Kelly O’Dwyer

EQT Holdings Limited (ASX: EQT) has announced the appointment of The Hon. Kelly O’Dwyer as a non-executive director to its Board.

Ms O’Dwyer was the Liberal Party member for the Federal seat of Higgins in the Australian Parliament for nine years, and a former Cabinet Minister. Prior to entering Parliament, Ms O’Dwyer worked in law, government and finance.  She is currently a non-executive director of ASX listed Home Consortium and a member of the School Council of Caulfield Grammar School.

“Kelly’s track record in leadership and senior roles at the highest level of government is well recorded,” said Chair Carol Schwartz AO.

“She brings a combination of deep understanding of government and policy, with a focus on economic and tax policy, Australia’s financial regulatory framework, corporate governance, risk and compliance, and significant leadership experience. Her experience in reforming the superannuation system and financial services, and her work in the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation will bring new perspectives and ideas to the Equity Trustees board room,” said Ms Schwartz.

“Ms O’Dwyer brings an exceptional combination of talent and expertise. I welcome her on behalf of the Board of Australia’s leading trustee company and look forward to working with her,” Ms Schwartz said.

The company also announced that Mr Jim Minto is stepping down from the Board today: “We thank Jim for his significant and valuable contribution to Equity Trustees during his four years of service, including his work as Chair of the Board Risk Committee,” Ms Schwartz concluded.

Ms Catherine Robson has been appointed as Chair of the Board Risk Committee and as a member of the Board Audit Committee. Ms O’Dwyer has also been appointed as a member of the Board Risk Committee.

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Equity Trustees’ Managing Director, Mick O’Brien said: “Paul has excellent experience and qualifications – the right mix of capability for a Board which has responsibility for more than $8bn of funds under supervision for nearly 230,000 superannuation members.”

Paul is a senior financial services executive with a proven track record for delivering results having successfully managed businesses through rapid growth phases and complex change. He held senior roles at Challenger Limited, National Australia Group (Wealth Management), Lendlease / MLC and the NRMA Building Society. In addition, he has more than 25 years’ experience in serving on entity boards and industry groups.

“The role of a specialist superannuation trustee is essential to the integrity of our superannuation system which maintains millions of Australians in retirement,” said Tony Lally, Chairman, ETSL Board.

“Members must have confidence in the superannuation trustee responsible for their fund so they can trust that their interests are being properly looked after – and part of that is engaging the best expertise on the Board of our market leading specialist trustee business.”

Paul Rogan joins Sue Everingham, who was appointed in February 2019, fellow independent directors Catherine Robson, Ellis Varejes and Tony Lally (Chairman), and executive directors Mark Blair (Executive General Manager, Superannuation Trustee Office) and Mick O’Brien (Managing Director, Equity Trustees) on the ETSL Board.

“Equity Trustees congratulates Paul on his appointment and look forward to his contribution as we continue to raise the standard in securing members’ interests,” concluded Mr Lally.

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“In an increasingly heightened risk environment, where demand for our specialist trustee services is increasing, Equity Trustees continues to appoint the most experienced, highly skilled people to ensure we can carry out our trustee obligations to the highest standards,” said Tony Lally, Chairman, ETSL Board.

Equity Trustees’ Managing Director, Mick O’Brien said: “Sue has outstanding credentials for this appointment, as a lawyer who practices in superannuation, investments and financial services law, with specific experience in the unique area of superannuation trusteeship and more than 25 years’ experience at executive management and Board level.”

Mr O’Brien added that this appointment follows a series of senior appointments which play an integral part of the superannuation trustee service area of the business, including David Warren (senior client manager) and Owen Brailsfordas Chief Risk Officer.

Sue joins fellow independent directors Catherine Robson, Ellis Varejes and Tony Lally (Chairman), along with executive directors Mark Blair (Executive General Manager, Superannuation Trustee Office) and Mick O’Brien.

Sue was the Head of the Office of Trustee, Wealth Management Division at the Commonwealth Bank, and is currently a consultant with law firm Norton Rose Fulbright. She has held senior positions in the tax, investments and superannuation practices areas of a number of leading national law firms as well as roles with BT Financial Group, Ashurst, Mercer, Hunt and Hunt, Malleson Stephen Jacques (now King and Wood Mallesons) and the ATO.

Sue is currently a non executive director of Hannover Life Re Australasia Limited and Destination Southern NSW Ltd. She was previously a non executive director of the Commonwealth Bank Group Super Fund, where she was also chair of the Risk and Audit Committee (2010 – 2013).

She holds a Masters of Taxation (LLM), Bachelor of Economics and Law and is an admitted solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW and ACT, and admitted barrister of the Supreme Court of the ACT. Sue is a qualified CPA and graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

“Sue joins a team proud to be entrusted with the responsibility and oversight of so many superannuation funds where Equity Trustees has been chosen as an independent trustee to look out for member interests. We congratulate Sue on her appointment and look forward to working with her on the ETSL Board,” Mr Lally concluded.

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(L to R): Chris Browne, Catherine Robson, Paul Forbes, Michael Nowak, Eleanor Dartnall, Brad Fox, PJ Byrne, Tapel Cafer, Andy Marshall

On the eve of the Finalist showcase, AdviserVoice gathered together all of the finalists for the AFA Adviser of the Year and Practice of the Year Awards along with awards partner Zurich for a round table discussion to share ideas and canvass industry issues.

Here in the final part of a three part series, we look at the innovations advisers are introducing into their practices and how they see innovation changing the way they do business. (Read the first roundtable here, read the second roundtable here).

Who’s who

Catherine Robson, Affinity Private – Finalist in AFA Adviser of the Year

PJ Byrne, Mr Insurance – Finalist in AFA Adviser of the Year

Eleanor Dartnall, Dartnall Advisers – Winner, AFA Adviser of the Year

Paul Forbes, Robina Financial Solutions – Finalist in AFA Practice of the Year

Chris Browne, Rising Tide – Finalist in AFA Practice of the Year

Tapel Cafer, Complete Financial Balance – Winner, AFA Practice of the Year

Michael Nowak, Joe Nowak Financial Services Group and National President of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA)

Brad Fox, CEO of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA)

Andy Marshall, Head of Sales Strategies and Research for Zurich’s retail risk business

———-

AdviserVoice: How does innovation manifest itself in your business?

Catherine Robson

Catherine Robson: The challenge for me as a small business owner is not getting too distracted by the bright shiny idea. Innovation is fantastic but it’s absolutely useless without good implementation. So, I have an advisory board that does that for me, who’s like, “Yeah, yeah, sounds interesting. How are we going to implement it sustainably? How is it actually going to work?”

AdviserVoice: So, what are some of the ideas that they’ve said “yes” to?

Catherine Robson: The big challenge we’ve got at the moment is to build an international team for part of our administration capability and the opportunity to find really well-qualified people that really care about doing a good job. So, you know, for us, we’ll have one of our team in the Philippines and culturally it’s our obligation to make sure that she’s absolutely part of our team and she’s embedded with our values and she’s had the opportunity to spend time in Australia to understand what we do. So, it’s a very serious commitment for us.

I think one of the things that’s been brilliant for us in terms of having a team member who’s integral to our work that sits in a remote location is that your processes need to be absolutely spot-on because you can’t just wander over to their desk and go, “I didn’t really mean that, I meant this.” So, that has been excellent for us in terms of thinking about the scalability of our business because it’s put the acid on us to really explain properly and have discipline around what are the processes and how do we automate them.

Tapel Cafer

Tapel Cafer: From a technology perspective, we’re very fortunate we have some individual capabilities with our practice that are amazing and we have built some capabilities that are significantly better than XPLAN in regards to the way it produces material that makes it easy to understand. But the only reason we could do that is because we have absolute geeks who at night go home and play with Excel and they love it.

PJ Byrne: One of the best innovations we’ve put into the business is our online review system. So, we were doing the traditional send a letter out to invite someone for an annual review, do the checklist, and here’s a reply paid envelope, and that got sent off in a mail box and then I didn’t really know if it got there. And then, occasionally, a form would come back saying want to increase or decrease or whatever.

So, in February we started sending it out on email, and it’s awesome. It’s actually an invitation for review and they’ve got four buttons to choose from – “Yes, I’d like to catch up for review”. Another is “No, thanks. I don’t want a review this year. Happy with everything.”

PJ Byrne

From a compliance point, we get that straight back, straight into the database. Another button on there is, “Yes, please, investigate a claim,” because we want to re-wake them up to say, “Hey, if you’ve had any serious illness or injury let us know”.

Paul Forbes: For us, clients actually do like phone calls and they do like some physical sort of contact versus the social media.

We’re now moving to XPLAN and we’ve built templates all through that to make sure we remember to touch base after three months. It pops up at the start of the week to say ring these two people to say hello and make sure they’ve got everything, we haven’t spoken to them for three months. And, if they have, there’s a file note there that someone’s already spoken to them in the last three months. But it just keeps reminding us to touch base with these people because they don’t remember emails, they remember telephone calls.

Paul Forbes

Eleanor Dartnall: Along the technology side, I’m no geek. I’m the wrong generation. So, I pulled my son who is a geek out of his job and he worked with us full-time for six months. He built our websites and for Blueprint which is for our young people, we feed them all of their advice because they’re too busy to come in for a one-on-one meeting. They have a one-on-one journey right through to the statement of advice and giving us informed consent. From then on, they haven’t got time. So, if I want to know how they’re going, we don’t call them up; we text them.

The next thing, of course, is we’ve got all these clients who have to do corporate actions, so instead of getting it all out in the mail, they’ve all got to login to the website for their client advice that they get automatically that generates an email, “Please check, sign in, have a look at your advice,” and then they have to push a button, “Yes, we want to accept that corporate action or we don’t.” The default, if they don’t get back to us is we decline them. Can’t tell you how many hours that’s saved – huge. And compliance has signed off on it.

Chris Browne: My frustration is that we don’t have a big safety net under new entrants to the financial advice industry, so about two and a half months ago we launched a business called Club RT. It’s got three pillars. It’s got business coaching because, you know, you can get someone like [Catherine Robson] leaving the National Australia Bank as the best financial planner in Australia but what they forget is they don’t have the business acumen to run a business and know the right time to hire staff and how to indoctrinate them into the culture and they don’t consider the systems and processes. The second one is just licensing infrastructure, giving these new entrants access to Worksorted so they can do their commission and fee reconciliation.

Eleanor Dartnall

And the final pillar is the serviced office because, if I think about Chris Browne eight years ago, I was working down at the front bedroom of my house in Yarraville and it looks bad. So, rather than expecting new entrants to spend $36,000 a year on rent and getting an office out in Sunbury, we’re saying, “Well, work at home 50 percent of the time but, when you need to meet with the client, when you need to share a coffee with a mate to work out what went wrong in that last appointment or what went right, you’ve actually got an environment where you can do this.”

AdviserVoice: Okay. So, what’s the next big thing? We’re looking into the future, into our crystal balls. What does the next 12 months hold?

Brad Fox

Brad Fox: The next couple of years holds the most enormous opportunity for financial advice there has ever been. The demographic demand for advice is going to explode to around about 3,000 to 4,000 people a week retiring four years from now. The challenge for us is how well we want to meet the supply for advice and it’s got to be quality.

Chris Browne: I think the big change over the course of the next 12 months is that we need to raise the bar. It’s not just an accreditation like the CFP or AFA’s equivalent FChFP. It’s coupled with experience. I think that young advisers need to be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with experienced advisers and they need to be in good businesses – you know, well-systematized businesses.

Chris Browne

Paul Forbes: I think the unintended consequence of FOFA is really moving everything away from product to advice. It’s a much safer world to live in. We’re going to see naked pricing, we’re going to see rebates gone, we’re going to see people actively using rebates to reduce prices to clients, and that’s when we can sit back and say to the client, “That’s what I’ll charge you. That’s all there is to it.”

Catherine Robson: I love the technology. It’s beautiful and it really does some sensational things around helping you manage your behaviour. So, I think, as an industry, we need to recognize that we could be wrong footed really easily by something like a beautiful solution to finances. If we’re not really clear on what value we add we could find ourselves being irrelevant dinosaurs.

Andy Marshall

Andy Marshall: If you see a shift in changing remuneration or pricing models, particularly with insurance, and it gets back to the quality of advice that’s actually being given, there are a lot of advisers who won’t be able to survive in that world because currently their proposition is “I’ll shop around next year and wait for the best prices”. And so, it’s going to come back to that: how are you packaging up that value of advice discussion and, if someone does it on technology, that’s a massive game-changer.

———-

The Association of Financial Advisers Awards gave separate recognition to the best individual adviser and to best advice practice for the first time this year. The winners were announced at the AFA National Adviser Conference, to be held in Cairns, October 12-14. Zurich has proudly partnered with the Adviser of the Year Award since its inception in 2003 and now also for the inaugural Practice of the Year Award.

The post Roundtable part 3: Innovation appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Randall Stout

The Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA), yesterday announced the national winner of the 2014 FPA CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER (CFP^®) of the Year Award: Randall Stout, from HPH Solutions.

Mr Stout was also named the 2014 FPA CFP^® Western Australia State Winner.

The CFP^® of the Year is awarded to the financial planner who best embodies the highest professional standards, as embraced by the FPA.

“We look for a planner who demonstrates true professional leadership and excellence, someone who routinely goes above and beyond best practice to achieve the best outcomes for clients,” he explained.

Mr Rantall went on to say that the awards are particularly important this year given recent debate around professional standards and the quality of financial advice.

“There has been a lot of attention given to rogue planners – as it should be. But equally, the reality is that those individuals are well and truly outweighed by the number of professional, skilled and committed planners working hard to improve financial outcomes for everyday Australians.

“That’s why I am so pleased to be able to reward someone like Randall, who has made such an outstanding contribution to our profession.

The theme of our Professional Congress this year is “Inspiring Greatness”, and I hope that Randall’s achievements will go some way towards inspiring greatness in others,” he said.

One of the judges of the award, Lisa Weissel, CFP^® and Senior Financial Adviser at Evergreen Wealth Professionals, said that that the high calibre of entrants made the awards decision a difficult one.

“We were looking for true excellence in financial planning. For us, that translates as the ability to provide clear, easily-understood advice which clients can follow to reach their financial goals. It sounds simple, but requires the combined ability to genuinely engage and communicate with clients, along with the technical skills required to provide the most appropriate advice,” Ms. Weissel said.

Mr Stout CFP^® is a certified practicing accountant (CPA) who has been a business owner of a number of successful Perth-based financial planning practices and is currently a Director of HPH Financial Planning. He is the Chair of the WA Chapter of the FPA, makes regular contributions to the Money section of the West Australian, and appears regularly on Perth radio 6PR as a money and personal finance expert.

Mr Stout said that” I look at the people who have won this award before me and they are the financial planners I look up to. They are people who consistently give great advice and I am privileged to be placed on the same level as them. We all care about people, we’ve all got empathy. And we are all driven to give the best advice that we can to really help people improve their financial situation.

“I am very proud to be recognised for what I do by the FPA. I see the tireless effort they put in on behalf of their members and I am grateful for that. My clients trust me and know that I care and this award will certainly help because its shows my clients that I am recognised for what I do among my peers.”

In conclusion, Mr Rantall highlighted the FPA’s longstanding commitment to raising standards in the financial planning industry, and the integral part that the awards play in that process.

“By recognising and rewarding planners who live the FPA values and standards and in so doing consistently deliver great outcomes for clients, we’re providing the role models and benchmarks that will inspire and raise standards across the whole profession. This is the best way to show Australians that our profession is both worthy of their trust and offers them the best and most reliable path to financial wellbeing,” Mr Rantall said.

The state winners for the FPA CFP^® award were also presented yesterday.

State Winners:

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(L to R): Chris Browne, Catherine Robson, Paul Forbes, Michael Nowak, Eleanor Dartnall, Brad Fox, PJ Byrne, Tapel Cafer, Andy Marshall

On the eve of the Finalist showcase, AdviserVoice gathered together all of the finalists for the AFA Adviser of the Year and Practice of the Year Awards along with awards partner Zurich for a round table discussion to share ideas and canvass industry issues.

Here in the second of a three part series, we look at the reputation of financial advisers in the broader community and what can be done to improve it. (Read the first roundtable here, read the third roundtable here).

Who’s who

Catherine Robson, Affinity Private – Finalist in AFA Adviser of the Year

PJ Byrne, Mr Insurance – Finalist in AFA Adviser of the Year

Eleanor Dartnall, Dartnall Advisers – Winner, AFA Adviser of the Year

Paul Forbes, Robina Financial Solutions – Finalist in AFA Practice of the Year

Chris Browne, Rising Tide – Finalist in AFA Practice of the Year

Tapel Cafer, Complete Financial Balance – Winner, AFA Practice of the Year

Michael Nowak, Joe Nowak Financial Services Group and National President of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA)

Brad Fox, CEO of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA)

Andy Marshall, Head of Sales Strategies and Research for Zurich’s retail risk business

 ———-

AdviserVoice: How do you think that advisers are perceived now compared to, say, 12 months ago or 24 months ago?

Tapel Cafer

Tapel Cafer: It’s declined, because if you Google “financial planning” now, you’ll get snippets of what happened to Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie and blah blah blah. So, really, with what’s happened recently, it probably has tarnished our industry a little bit.

Paul Forbes: Advisers are the meat in the sandwich in the campaign between instos and industry funds and that’s really hurt us. It’s got nothing to do with advice. Industry funds keep coming out and saying “we don’t pay advisers or we don’t pay commissions” – of course they don’t, they don’t do advice. So, every time I see social media jump up and all the responses come up from advisers and they shred each other. Wake up to yourselves for goodness sake. This has nothing to do with us.

Brad Fox: We’ve been on the record a number of times as reminding the industry funds that they’re a product provider. The challenge is with how they’re developing their models at the moment. They want to be an advice provider but they want to do it without meeting the same best interest test that other advisers do.

AdviserVoice: Do you think that there are any other wedge drivers? Any other manipulators of image?

Paul Forbes

Chris Browne: Ease of entry. I saw Ray White is moving into financial planning. I look at that and I think if I wasn’t in the industry, my perception of the industry would lower again. I think there needs to be more rigor to be a financial planner – education and shoulder-to-shoulder experience.

Catherine Robson: I think, as an industry, we need to move from advocacy about ourselves to advocacy on our behalf by consumers because we’re doing such as good job. It’s got to be us as an industry being judged by our actions, not our words.

Catherine Robson

But I think there’s also power in actually advocating for other advisers. Part of what this forum is all about to me is the connection the advisers make with each other. And having had the opportunity to get to know Eleanor [Dartnall] so well over the last 12 months, there’s another adviser that I would trust with my own family. So when there’s a client that I can’t look after, it’s fantastic to have that, and also to be able to tell the story about why another adviser is fantastic. And, as a community of advisers, I think that’s a really good investment for us to make.

Brad Fox: When we talk about being profession, that’s what professions do, they don’t tear each other apart.

Catherine Robson: Just because you’re a profession doesn’t make everyone fantastic, but I think you raise the bar to the point where you feel comfortable that there are people that you genuinely trust.

AdviserVoice: What’s one idea that you have at the top of your head that could help turn the reputation around?

Chris Browne

Michael Nowak: I’d start with mainstream journalists. We need to educate them. I believe that they’re starting with a very low level of knowledge about what advisers do and the benefits that we provide, and we could make some huge inroads if we just engage them over time and if they’re aware of how we help Australians.

Chris Browne: I think we’ve just got to roll out the right advisers to them, you know? It’s got to be people of this calibre as opposed to anyone.

Michael Nowak

Brad Fox: Just imagine we got half the advisers in Australia next week, say 8,000 of them, to tell one true recent claim story to a thousand people: we just communicated to 8 million Australians – a third of the population – in a week about what you do. It’s not hard.

Catherine Robson: Being part of an industry body is such an important value add for me, particularly as a business owner, because you get the opportunity to meet advisers and hear what they’re doing. Why do you think there aren’t more advisers who are joining the industry bodies and being part of it?

Brad Fox: There is no motivation in their mind to need to do it, and that can be an experienced adviser who thinks they already have the work that they need or it might be someone that just doesn’t earn enough to want to spend $500 on a membership. It seems quite ridiculous but they’re the sorts of responses that you get.

AdviserVoice: What’s the proportion of advisers who are members of a body?

Brad Fox: Well, 16,000 to 18,000 advisers is the commonly used number and about half of them. There’s a risk that they might water down a great culture. So, we’ve actually got to manage that as we’re going to go through the announcements that have been made over the last six weeks by different bodies and different licensees about going towards compulsory membership of a professional body. We’ve got to make sure that we get to interact face-to-face with those advisers to bring them into our culture rather than let them think it’s a tick-a-box exercise – “I’m now a better adviser.”

Brad Fox

Chris Browne: To indoctrinate them into the AFA culture, I reckon we should actually create accreditation around ethics – train people around ethical issues.

Brad Fox: We actually have one, Chris. It’s one of the four units for the Fellow Chartered Financial Practitioner FChFP. When you’ve done that one unit, it’s all ethics, you qualify for the entry level designation Associated Chartered Financial Practitioner AChFP.

Chris Browne: Well, I think it needs to sit in a silo and it needs to tackle things like pricing, it needs to tackle things like churning, it needs to roll out people like us because I’ve sat down with countless young advisers who have got their first job with a bloke out in Boronia who’s a pretty average adviser and they actually think that they’re doing the right thing. They actually think that (behaviour like) churning is okay.

Brad Fox: That’s one of the options the board is considering is to how we land on that and when can we land on that.

Tapel Cafer: We need a multi-prong approach. We talked about the younger generation we need to educate, but when you’ve got the older group who are educating young advisers in the old style we need to tackle them as well. There’s so many fires here we’ve got to tackle from so many angles, it’s an intergenerational thing.

———-

The Association of Financial Advisers Awards gave separate recognition to the best individual adviser and to best advice practice for the first time this year. The winners were announced at the AFA National Adviser Conference, to be held in Cairns, October 12-14. Zurich has proudly partnered with the Adviser of the Year Award since its inception in 2003 and now also for the inaugural Practice of the Year Award.

The post Roundtable part 2: Reputation of advisers appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Chris Browne, Catherine Robson, Paul Forbes, Michael Nowak, Eleanor Dartnall, Brad Fox, PJ Byrne, Tapel Cafer, Andy Marshall

On the eve of the Finalist showcase, AdviserVoice gathered together all of the finalists for the AFA Adviser of the Year and Practice of the Year Awards along with awards partner Zurich for a round table discussion to share ideas and canvass industry issues.

Here in the first of a three part series, we look at their view of the state of financial literacy and what financial advisers are doing to help raise standards of financial literacy within the community. (Read the second roundtable here, read the third roundtable here).

Who’s who

• Catherine Robson, Affinity Private – Finalist, AFA Adviser of the Year
• PJ Byrne, Mr Insurance – Finalist, AFA Adviser of the Year
• Eleanor Dartnall, Dartnall Advisers – Finalist, AFA Adviser of the Year
• Paul Forbes, Robina Financial Solutions – Finalist, AFA Practice of the Year
• Chris Browne, Rising Tide – Finalist, AFA Practice of the Year
• Tapel Cafer, Complete Financial Balance – Finalist, AFA Practice of the Year
• Michael Nowak, Joe Nowak Financial Services Group and National President of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA)
• Brad Fox, CEO, Association of Financial Advisers (AFA)
• Andy Marshall, Head of Sales Strategies and Research for Zurich’s retail risk business

——————–

AdviserVoice: First of all, I’d like to hear from you all how you’d rate your own clients’ financial literacy, specifically in relation to insurance issues.

Catherine Robson

Catherine Robson: We deal with professional people who are often very highly educated and take notice of financial issues. While they know their facts and figures, they find it difficult to apply that to themselves and their own behaviour, and so that’s why they need an adviser. And I think one of the blind spots for them is insurance because while, theoretically, they know that it’s a good idea, somehow, they think they are exempt from the laws of the universe and it’s not going to happen to them.

PJ Byrne: We have a client base that spreads across the Australian demographic so we do mums and dads through to business owners. In terms of clients’ literacy, it’s just about encouraging them to invest the time to

PJ Byrne

understand what they need to understand and get it right the first time, and that’s where advisers can make a difference – to tell them that you do get what you pay for.

Paul Forbes: I think people actually understand the broader context but I don’t think they understand how it applies to them. So, if I look at the people who come to us, some of them will understand it. They will have done quite well in their lives. But one of the questions they really don’t get is “How much is enough?” They actually don’t know when they can retire.

Chris Browne: We spend a lot of time in the early days just bringing them up to speed. We don’t talk about

Paul Forbes

insurance; we talk about “What’s your Plan B?” and I think that’s talking in their language as opposed to our language, and I think that’s really, really important. And, also, it’s important to know that there is no silver bullet and we need to consider things like internet clips on YouTube. We need to think about going out and educating people in their work places, and we need to think about the wider media.

Eleanor Dartnall: We had a huge financial literacy issue with self-funded

Chris Browne

retirees. Most of those clients were professional. You had to insist that they brought their spouse with them because the assets were also in their name, and I had quite a journey to get them to realize that I needed to teach their wives. You know, I had to use very mundane language. I would say “if you’re a 70-year-old engineer, it’s a monty that you’re going to go first and your wife’s going to be vulnerable to the first bit of rubbish advice she gets”. And then, they’ll say, “Well, will you teach her?”

AdviserVoice: What are the barriers to better financial literacy?

Tapel Cafer: When we’re talking about the younger generation, this is a serious topic that they actually haven’t listened to because it’s not really going to apply to them. So, you’ve got to find different ways to relate to them. You could be using comic sketch via social media to get to get to that audience.

Eleanor Dartnall

Chris Browne: The important piece is just meeting clients where they want to be met. I think, too often, we dictate how they interact with our business. You know, it’s the big board room or it’s the stiff meeting room and all that sort of stuff. Some people don’t care about stuff like that.

Brad Fox: I think technology is an enabler. We have to change how we reach out and social media can be part of that, but also reaching different audiences, choosing different language for different audiences, different communication means. We need to change the whole perception about insurance – from a discretionary purchase item in an Australian household to an essential purchase item.

Tapel Cafer

Tapel Cafer: One of the best forms of marketing we have found is actually peer to peer. We’re very big in the medical space and we do a lot of sponsorships at conferences and it’s an educational process. We have a large number of orthopaedic surgeons as clients and registrars as clients, they come in and speak on our behalf. Not only endorsing our company but endorsing the insurance industry because they now truly value the insurance industry because they have lived it. They have lived the trauma of someone being diagnosed or having the accident. They’ve also learned the insurance industry does actually pay – not watching a video, this is actually hearing it from their mouths.

AdviserVoice: How do you get to the people before they come in your door? How do get them to come in your door?

Brad Fox

Brad Fox: Whenever you’re trying to create mass influence, you’ve got to find where the gatekeepers are and how do we influence the influencers which are those gatekeepers. You know school teachers are the classic ones to meet kids.

Chris Browne: Over the course of the last twelve months, we’ve done 18 wealth workshops in small businesses and, sometimes, the person of influence – the CEO of that business – does an introduction and says,  “Bring in the team, they look after my financial affairs. I’m really, really pleased so I’ve invited them in to do a lunchtime session with you”. We’ve found that the amount of traction that we get with that audience is far superior to the opportunities where we’re invited in, we’re doing the presentation but we don’t get the endorsement from the CEO. We might get 50 percent that come along and meet with us, but it’s not the 90 percent that we would with the endorsement from the CEO.

Andy Marshall

Andy Marshall: I did a presentation this week and asked the audience if they knew the Risk Store stats on how many claims were paid out last year? The audience were financial advisers, it was a room of 125 people and no one knew. No-one, that’s appalling because you should know that but it’s also what you then do with that stat because with that stat you can actually make it real and say, “What that actually means, Mr. and Mrs. Client, is that 170-plus families got X million dollars paid out a day.” That would join the dots. They know bad stuff happens but it’s about the reassurance piece and I think what we need to factor is how do you reassure people that there’s something really positive from interacting with an adviser?

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The Association of Financial Advisers Awards will give separate recognition to the best individual adviser and to best advice practice for the first time this year. The winners will be announced at the AFA National Adviser Conference, to be held in Cairns, October 12-14. Zurich has proudly partnered with the Adviser of the Year Award since its inception in 2003 and now also for the inaugural Practice of the Year Award.

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Philip Kewin

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and Zurich have named the Grand Finalists in the prestigious 2014 AFA Adviser of the Year Award and in its newest award – AFA Practice of the Year.

First awarded in 2003, and supported by Zurich since inception, the AFA Adviser of the Year honour is acknowledged as Australia’s premier advice award. This year heralds a new chapter in the Awards, with the best advice practice to be honoured separately.

AFA CEO, Brad Fox, said the grand finalists for both Awards have been selected after undergoing an intensive 360-degree assessment process with judges recognising education, experience, leadership within the profession, advocacy and innovation. An extensive client survey is part of the judging process as well as a practice visit from one of the judges, and then a final full-day judging showcase.

“As an Association, we are incredibly proud of the financial advisers that have entered the awards. The calibre of grand finalists proves that as a profession, we have a lot to celebrate. Each year, through the rigorous judging process, we get an important reminder that quality advice is still the norm in Australia, and that the very best are world class. Financial advice is first and foremost a service business and our grand finalists are incredible exponents of this.”

The AFA Adviser of the Year Award criteria includes elements such as client service, technical excellence, robustness of advice process, personal adviser qualities, industry contribution and commitment to improving financial literacy. The AFA Practice of the Year Award recognizes the practice’s use of technology, quality of client engagement materials, quality of the client feedback process and also commitment to improved financial literacy of clients and the wider community.

“The Awards represent an opportunity to not only celebrate the professional excellence of the grand finalists, but to also acknowledge the high quality nominations that were made from a significant number of other advisers and practices, all dedicated to improving the lives of their clients,” Mr Fox said. “There is no doubt that the AFA’s ambition of achieving great advice for more Australians is in good hands.”

Mr Philip Kewin, Zurich’s GM Retail Life & Investments noted that, despite the diversity of business models used by this year’s finalists, they all deliver a consistently exceptional customer experience.

“As the premier advice awards, our finalists have always been the vanguards and pioneers of the advice profession,” Mr Kewin said.

“This glimpse into the future of advice and advice practices reveals much diversity and innovation in the ways advice is being made more accessible, and the overriding focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience augurs well for the profession and the community overall,” he said.

The 2014 AFA Adviser of the Year and Practice of the Year will be announced with the support of Zurich at a Gala Dinner on Tuesday, 14 October 2014 at the AFA National Adviser Conference in Cairns.

The grand finalists are:

Adviser of the Year

• Catherine Robson, Affinity Private
• Eleanor Dartnall, Dartnall Advisers Pty Ltd
• PJ Byrne, Mr Insurance

Practice of the Year

• Complete Financial Balance
• Rising Tide Financial Services
• Robina Financial Solutions Pty Ltd

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Catherine Robson

A survey by Australia’s largest life insurer TAL has found that women rate a good job as the key to feeling financially secure.

The survey asked what made women feel financially secure and a ‘good and secure job’ came in at number one for 52% of women. Despite Australian’s love affair with the property market, less than one third of female respondents (32%) said owning a home was most important. This was ahead of a savings plan at 7%, having superannuation of at least $100,000 at 3% and financial protection via the various forms of life insurance at 2%. Five per cent did not know what was important.

TAL Life CEO Brett Clark said: “It is concerning, but perhaps not surprising that financial protection came in so low.  There are many broader studies pointing to low consumer awareness of insurance and financial protection.  It is also well recognised that the ability to earn an ongoing income is often an individual’s single largest asset. If your income stops through injury or illness and you don’t have any financial protection, then that can be catastrophic for individuals and families.?”

He said it is important for all Australians, women and men, to focus on all aspects of their financial situation as part of working towards feeling financially secure. “It is comforting to know women see their ability to earn an income as their most important asset but protecting that asset is the vital next step.”

Mr Clark also said there was quite a long way to go to ensure greater awareness and greater access to advice for women and address the challenges experienced by women when it comes to seeking financial advice. That is why both TAL and the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) initiated the Female Excellence in Advice Award, which is currently seeking nominations.

Catherine Robson, winner of the AFA 2013 Female Excellence in Advice Award and founder of financial advisory firm Affinity Private, urged women to protect what they themselves see as one of their biggest assets. “The research shows that women have rightly identified employment income as an essential prerequisite to financial independence,” she said. “Most women I meet also recognise the importance of their income for their loved ones and carry a level of anxiety about what would happen if they were unable to work. I am proud that the financial advice industry, through the AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award and other initiatives, is encouraging talented advisers to help women turn that lingering anxiety into positive actions to preserve their independence and protect the ones they love.”

The AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award draws attention to the achievements of women in the financial advice profession and the valuable work they do in the community to deliver better financial outcomes for more women.

“The AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award contributes to the diversity debate by recognising the contributions of female financial advisers to the profession, community and the lives of consumers,” he said. “TAL believes that greater representation by women in financial advice is critical to ensure the advice profession properly mirrors community diversity and to help empower women to take more control of their financial future.

Nominations for the 2014 winner of the AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award close 8 August and the winner will be announced at the AFA National Conference on 14 October. Macquarie Graduate School of Management is offering this year’s AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award winner a full scholarship (valued at $12,000) to complete either a Postgraduate Certificate in Management or an Executive Education Leadership Development Program. All semi-finalists will have the opportunity to participate in a Leadership Master Class as part of the Award Program.

Most important in feeling financially secure – females

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Deborah Kent

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and leading life insurer TAL have jointly launched and opened nominations for the 2014 Female Excellence in Advice Award (the Award) at the AFA Inspire ‘Stand up and step up’ event.

The Award, developed in 2011 as a joint initiative by the AFA and TAL and supported by the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, recognises and showcases the talents and contributions of women in financial advice to their profession, community and their clients.

AFA Inspire Chair Deborah Kent said the Award is another step forward in the AFA’s quest to give women the tools and the inspiration they need in order to achieve excellence in the financial services market place.

“The aim of the Award is to not only recognise women doing well but also to act as a catalyst for change in financial services and in the lives of everyday Australians,” she said.

“Attracting and inspiring women to seek senior roles, including the role of financial adviser, will eventually mean that we have more women addressing the financial situations of female Australians, especially when seeking advice about their own retirement and insurance needs.”

TAL Life CEO Brett Clark said the Award was important in raising the profile of financial advice as a career choice for women and to promote greater involvement by women obtaining financial advice and protection.

“The award is now in its 4^th year and TAL is really proud to have been part of it with the AFA.  In the initial design and thinking our ambition was for this to be much more than another award, but a wide ranging program and a reason to have an ongoing dialogue about diversity in the planning profession, and how we provide greater awareness and access to financial advice to women across Australia.”

Guest speaker and media personality Tracey Spicer hosted the launch and ‘Stand up and step up’ event. She provided insights on how to challenge the status quo, how women can ensure they have a passion and a purpose, and led a panel discussion on insights into success, leadership and what it takes to be a winner in the financial services industry.

Panellists included 2013 AFA Female Excellence Award winner, Catherine Robson; AFA Director/Treasurer and Inspire National Chair, Deborah Kent; and TAL General Manager Retail Distribution, Niall McConville.

“We are urging female advisers who demonstrate the ability to change the lives of everyday Australians, whilst also providing inspiration to other women seeking a career as a financial adviser, to apply, ” Ms Kent said.

The 2014 winner of the Female Excellence in Advice Award will be announced at the AFA National Conference on 14 October.

Macquarie Graduate School of Management is offering this year’s AFA Female Excellence
in Advice Award winner a full scholarship (valued at $12,000) to complete either a Postgraduate Certificate in Management or an Executive Education Leadership Development Program, of their choice. All semi-finalists will have the opportunity to participate in a Leadership Master Class as part of the Award Program.

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