How did the idea for Otivo come about ?

After working in the finance industry for the best part of three decades, I didn’t think it was healthy that only 11% of Australians received financial advice – despite over 61% saying they want it. 

I wanted to right this wrong, so I gathered together the smartest tech people I knew to build Australia’s very first personal online financial advice service.

It took a few years for us to perfect it, but we wanted a solution that covered all the bases, yet gave people advice in plain English that they could use right away. 

We spent a lot of time working with people to understand what they really needed. So now Otivo covers every aspect of people’s lives, giving them financial advice in real-time that automatically adapts to any changes in their life to help them manage their debt, sort out their insurance, save for something fun, and boost their super and investments. For us, it’s all about helping people navigate their way through the tricky world of finance and live their best lives, free of worry. 

Tell us more about how Otivo works?

For many, personal finance is confusing and complicated, but we don’t think it should be that way. People just want to know what they should do next to improve their financial situation.

Otivo is the first fully compliant digital platform that is set to change the game by making financial advice accessible to all Australians.

We take a look at people’s complete financial profile, assess their priorities and set about helping them achieve their goals. We might start with paying down debt, then help them achieve their savings goals, boost their super, support investments and help them with insurance needs. 

Otivo’s easy to use financial hacks have proven to save our current customers an average of $485,000 between now and retirement.

To sign up, customers only need to sign up to a subscription model, with the basic version costing $12 a month – essentially the price of a weekly cup of coffee.

What’s unique about the service you provide to consumers?

While there are a few Robo advice platforms, there’s no other product in Australia that offers personalised financial advice online. Unlike Robo advisers, we examine people’s financial situation as a whole, then deliver personalised advice that’s tailored to them. Because it’s all online our advice automatically keeps up-to-date with whatever’s happening in their life. Plus, people can access it whenever they want, 24/7.

Otivo brings together cutting edge technology alongside expert knowledge of financial advice to help take the mystery out of managing your money.

What are some exciting things you’ll be looking to launch in the future?

We will be introducing more features to give real-time feedback on your net wealth and giving advice on steps you can make today to boost your wealth. Things like alerts to let you know how much cash to invest this month given your cash trajectory. Investing outside of super will be another great feature for those wanting to get ahead beyond their super. And finally more editorial about what to do given the time of the year for instance tax time, budget changes and holiday spending.

Why did you decide to partner with Basiq?

We partnered with Basiq because we wanted to provide the most innovative and secure solution to our customers. Basiq enables us to better understand our customers’ needs to deliver advice that’s always relevant. 

Basiq are the leaders when it comes to accessing data and generating insights from financial institutions. They are also well progressed with open banking making it easy for us to work with all the banks. Their roadmap includes the ability for us to initiate transactions via open banking and their ability to get a complete picture of end consumers across multiple data sources makes them stand out in the industry as an easy choice for us.

Innovate with Basiq

• Learn more about Open Banking via our definitive guide to Open Banking.
• Dive deeper into Basiq’s Open Banking product.
• Discover how to instantly verify accounts via the Basiq platform using Connect – a secure, reliable and unbeatable account verification method.
• Contact our team to find out more about Connect and the Basiq platform.