Another vintage year for Perpetual Planner

Perpetual Private Clients’ group executive Wayne Wilson likes a bit of a wager every now and then. And we’re not talking the odd tenner, either. This is why Wil-son has in fact put a bottle of Grange on the line, depending on the level of busi-ness his 1998-1999 adviser of the year Andrew Cunich can write.

Perpetual Private Clients’ group executive Wayne Wilson likes a bit of a wager every now and then. And we’re not talking the odd tenner, either. This is why Wil-son has in fact put a bottle of Grange on the line, depending on the level of busi-ness his 1998-1999 adviser of the year Andrew Cunich can write.

Wilson doesn’t sound overconfident when asked about his chances of scoring the wine. His colleagues don’t stand him a great chance, either. In fact, Perpetual Pri-vate Clients’ regional manager for NSW Andrew McKee is backing Cunich, who he says is having a bumper of a year.

“He’s looking pretty good for it,” McKee says.

Andrew Cunich hasn’t been a planner all that long, though he’s been in the finan-cial services industry for at least a dozen years. He used to work as a regulator, in the superannuation group of the old Insurance and Superannuation Commission (now folded into the Australian Securities and Investments Commission). He de-scribes his times at the ISC as “almost like being paid to go to university”. He’s also worked with AMP, as a sales technical adviser and has even served a stint as a principal research officer for the Senate Select Committee for Superannuation.

Just to round the picture off nicely, he has a black belt in tae kwon do.

These are pretty good credentials if you want your clients to pay attention to your advice, though McKee says the group so far have no need to employ Cunich as a bodyguard.

With this, Cunich concurs. He has responsible for “a little over 300 clients” as a planner. He says he’s never had a client from hell since he took over the running of Perpetual Private Clients’ Canberra office in 1995.

“Clients from hell usually exist for a reason, such as you haven’t been able to pro-vide a solution for them. I can honestly say I haven’t had that problem.”

From all accounts, Cunich has not had the easiest of jobs at Perpetual. When he first started with the group, his office was mainly offering traditional trustee serv-ices. His brief was to turn the business into a provider of full financial planning services. However, he says he always felt Perpetual had a good grounding from which to work.

“Other groups had financial planning but very little else, whereas we had every-thing else and just needed to offer financial planning. The practice now is a thriv-ing one-stop financial planning office. We’re no longer dependent on the state head office and we’ve enhanced our profile in Canberra.”

Unfortunately, the transition had some casualties along the way. In 1995, 12 staff manned the Canberra bunker. Now there are only 6. However, Cunich says some staff are also located in Perpetual’s headoffice, performing backoffice duties.

When Wayne Wilson first joined Perpetual, he was impressed with Cunich’s suc-cesses in what he describes as the “overserviced” Canberra market.

“When I came to Perpetual, He was one of the existing managers. He’s the only one of them left. He was one of those guys who’d been doing it right all along and he’s gone like a steam train since I’ve been here,” Wilson says.

This is something McKee agrees wholeheartedly with.

“For the last three or four years, since he’s been running the show, he has really gone from strength to strength without a fuss.”

Cunich says the move into financial planning has not only been a logical progres-sion, but a vital source of new business for his team.

“In most cases, the first contact we have with our clients is through giving them fi-nancial advice. Then they become a private client and we handle all their affairs,” he says.

Perhaps stemming from his time as a regulator, Cunich feels particularly passionate about one issue in financial planning: commissions.

“We (at Perpetual) are paid a professional salary and are entitled to a bonus in re-lation to profitability. We’re not paid a commission,” he states matter of factly.

However, Cunich says he “certainly would not cast aspersions” about those plan-ners surviving purely on commission and says, for one thing, client bases are very hard to build up. He does, however, believe the financial planning industry is moving towards fee for service. While he says he can’t see fee for service being adopted across the board in the next five years, he still thinks this form of remu-neration will be the only way to go in the long term.

It is not surprising, then, this is something he has personally embraced for his busi-ness.

“I wanted to be in a professional environment where I was free to give advice. I wouldn’t say it was a decision in ethics, but rather it was a professional desire to work in a pure and holistic environment.”

Cunich is also willing to weigh into another key area of concern in financial plan-ning: spreading yourself thin over too many areas of service. Cunich believes the industry will soon be divided into specialists, due to the “increasing complexity of legislation and the vast amount of products available”.

Advisers will have difficulty in keeping their professional skill levels up to date in all areas.

“We’ll see a lot more specialisation in the industry, just like we’re seeing in the le-gal profession,” he says.

Cunich also knows first hand the difficulty in keeping up with an increasing workload. Apart from having more than $200 million under his direct advice as a planner and spending 50 to 55 hours a week as a planner, he also has to squeeze in an extra 5 to 15 hours a week to keep up with his management role. He admits it’s a precarious balancing act, and that he “can work quite extended hours” at times.

“It’s the nature of the role, but I try to keep the balance down to about 55 or 60 hours a week,” he says.

While he feels pretty happy about the direction of his Canberra business, Cunich does express significant frustration at the number of clients he has seen who don’t realise the importance of acting on financial planning advice.

“I’m disappointed that my skills have let me down when it comes to conveying the value of the advice to clients. When you haven’t been persuasive enough, that’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

In fact, Cunich’s pet hate is “people who don’t take responsibility for their plan-ning services”. Like many other planners, he says he gets fed up with people wanting a quick fix solution to their financial woes when it’s nearing the “too little, too late” scenario.

“People too often come to me when I should’ve seen them years ago,” he says.

Perhaps Wilson’s bottle of Grange will come in handy after all.