Chapter One
Six years in the adviser's chair
I spent six years advising clients — four of them running a financial planning practice with my father. I know exactly what it looks like when an adviser is stuck at their desk doing mandatory administration instead of preparing to bring their best thinking to tomorrow's client meetings.
The real work of financial advice — the part that matters — is the conversation. Sitting across from a client, understanding where they are, where they want to go, and using your expertise to bridge that gap. That's where advisers find meaning. That's the work they trained for.
Chapter Two
Recognised early
Along the way I was named AMP Financial Planning's New Adviser of the Year for NSW & ACT (2014) — recognition as the standout new entrant to the advice profession. It confirmed something I still believe: doing advice well is a craft, and the craft deserves protecting from everything that isn't advice.
Chapter Three
Inside the institutions
After the practice came seven years consulting to some of Australia's largest financial institutions — Deloitte, NAB, and JBWere — on large-scale regulatory, remediation and transformation programs.
That's where I learned how big organisations actually change: how to scope properly, manage risk, and deliver programs that stick. It's also where I watched millions spent on technology that never fit how people really work — a lesson I carry into every build.
Toward the end of that work, I ended up on the other side of exactly this problem. I was the end user in a working group with NAB's enterprise technology team as they built an AI system — on Cursor, the AI-development platform — to automate the manual file work my own people were doing: reading documents, running calculations and pulling the key facts out of each client file, with my team reviewing and approving every output through a stage-gated, human-in-the-loop process. I've now seen enterprise-grade, compliance-safe AI built from the inside — and Bax Advisory exists to bring that same institutional thinking to retail advice practices.
Chapter Four
Why Bax Advisory
The problem I kept seeing: practices are sitting on a real opportunity to reduce admin, free adviser time and improve the client experience. The tools exist. The challenge is knowing which to trust, how to implement them inside a licensed practice, and how to do it without creating compliance exposure.
Most practices have either tried something that didn't stick, or don't know where to start. What they need isn't another tech vendor. They need someone who understands both sides. That's the gap Bax Advisory was built to fill.
