Newly appointed Class General Manager, Growth, Jo Hurley shares her passion for growing the SMSF market

By Jo Hurley – General Manager of Growth at Class

Right now, the world is facing a period of economic uncertainty coupled with rising inflation and lower investment returns as well as increasing regulatory compliance. That said, my perspective is that the SMSF industry remains strong and continues to evolve at pace. SMSF numbers often grow in times of uncertainty, as demonstrated in the Global Financial Crisis. At Class, we continue to have a strong focus on innovation to enable our clients to easily respond to these challenges as well as free up their staff to offer more client services and grow their businesses.

We’re continuing to see the rise of automation and a younger, more informed digital generation who are hungry for information at their fingertips and much more interested in educating themselves about their super.  This is a real step change for the industry and there’s no room for legacy ways of working in this new dynamic environment.

In my experience, it’s in times of both challenge and constant change that SMSFs tend to show the strongest levels of growth.  Indeed, history has shown that uncertainty drives people towards SMSF because members are actually logging in, reviewing balances, taking an interest in, and concerned about what might lie ahead.

In 2022, it’s exciting that people want to engage more with their super than might have been the case in the past. While many may have had SMSF on the back of their mind and heard a lot about it before, they now want to become more active in protecting their retirement savings.

In my role as General Manager of Growth at Class, my objective is to not only grow our market share, but more importantly to help drive growth in the overall market itself for the benefit of the industry. This is an exciting time for us, and I’ll be working with the new leadership team to engage and listen to our customers and deliver more of what they want and need.

As head of growth for both Class and Now Infinity, I’m really looking forward to working with our clients and partners to help them grow and succeed. Our partners are a critical part of our growth strategy and so we have a real focus on delivering value and   ensuring they understand the core benefits of working with Class and that they’re aligned with our overall business strategy will enable me to support them, to help differentiate their business and deliver upon their targets.

We will be working closely together with our partners to create opportunities for mutual growth while at the same time ensuring that our technology and people are aligned to foster industry growth as a whole.

At the same time, we want clients to know who to connect with and have an ecosystem of partners that are approachable and knowledgeable and treat each and every member with a great experience.  Indeed, we need to equip partners with the information and systems knowledge that will enable them to recognise and act on every member engagement opportunity leading to a positive outcome.

I’ve had a really long association with Class going way back to its launch and I’ve consistently seen its laser focus on innovation pay incredible dividends in its growth and positive market presence. It’s been a real joy in the lead up to the announcement of my new role to have spent time engaging with our Class Audit Partners to get vital feedback and to talk about some of the ideas and visions that we might have for the Class platform in the future.

I’m looking forward to engaging with our customers and partners and continuing to build on those relationships. I look forward to listening to, learning from and collaborating with them to ensure that our integrations continue to make Class a leader in data insights and growing the SMSF sector overall.

The ultimate aim will be to know what our customers need before they do and innovate accordingly and we’ll do this by attracting the best minds in the industry to our company who want to ask questions, support disruption, move fast and enhance customer engagement.