and 32 mindset points. So really the improved financial wellbeing situation comes about, mostly because of what's happening on the financial, on the money side, not so much because of what's happening on the mindset side. So, again, you know, differently put, this means that just because you have a financial adviser doesn't necessarily mean that you have a better understanding of what gives you joy and what gives you purpose.

(18:42): It doesn't necessarily mean that you have a longer mental time horizon. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're less likely to be bogged down by the wrong types of social comparisons. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have a much more resilient mindset in times of crisis. What we incidentally found where most of the difference comes from between the advised and the non-advised population is that those who have a financial adviser, perhaps unsurprisingly, but perhaps also fortunately, they're much more likely to have a long-term financial plan. okay. it's kind of what you would expect, but certainly I think it hints at an opportunity of where financial advisers can actually make a bit of a difference and can help, their clients when improving their financial wellbeing. So what I would say what this means in practice is that you're focusing much less on those things that perhaps you were educated or have educated your clients to be focusing on, which is, you know, focus on products and investments when you know, first introducing yourself.

(19:49): You would perhaps talk about your credentials, you would talk about your capabilities, your knowledge, et cetera, and you would promote your experience and maximizing wealth. That I think, is that value proposition of the performance maximiser of the past. And what we're shifting to is a model whereby we are seeking to understand clients much more at a deeper level. I mentioned it before, you know, we are needing to understand emotional reasons and the quality of life related reason for why adviser, why clients actually sought to reach out to a financial adviser in the first place. We've got to spend much more time identifying aspirations, values, or principles, long-term goals, okay. And really, instead of focusing how much you've increased wealth, look at how much you've increased peace of mind, like how you've given people more time and how as well, you've given people more money, which I think is a great value proposition, by the way.

(20:47): Everyone wants more money, everyone wants more time, everyone wants more peace of mind. So that's something that you know, you can offer as part of that value proposition. In terms of, you know, when creating a plan, this is something I mocked up here. You know, why not create a plan that looks more something like that? okay. So something that does consider you know, prominently captures a client's values or their principles what intrinsically motivates them as well as their financial situation, okay. And in this example also, this is something that lays out next steps, including what a client can do. That again, reflects both their finances and what's important to them at a more human level.

(21:39): I will plug this in very quick. We did a bit of research now in, in January, it would've been two years ago, where we interviewed 250 advisers, and we worked with that contrast of the performance maximiser versus the wellbeing maximiser. We were asking advisers how much they consider themselves to be a wellbeing maximiser versus how much they consider themselves to be a performance maximiser. And perhaps more interesting than the share of advisers who plotted themselves at either end of the scale. More interesting than that is how those who consider themselves wellbeing maximisers and those who consider themselves performance maximisers answered a subsequent set of questions. And what became apparent here was that those who are wellbeing maximisers, they're much more likely to report high profit margins. They're much more likely to get referrals, and they're much more likely to be optimistic about their business's future.

(22:37): As I said, this was conducted now nearly two years ago, I would hypothecate that the share of wellbeing maximisers who report high profit margins and who get the referrals and who are also optimistic about their business's future is even higher. Now, compared to the performance maximiser, because what I'm hearing a lot from advisers, and perhaps you experienced that as well, is that many clients are worried about what's happening in the markets and are questioning, you know, the return on investment are questioning the fees and are suggesting, and perhaps even doing it that cash is better, okay. And they're moving out, they're disinvesting moving into cash. Now, I think this is perfectly plausible and is perfectly understandable When the client has been educated, that performance is everything that matters. And I would hypothecate that the wellbeing maximiser, someone who has educated clients a lot that, you know, these things will happen.

(23:38): But what is important is to remain focused on long-term goals. And, you know, brings that to life with stories and can link back to values and aspirations for example, with phrases like, yeah, well, yes, markets may be down by 10% or 15%, but you are not down 10 or 15% against your objectives, okay. And here's why. You can lay that out. You can link that back better to, you know, a life plan. And the story is much less, is much more decoupled from what's happening in the markets. You're much more seen as a financial coach, as a guide, as someone who is helping them make the right choices. Along the way.

(24:20): I want to, I have only five minutes left or so I will rush through this very quick. This is really to say that what is the most important skill of a wellbeing maximiser is that of a listener? Okay. So this, this sounds, this sounds really, you know, easy, but it's actually really very hard. okay. We, there's tons of books out there on how to speak. There's hardly anything on how to listen. I want to offer, again, a bit of method and a bit of systematic-ness in terms of how to listen by offering this foresight model of Friedemann Schulz von Thun’s tool who says that there's always Four sides in the statement. We are always looking at the sort of factual information. What is someone factually conveying about themselves when making a statement? But there's other things. There's an appeal, there's relationship, there's self revelation, et cetera. We can think that through systematically. We will, of course, share the slides. Here's one example of how, you know, someone may be saying something like, I need a financial plan for retirement, which is the factual element of that sentence. But there are other pieces that are being conveyed.

(25:33): So really, the the point here is that when listening to what someone is saying, don't just listen at a sort of superficial level as in, you know, like, when it's my opportunity to speak, but listen to what they are when they're saying something. What they're also saying, perhaps also what they are not saying, okay, what they're saying at a deeper level. It's really quite difficult, but you can train that as something that can be learned in this particular model, is an example. Overall, the two things I would say, as a rule of thumb stand out are really important so as to get to know the client. And the, the thing you should be filtering for when, when, when meeting a prospect or when having a review meeting with a client or different points at different points in the relationship is what is it they disclose about themselves, makes them happy?

(26:25): Along those variables I mentioned before, what is it that makes their life enjoyable? And what is it that makes their life meaningful, but also listen to their time horizon. Okay. This is very, very, very important as an industry, we are used to being, to, to thinking long term. We understand compound interest only works over the period of like 10 years or 15 years or something, okay. Many clients find that awfully hard because they're finding it hard to even think about what's up in a year's time. Okay. So this is something I would say is a key skill, a key approach that wellbeing maximisers have, and that is stretching people's mental time horizons to help them more meaningfully and concretely connect to their future self of in two years, five years, 10 years and 20 years. Here's some ideas how you can do that.

(27:16): I want to very briefly provide some ideas. I only have a couple more minutes left, but I want to speak about the power of good open questions. Okay. So, and I wanted to say that before that about the listening, because a, a good question only becomes a good question if you know that you've also got to like listen for the right things or filtering for the right things and, and the right quantity, the right amount after having asked the, the, the, the, the, the good question. okay. So here's an, here's an example of what might be a good question to ask when meeting a client or when meeting a prospect. First time, this is the question here, what brought you in today? Okay. Which is a really non-confrontational, simple question that provides the client with the floor to share whatever is on their mind, okay.

(28:09): It allows them to, to take the lead, set the tone, and provide a broad overview of what's in their mind. You know, speaking about emotional reasons, motivations, anxieties, et cetera. That may be okay. So you're signaling by asking that story and then leaning back, you know, inviting that feedback, you're signaling to the client you're genuinely interested in hearing their story. The other good question to ask is why now? Okay. Because the factors, of course, they could have reached out yesterday. They could have reached out a week ago. They could have reached out a month ago. They did. So now, why, okay. And I think this may potentially be a really good question to invite feedback data points on the more sort of emotional drivers. I mean, many of you will be aware of the client leaving the meeting room or the prospective client leaving the meeting room and feeling almost like the visit to the dentist is over because there's so much emotional strain and anxiety in meeting the financial adviser first time.

(29:09): And I think that why question may be one to sort of invite that that, that, that revelation of deeper emotional drivers during fact find. I, again, I just pick a couple of questions here. How do you feel when you think about your financial future? But actually, let me pick this one here. If you found out that you received 10 million pounds, but you only have 10 years to live, what would the next 10 years of your life look like? What would you do and what would you stop doing? This is a variation of the Kinder question you may be aware of which allows you to help the client think through their goals and priorities in life, and of course, you know, associate and link them with a financial component. And, and, and your role then will later be to educate them about how their financial choices will bring them closer to or potentially further away from these goals.

(30:04): I will you know what, I will stop here. We will of course share the deck. There's a few more slides here on questions you could ask when providing those recommendations that you crafted on the back of meeting them first time as well as questions you can take into a client review meeting. But I will stop here and invite discussion. I will say as well that we have more material on our website something that we will be very happy to share and invite you to explore further. There's also a new LinkedIn page that we've only recently launched, where more of the stuff that comes out of my center for behavioural research you know, both small and big, you know, small as in these examples that I've provided. Just good questions you can ask, on your journey to becoming a wellbeing maximized as well, some of the bigger tools that we are developing so as to help people develop a long-term mindset. But I will stop here to invite a bit of discussion or in fact feedback, if you wanna knock me down with a sharp blow do that as well. I'm, I'm happy to discuss that.

(31:20): Thanks, Tom. Great session. Really appreciate that as always. If ladies and gentlemen, you've got any questions, there is a chat bar that you can just stick them in. I've got one that probably for you to consider Tom, or to give you feedback on. And I know we're doing a session on market volatility tomorrow, which is all apparent, probably a big challenge for many of the advisers on the call. The other big piece though is around consumer duty. And, and do you see consumer duty and the impact of that legislation enforcing change and, and that movement to more being a wellbeing maximiser and away perhaps from that, that performance overlay?

(31:59): Yes, absolutely. And, and that's along the lines that I, that I indicated, because really what the key difference of the wellbeing maximiser is the human-centric approach. Yeah. The appreciation that we have, emotions that we have, motivations that we have, beliefs that we have values, that we have habits that there are context factors you know, like the families or the communities we're living in or the comparisons that we have, et cetera. All those things are really, really important to consider vulnerabilities another example. Okay. Really, really important to consider. And the wellbeing maximiser, of course, is sensitized for that. Okay. And shows a lot of empathy and, you know, considers that in their plan. And that I think is something, you know, that in essence, Consumer Duty invites us to think about. When you, when you look at the text of Consumer Duty, there's a lot of behavioural insight, a lot of psychological insight, a lot of neurological insight in there, okay.

(33:04): Being considered in the legislation when they talk about, you know, we need to measure how customers under how your clients understand the, the documentation. Okay. They, they talk about you can't just give them this is not their words, but me paraphrasing. You can't just give them a 40 page T and C document and expect them to understand you need to be appreciative of them being humans. And humans are, humans are not reading that sort of stuff. okay. So not, not reading it in the way that a legal expert would be reading it. okay. So that's really what consumer duty does. It is nudging us to become human-centric. And that's why it's very much paving the way, in my view, for that approach of the wellbeing maximiser.

(33:48): Great. I like that phrase, nudging to become human-centric. And just one other one, Tom, and this is more personal. You talk about that longer term visualisation of, you know, your joy and purpose. I mean clearly by my gray hair and bags under my eyes, I'm a certain age profile, and I'm starting to look further down the down the line, sort of next steps. Have you got any practical tips on how you look beyond that, say, 6, 9, 12 month window? How you look at that longer term?

(34:18): Yeah, so I guess the first thing I would do is I would pick them up where they are, okay. I think this is, this is quite important. So if their, if their current mental time horizon only stretches to six months, then it is pointless to be encouraging them to think about, you know, 20 years out. Because that's too much of a mental leap. Okay. you wanna do, so gradually when they speak about the, when you hear your clients speak quite vividly about next year's holiday, for example but quite vaguely about retirement, then that is indicative of, you know, they have a mental time horizon that is perhaps, you know, for a year. But you know, there's something, there's a gap between next year and what's happening 15 years. So gradually stretch that mental time horizon. Okay, you talked about holidays in a year's time. What about holidays in two years time? Okay. And do so gradually to like, listen where they are, and then gradually sort of stretch it out, okay, stretch it out to 10, 10, 15 years, whatever the advisable time horizon.

(35:25): Thanks that, that was, that was really useful. There's no other questions coming up. So I think probably

(35:31): I think we have a couple actually, Justin,

(35:32): Oh, have you got a couple? Sorry, I'm looking in the wrong box too far away.

(35:36): Yeah, let me just, sorry, let me bring it up here.

(35:47): Apologies. Sorry, I saw something coming in. Let me just find it very quick. I see here many clients are still hyper-focused on the performance and measure this partly as it is objective. How do you explain the value of wellbeing when it is so subjective? Okay. Now, the first thing I would say here is that yeah, absolutely. I mean I get it. So I think the problem here in part is that clients have been educated that this is what the, what the financial advice is for. Yeah. So this is what I mentioned before, that clients have been educated that investment performance, asset allocation, costs, these things are really important. And this is now, you know, how they measure success. Okay. As a result I would use a narrative whereby you look back first and look at the financial plan that you created and the journey that you had, and why you crafted that journey.

(36:54): Okay. So as to, I think you want to come to that narrative that, yes, this year performance is bad, and yes, this year performance is down by whatever it is. You know, we've lost we've lost 50,000 pounds or whatever it is. Okay. But see the bigger picture, okay, see the longer journey that we are on and that, that we have been on together, and you see that our our performance against your long-term goals isn't down by that percentage. Okay. So bring it in by highlighting the things that you know, are important to that particular, to that particular client, to, yeah to educate, raise awareness. It's not just about that, it's not just about that market piece. It is about the financial decisions we have to make along the way so as to get to this point where we are now and today, financial wellbeing is subjective.

(37:53): But I will say there is a lot of good signs out there. What I mentioned here, for example on the happiness research with joy and purpose, this has been heavily influenced by the work we did together with LSE London School of Economics, a happiness research and behavioural scientist who on the back of a lot of research has identified that it's about a sort of equal measure of purpose moments and pleasure moments. This is, this is something that I think is very relatable, very practical and tangible. And hence something we are working with. I agree, it is often at times subjective and it's perhaps, you know, a question as old as humankind. But it is still something that you can work through systematically and methodologically which I think is really important when you're trying to, you know, bring it to life and convey that you are an expert in that, that this is something that you're considering when building financial plans.

(39:00): Thanks, Tom. And thanks very much for the questions. Now, I've worked out the the chat bar. I can't see any more questions but correct me if I'm wrong. But again, just thank you for your time, Tom, thank for your great insight. And to everybody who's dialed in today, thank you so much for, for giving up your time. As we say, we'll put the CPD link on there, and there'll be an invite if you haven't already had it to tomorrow's session, which actually goes further into that market volatility and market performance, which unfortunately is all apparent at the moment. But just could do with some stability around that. But I think that if, unless there's anything else, Tom, that'd be a really good place to end the call today. So thank you all for your attendance. Again.