National Affiliation Conference

Brentnalls Conference April 2024

By Matthew Holden, Managing Partner

8 May 2024

Over the course of 3 days in April 2024, a few of the leaders at Brentnalls SA attended the bi-annual Brentnalls Affiliation Conference.

These conferences provide a great opportunity for us to learn from fellow professionals, and we always leave with a long action list to implement back home.

Starting on Wednesday, April 17, the attendees broke out into different sessions, including the tax specialist group and business advisory group, where we shared knowledge and stories with the other affiliation firms. Also on Wednesday, a panel session organised by the "Women in Brentnalls" committee provided an opportunity to learn from some of the new equity owners of the member firms on their career journey so far. This included Wade Crane from Brentnalls SA, who spoke about his start here as an undergraduate in January 2017 and his progression to being a leader and equity owner of the firm.

On Thursday, a packed schedule had us learn from our respective firms via practice updates, whereby each firm shares information about practice matters, such as marketing, systems & processes, & HR issues. A great opportunity to learn from each other's successes (and mistakes – although these are few!).

We also heard from guest speakers, including demographer Simon Kuestenmacher, who gave a session on ‘Demographic shifts: navigating new customer values in a changing nation’, and Alan Fitzgerald, who is a specialist in IT systems and processes for accounting firms, and gave a session on ‘Putting the Relationship back in Client Relationship Management & AI’. In addition, we heard from Nick Zouros from FYI Docs, which is a new & innovative document management system that we have implemented over the last 2 years. Nick presented further enhancements they are looking at providing for firms like ours.

On Friday, James Mason from Mindshop hosted a session on ‘Advisors of the Future’, and Robyn Jacobsen from the Tax Institute provided a session on new and upcoming changes in tax for our clients and ourselves as a practice.

The conference was held in Melbourne, and it was wonderful to learn and share with fellow affiliates.