Brad Fox
Your Best Interests (YBI), a joint initiative of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and evolution media group (emg), has received outstanding support from the Australian public and the financial advice community for its upcoming reality TV series of the same name.
“Life-defining moments like starting a family, managing a redundancy, preparing for retirement, putting parents into aged care and so on, make us re-evaluate where we are at and what’s important to us,” said emg Managing Director, Marcus Field. “The YBI series will pair Australians currently facing a life-defining moment with financial advisers who can help them make the most of milestone events.”
YBI and foundation partners will go into pre-production next month under the direction of emg’s award winning production arm, evoTV. The TV series is scheduled to air early in 2014 and will be underpinned by a rich media website and a Find an Adviser service.
YBI has already attracted more than 90 applications from people wanting to be in the series and the level of engagement across Facebook in particular has shown that the series concept – Making the most of life’s biggest moments – is striking a chord with the Australian public. “We have also had a great response from the advice industry, with over 40 advisers being cast at the recent AFA conference,” Mr Field said.
The life moments shared by the public to date have been extremely diverse. “The breadth and depth of the stories being told to us is really encouraging and the raw emotion that is coming out as we talk to people is going to make for great TV,” Mr Field said. “We are very proud to have partnered with the AFA for this initiative. It represents the first collaborative effort to help consumers understand the positive impact financial advice can have on their lives.”
AFA CEO, Brad Fox, said the AFA’s aim to help its members deliver great advice to more Australians has moved an enormous step closer as a result of the initial response to the YBI launch. “We are extremely pleased to receive such great interest from the public and the advice market,” he said. “YBI is a fresh, innovative game-changer that will help communicate the story of the value of advice to a much bigger audience.”
The financial services market place has also been quick to support the initiative. “A number of our corporate partners including AIA, Asteron (Suncorp), BT, Netwealth and Zurich have already committed support for the initiative, as they share our vision to make a significant difference and grow the market for advice while helping Australians through their life-defining moments,” Mr Fox said. “A number of other partners are also close to committing to the venture.”