Cassandra Thong has been appointed to the newly created role. She will work closely with Andrew Rocks, who has been the Head of Partnership and Business Development since January 2020.

Based in Sydney, Ms Thong has more than 25 years of experience in the financial planning industry, with her first 12 years spent running her own financial planning and mortgage broking business. Ms Thong joins VBP from Capify Australia where she was a Senior BDM. Prior to that, she was the National Partnership Manager for Sydney-based advice firm Milyar.

Ms Thong will work with new and existing clients to assist with building out each financial services practice’s capacity and capability and assist them with achieving their strategic goals.

David Carney, chief executive officer of VBP, said Ms Thong’s extensive knowledge of financial planning and mortgage broking will be a useful asset to the business as it expands its strategic capabilities.

“Cassandra has established strong relationships and networks within the industry. She comes from a strong business development and relationship management background and has a solid understanding of Australian clients and business,” Mr Carney said.

“Cassandra’s knowledge and experience will be invaluable to VBP as we integrate the financial advice administration, paraplanning, mortgage broking administration and bookkeeping team members and critical infrastructure we have developed over eight years across 950 team members.”

The appointment of Ms Thong follows the hires of Lia Gunawan as Strategic Relationship Manager and Hannah Pike as Client Services Specialist earlier this year. Ms Gunawan is tasked with refining and enhancing VBP’s strategic relationship management framework while Ms Pike is developing VBP’s financial planning assistants across complex administrative tasks.

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Ben Nash

XY Adviser, an exclusive online community for the financial advice industry, has been named as a finalist in the category of ‘Excellence in Innovation’ for the 2021 Sydney City Business Awards.

The Sydney City Business Awards, held in partnership with the City of Sydney and Business NSW, recognises growth, entrepreneurship and celebrates business success across all industries in the Sydney central business district and surrounding inner-city suburbs.

The Excellence in Innovation Award recognises “a business that has made significant contributions to their industry and/or community, or implemented innovative solutions for new and existing business needs through the introduction or improvement of an idea, method, technology, process or application”.

Founder Clayton Daniel says “Financial advice is simply too important to be done poorly, and we’ve worked extremely hard to provide an environment for the best advisers to share and learn from one another. To be a finalist for this prestigious award is something our whole team is really proud of.”

XY Adviser’s nomination for this award was based on the launch of their professional network for the financial advice industry in January 2020. This exclusive platform allows members to ask honest questions and receive reliable peer answers in a safe and supportive environment. This has seen their professional network becoming the catalyst for advisers to start their own businesses, build their professional network and grow through industry-wide collaboration and idea-sharing.

Peter Tribolet (Foundation Financial Australia), says about the value of being part of XY’s community “The value XY Adviser offers is unparalleled, not just in Australia but globally. Where else can you ask a question and receive replies ranging from some of the most experienced Advisers in the world to the freshest, keenest new entrants with innovative solutions?”

Initially a ‘passion project’, XY Adviser was officially launched as a commercial entity in 2019 by Clayton Daniel, Adrian Patty (Advice Revolution), Ben Nash (Pivot Wealth), Ray Jaramis (Employment Hero), Emily Blanch and Andrew Rocks (Virtual Business Partners). 1 in 6 financial planners in Australia is now part of their private professional network, with members in almost 20 countries. Their financial adviser-oriented ‘XY Podcast’ is the most popular Financial Services podcast in Australia, consistently ranked in the top 15 most popular Business News podcasts in Australia.

In 2020, the success of this innovation allowed XY Adviser to raise capital from 200 advisers and since expand into South Africa and South-East Asia. They have also recently launched two new industry marketplaces; one for recruitment and the other for the buying and selling of financial advice businesses. Shortly they anticipate taking on an additional round of investment to further improve the user experience of their platform.

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George Lucas

Wealth Know How, Australia’s fastest growing provider of independent financial videos and Announcer Financial Planning, an independent financial planning group, have partnered to educate and engage clients with online videos.

Announcer’s new website will now have a cross section of educational videos from Wealth Know How.

Announcer Financial Planning’s Managing Director Andrew Rocks says: “We are delighted to be working with Wealth Know How who are leaders in their field for financial videos. We immediately saw the value of providing high quality and unbiased video content to clients.”

“Wealth Know How offers us independent educational information that is professional and credible.   We will utilise their educational videos to further earn our client’s trust and confidence and we see video education as a key tool for business growth”.

“Our marketing department has made definite plans to use the videos to connect and educate clients and prospects via email marketing campaigns and social media,” he added.

Wealth Know How’s Co-Founder George Lucas said: “We are excited about our relationship with Announcer Financial Planning and see firms such as Announcer gaining market share by using professional videos to educate their market.”

“Announcer have a sophisticated communication and marketing strategy and are positioning their business at the forefront of client engagement through financial education.”

“Our alliance allows them to access a diverse library of video content that will help engage their target market. The real outcome for Announcer will be that viewers will spend longer time on the website and as a result will develop a more meaningful interaction with their brand”.

Wealth Know How offers an extensive and growing library of short, easy to understand financial educational videos for use on websites and across a range of digital marketing tools.

Announcer Financial Planning, is a national, privately owned financial planning group, delivering a holistic one stop wealth shop experience.   It provides financial experts across financial planning, tax, property, law, mortgages and lending.

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