We built the support team we spent years failing to hire.
Platinum Co PLT Pty Ltd exists because its founders lost the same argument every year: you can't buy capacity fast enough to meet demand, and you can't grow without it.
There's no shortage of clients. There's a shortage of Tuesdays.
Every principal we spoke to had tried the obvious fixes. Hire locally — three months recruiting a paraplanner who might leave in eighteen. Hire a freelancer — cheap per hour, expensive per outcome, gone without notice. Buy software — helpful, but software doesn't sit on hold to Services Australia for forty minutes.
Meanwhile the adviser register kept shrinking, the CSLR levy landed on the firms that stayed, and DBFO changed the paperwork without removing the strategy work behind it. The practices still standing are working through queues rather than pipelines.
So we lead on speed rather than savings. Whether the economics work in a given practice depends on its volumes, charge-out rates and how much recovered adviser time can actually be billed.
So we did the expensive part first
Most providers hire after you sign. It's rational — you don't carry payroll for staff nobody has bought. It's also why onboarding takes months and why the person in the pitch isn't the person doing the work.
We recruit and train ahead of demand: six weeks of Australian advice induction before anyone touches a client file, then supervised live work before placement. It costs money to hold a trained bench. It's the reason we start in a fortnight, and the reason continuity survives a resignation.
What we won't do
We don't give advice. PLTCo is not an Australian Financial Services Licensee and does not provide financial product advice or credit assistance unless formally authorised to do so. We prepare work on instruction; your adviser determines the scope, selects the strategy, decides whether the advice is appropriate and issues it. Review, approval, supervision and compliance responsibility stay with the adviser and licensee. That boundary is the product, not a limitation of it.
We also won't sell you something you don't need. If your queue is clear, we'll say so on the first call — you'll ring back when it isn't.
Four promises, each with a bill attached.
Anyone can claim standards. These cost us something, which is the only reason they're worth reading.
An Australian name on every engagement
Not a shared inbox. One Australian-based lead who knows your practice, reviews work before it reaches you, and answers the phone.
Trained before placed — never on your files
Australian advice induction, then supervised live work, before anyone is assigned to a practice.
Corrections are on us
Work that doesn't meet the standard agreed in your service schedule is corrected at our cost.
No lock-in
Thirty days' notice, any time, no exit fee, no minimum term. We keep clients by being worth keeping.
The part your responsible manager reads first.
Outsourcing sits within your licensee obligations. Here's the answer before you have to ask.
Least-privilege access
Work happens in your approved systems, on unique named user accounts with least-privilege permissions. Access is revoked when a team member leaves your engagement. We minimise copies of your data and keep work within approved environments — controlled temporary processing, migration staging and system logs are a normal part of the work and are covered by agreed retention terms.
Privacy Act 1988 alignment
Handling follows the Australian Privacy Principles: secure transfer, audit logging, data minimisation, controlled retention and deletion, and a notifiable data breach protocol. Documented policy supplied on request.
Approved systems only
Managed environments — no personal devices, no removable media, no personal cloud storage.
Vetted people
Background and identity checks, signed confidentiality undertakings, annual privacy and security training for everyone on an Australian engagement.
Documentation for your file
Service agreement, outsourcing schedule, data-handling policy, business continuity plan and security controls summary — before you sign, not after you ask.
Accountability stays put
PLTCo prepares work on instruction. The adviser sets the scope, selects the strategy and decides whether advice is appropriate; the adviser and licensee retain review, approval, supervision and compliance responsibility. Nothing in this arrangement moves an obligation off your licence.
If your licensee has its own outsourced service provider due-diligence questionnaire, send it through. We'd rather complete yours than ask you to accept ours.
The best feedback we get is that nobody mentions us.
Advisers ring their support team when something's gone wrong. Quiet is the product.
"Our advice documents were taking weeks longer than we wanted. The first draft now lands quickly enough that we review while the meeting's still fresh."Faster first drafts
"Handing the Services Australia administration across took a recurring job off two advisers. It's the sort of work that never needed us doing it."Administrative load reduced
"We acquired a book with messy data. What we valued was the exception report — a known list to work through, rather than surprises in review meetings."Migration with exception reporting
The questions your licensee will ask. Answered here, not behind a form.
Other providers will send you a checklist of questions to ask. Useful — but you still have to chase the answers. Ours are below, in public, including the ones where the answer isn't flattering.
Are you ISO 27001 certified?
Where do your people physically sit?
Who has access to our client data, and how do you prove it?
What happens to our data if we leave?
Is the person in the pitch the person doing our work?
What's your staff turnover?
Do you hold professional indemnity insurance?
What if a client complains?
What happens if we want to exit?
Who do we call when something goes wrong?
Can we speak to a current client?
Assessing us formally? Send your licensee's outsourced service provider questionnaire and we'll complete yours rather than ask you to accept ours.
AML/CTF: it depends on the service and the task
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing obligations are not identical across advice practices. What applies depends on the client, whether a designated service is being provided, and which tasks are outsourced. Some practices are reporting entities; some are not; some are for part of what they do.
Where PLTCo supports a reporting entity, our involvement can include:
- Personnel training appropriate to the tasks performed
- Customer due-diligence support and document collection
- Record keeping in line with your programme
- Escalation of exceptions rather than resolution of them
- Confidentiality, including tipping-off restrictions
The reporting entity retains responsibility for its AML/CTF programme, its risk assessment, and all reporting obligations. Our personnel do not access suspicious-matter reports or restricted AML investigation information unless specifically authorised and legally permitted.
Official Australian reference data
Published figures from official sources, shown with their period and retrieval date. Reference information only — not advice, not a personal estimate, and not a prediction.
Resident individual income-tax rates
Consumer Price Index, All Groups
Cash rate target
Insurance statistics & news
Published by the issuing agency, shown here for reference. These cards read from official ATO, ABS, RBA and APRA sources through a server-side adapter. Until that endpoint is configured they show an unavailable state and link to the source — no value is ever displayed as current unless it has been retrieved and dated. Cached values are labelled as cached and show their retrieval date. To be explicit: this reads published government data in one direction only. No client information travels to the ATO, ABS, RBA or APRA through it.
Twenty minutes, honest either way.
Bring your volumes. You'll leave knowing what the backlog costs — whether or not you engage us.