OA 593: Offshore Excellence in a Highly-Regulated, High-Complexity Niche with Brian Jones of VA Platinum

Brian, welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

Derek, I'm doing amazing.

Thank you.

Brian, it's great to have you on the show.

Why don't we start by introducing VA Platinum?

Sure.

So VA Platinum has been going for eight years.

I fell into the business as an ex-financial planner and a few friends asked if I could help them find some team members in the Philippines.

And fast forward to today, we pretty much deal 95% with Australian financial services businesses.

We've got about 850 team members across two locations, one in Cebu and one in Davao.

Amazing.

It's

really impressive growth for eight years.

And you started off obviously with the niche being

your sort

of own itch to scratch and origin.

How have you felt about that niche? You know, niches can be very powerful, but also they can be somewhat confining or limiting sometimes.

Looking back on eight years, are you sort of comfortable there? Are you looking to expand? How does it work with the financial services niche?

Absolutely looking to expand, Derek.

But also, it's a strange thing in that we are the second largest outsourcing business serving financial planners in Australia and we're the largest outsourcing business serving mortgage brokers in Australia.

Yet, we've only got 400 clients compared to the TAM, the Total Adjustable Market, sits at about 35,000 potential clients.

wow so yeah we've got good growth just in financial services but we've started to move a little bit more also into accounting bookkeeping and legal so it will be interesting to see where you know the new industries take us

with financial planners and mortgage brokers are there are a lot of them sort of solo solopreneurs you know they run their own shop and fairly kind of small operations are they

Brian, welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

Derek, I'm doing amazing.

Thank you.

Brian, it's great to have you on the show.

Why don't we start by introducing VA Platinum?

Sure.

So VA Platinum has been going for eight years.

I fell into the business as an ex-financial planner and a few friends asked if I could help them find some team members in the Philippines.

And fast forward to today, we pretty much deal 95% with Australian financial services businesses.

We've got about 850 team members across two locations, one in Cebu and one in Davao.

Amazing.

It's

really impressive growth for eight years.

And you started off obviously with the niche being

your sort

of own itch to scratch and origin.

How have you felt about that niche? You know, niches can be very powerful, but also they can be somewhat confining or limiting sometimes.

Looking back on eight years, are you sort of comfortable there? Are you looking to expand? How does it work with the financial services niche?

Absolutely looking to expand, Derek.

But also, it's a strange thing in that we are the second largest outsourcing business serving financial planners in Australia and we're the largest outsourcing business serving mortgage brokers in Australia.

Yet, we've only got 400 clients compared to the TAM, the Total Adjustable Market, sits at about 35,000 potential clients.

wow so yeah we've got good growth just in financial services but we've started to move a little bit more also into accounting bookkeeping and legal so it will be interesting to see where you know the new industries take us

with financial planners and mortgage brokers are there are a lot of them sort of solo solopreneurs you know they run their own shop and fairly kind of small operations are they