Tim Steele, Chief Executive Officer, Class Pty Ltd
Now that I have been with Class a couple of months, I would love to share a few thoughts and insights. I have spent time with as many customers and partners as I can, listening and learning on how we can deliver even better outcomes for you.
One of the highlights of my first few weeks was running a Think Tank with several customers. These sessions also proved to reinforce our commitment to investing in our solutions to continue to deliver better financial futures for our customers.
Class has kicked off the new financial year strongly, thanks to the commitment and support of our customers and partners, but we’re keen to do much more. We remain focused on my five key priorities to build on for the future success of Class and our customers:
- Focus on the core, including enhancing our existing market-leading solutions.
- Enhance our customer engagement, by investing in more training and education, to achieve better outcomes for our customers.
- Collaborate across the Group to develop innovative, new solutions.
- Listen, learn and collaborate with our industry partners to grow the SMSF market for all.
- Investing in our people and continuing to be an employer of choice.
Building Momentum
Our new appointments to the Class leadership team have already made progress to deliver even greater outcomes for you. Like me, they are keen to spend more time with our customers and partners.
- Gary Cox, GM Class.
- Tracy Williams, GM NowInfinity.
- Tom Sargent, GM Data/HUBConnect.
- Jo Hurley, GM Growth.
- Panos Alexandratos, Chief Solutions Officer.
Class Trust Tax lodgment
In May, we announced that we were first to market with the release of Electronic Trust Lodgment functionality as part of Class Trust. This provides accountants with a new powerful and seamless end-to-end solution for automating the preparation and lodgment of tax returns. This functionality is now generally available. Class also worked with Analytst house IBRS to support soon to be released market research to quantify the benefits of Trust Management automation and its role in fuelling growth. Stay tuned!
The Class Annual Benchmark Report
Our annual Class Benchmark Report was recently launched, which monitors the SMSF sector by analysing our data sets and comparing them across a range of financial years. It’s also my first as CEO and I’m very excited to be involved in such an important industry initiative. I also enjoyed the recent webinar with Peter Burgess and Meg Heffron to deep dive into the report.
This year, we looked at several trends including how Millennials are transforming the future of SMSFs, the impact on the industry of the new requirement for Director IDs, and the initial frustration with rollover requests. We also examine how the global environment is changing – thanks largely to rising inflation, low growth, and higher interest rates – and where ETFs and managed funds fit for members wanting greater global diversification.
Thanks also to our customer contributors for providing their invaluable insights:
- Meg Heffron, Heffron.
- Chris Homer, Supervision Group.
- Aaron Dunn, Smarter SMSF.
- Matt Leibowitz, Stake Super.
- Shelley Banton, ASF Audit.
- Evan Lucas, InvestSmart.
Finally, I was also pleased to see Class Super has been named the most popular SMSF administration software among competitors in Netwealth AdviceTech Buyers Choice 2022.
I look forward to meeting with even more of you over the coming months.
