AMP adds next step to holistic planning

AMP Financial Planning(AMPFP) has re-affirmed its commitment to offering holistic financial planning advice to clients by launching AMPFP Life Stages.

The initiative, announced to advisers in late October, is a bid to promote consistency and raise the quality of advice offered by its almost 1,500 planners.

“What we’ve done is look at the whole financial planning process from the dealer’s perspective and as a large dealer group, tried to create a set of tools to help planners understand what their clients’ needs are at different stages,” AMPFP chief operating officer Neil Macdonald says.

Macdonald says while it is not mandatory AMP planners adopt the guide, early indications are that planners have welcomed the initiative.

“We only just launched it at the end of October, and already, we’re starting to get positive feedback from planners,” he says.

The five stages are ‘Start Up’ wealth creation, ‘Grow Richer’ wealth accumulation, ‘Achieve’ wealth maximization, ‘Fine Tune’ wealth preservation and ‘Enjoy’ wealth utilisation.

Macdonald adds the guides can be used at the beginning of the planning process and include educational tools to assist clients in understanding the basic concepts of advice.

“This means planners can quickly reach the point in the client interview where they can start to add real value for their client.”

Macdonald says the tool is timely given industry discussion in relation to risk profiling.

“It assesses the client’s risk profile, as well as the characteristics of their life stage, and focuses them through the fact find and as such, is an important part of our quality advice proposition,” he says.