Fraser Jack

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) 2014/2015 mentoring program has launched, with a team of high profile mentors ready to share with aspirants what it takes to be the best.

AFA GenXt National chair, Fraser Jack, said the mentoring program has continually proven to be extremely rewarding for both mentors and aspirants and taking in different perspectives and real-life stories from more experienced advisers is crucial for newer entrants to the profession. “The AFA is always looking for new ways to increase professionalism within the advice community and will continue to support, educate and develop newer advisers so that they can provide great advice for more Australians.”

Mr Jack said the mentoring program provides aspirants with access to some of the industry’s best advisers, with this year’s program including several AFA Award winners such as 2013 AFA Adviser of the Year, Jenny Brown and 2013 Rising Star of the Year, Ravi Agarwal.

AFA CEO, Brad Fox, commented that peer-to-peer learning is essential for developing advisers “One of the cultural norms for members of the AFA is to collaborate and share their best thinking. Having an array of such highly successful mentors prepared to give back to the advice community is something we are very proud of,” he said. “We have the best advisers all willing to share their experiences, thoughts and approaches with newer advisers. This is of irreplaceable valuable in developing the next generation of professional financial advisers.”

Lachlan Money of Stream Financial was an aspirant in the AFA Mentoring program from July 2013, and said after leaving university the mentoring program gave him a different approach to advising which he believes was crucial to his development. “I had truly had enough of the study load from university, but my contact with my mentor provided me with skills that the degree ignores, particularly in the area of soft skills.”

Mr Money said he particularly valued honest feedback and appraisal from his mentor. “It is tough to properly evaluate yourself and how you are tracking with your career, so it was priceless to have someone experienced to offer opinions on what I was doing and how I could improve myself.”

The AFA Mentoring program is a member benefit provided to all adviser members of the AFA and was created six years ago to support the AFA GenXt initiative in developing the next generation of financial advice professionals.

This year aspirants and mentors will be exposed to content from the AFA’s masters-level Fellow Chartered Financial Practioner designation (FChFP) as part of the materials provided to fuel powerful conversations between participants.

For aspirants, the mentoring program covers areas such as how to generate referrals, how to engage clients, how to market to a target client segment, how to handle objections and how to develop centre of influence relationships.

Intakes for the AFA Mentoring program close on 20June 2014. Click here to find out more information.

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