City-slick with a rural tick

Financial planners in regional Australia share many of the challenges faced by those in metropolitan areas, writes Jason Spits, but technology has helped overcome the tyranny of distance by providing regional planners with new opportunities to service clients regardless of their location. 

Related: Face-to-face - from the top down

If you have ever harboured mental images of regional financial planners being laid-back rural types talking stock prices with their clients before getting down to sorting out an investment strategy or setting up a self-managed super fund, it’s time to update your view of their world. 

Add in planner offices interconnected to fund managers, platforms, research houses, licensees and clients through the use of technology – combined with a strong local presence and good referral relationships – and the picture grows clearer.  

This is the reality of financial planning in regional Australia in 2013 – a profession that mirrors its metropolitan-based equivalent and occasionally envies its ready access to resources while making the most of life away from the big smoke. 

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Interestingly, many regional financial planners are not unhappy with the distance they have to travel to see clients – that is par for the course – but rather it is the distance they have to travel to access continuing professional development (CPD) and peer networking resources that bothers them. 

Based in north-western Victoria in Mildura, Trilogy Financial Group senior planner Hayden Allen and general manager Greg Pahek said that the face-to-face contact city-based planners receive from product providers is something regional planners receive via the phone, and this is one of the few disadvantages they have found. 

“On the occasions that we have travelled to the city to meet with product providers or interact with peers at industry functions, it is the time cost of travel that is the biggest drawback,” Pahek said. 

“It is an expense we have to invest in, but our dealer group (Garvan) does make a real effort to ensure we get the information we need and it is useful for us to interact with other advisers within the same business group.” 

State Super Financial Services Western Australia state manager Scott Phillips also feels the distance keenly, even though he is based in Perth.

Phillips, who has been tasked with setting up the financial planning operations of State Super in the west, said he often has to remind himself that Perth is a long way from head office. 

“Living in Western Australia I have come to expect little feedback after 2pm from anyone on the east coast, which is an adjustment that has to be made when you relocate over here. Part of my new mindset is to ask ‘What time is it in Sydney?’ before making a call,” Phillips said.

“I am also aware that as a newcomer brand awareness can be practically zero and that we don’t have a home court advantage.” 

Hometown presence critical 

For smaller practices such as Ulton Chartered Accountants in Bundaberg, Queensland, a hometown presence and brand is critical according to partner and financial planner Kylie Wright. 

Wright said she has had a cup of tea and talks farming and stock prices before getting into the planning business at hand, but maintains this is the only way to build a public profile in a regional area. 

“It is important for us to be seen and so we sponsor race days and invite clients who we can network with and who also network among themselves, but we do prefer to do much of our work face-to-face. 

“It is a two-way benefit because we get to understand each other better and we become part of their social connections – to the extent that we are invited to family events,” Wright said. 

Greg Willey and Tim Wakeling, business partners at Strategy First in Bunbury south of Perth, said a local profile is best built by focusing on the quality and calibre of advice on offer and then sticking with that task by offering transparent fees and processes. 

“We do what we are good at and contract things such as compliance and IT to external providers. We do whatever we can inhouse, but for some things we don’t have the expertise or the time,” Wakeling said. 

“We do use technology to assist, but only once we have created a trust relationship with the client, which is not much different than what planners do across the board,” Willey said. 

Technology key, but care needed 

There is a travel cost with this type of work, according to Wright, but technology has allowed her practice to process the more mechanical and mundane aspects of the client relationship. 

In fact technology rates very highly with regional financial planners, with Allen and Pahek stating that it has given such planners the same capabilities, tools and functions as their city counterparts. 

“Technology has not always been the cheapest option for our practice but we do rely heavily on it and we get good returns from it.  

“We have also found that it gives us the same resources and puts us on the same footing as our metro cousins, but we have to be careful not to overstep the mark as it should never replace face-to-face advice,” Pahek said. 

“In the country planners have to use technology wisely. Skype is a great example of a tool that can be used with existing clients, but we would never use it for an initial discussion with a new client. 

“We use technology each day for our back office functions but would not rely on it to generate new business.” 

HPH Solutions private client adviser Randall Stout, who provides advice to fly in- fly out mining contractors from Perth, said his first Skype experiences were awkward but he has since adopted the technology as a compliance tool. 

“The first few meetings were a bit stilted – but from a technology point of view Skype is fantastic. We can record our discussions and include them in a client file as part of our compliance requirements, and our clients are happy to speak to us this way because they use it already to communicate with friends and family,” Stout said. 

“We can email the statement of advice and book the Skype meeting which speeds the planning process, but also means we don’t have to travel to see every single client or have them come to us whenever they are in town.” 

CPD at home defeats distance 

Yet it seems the one area that many regional planners do rely on technology is the provision of CPD education and training.

Each planner interviewed for this article said they received CPD information from education providers, product providers and licensees, reducing the amount of time spent in a training room hundreds of kilometres away. 

Stout said that he was able to overcome the west coast-east coast divide from his Perth office through the use of technology and services provided by his licensee, member associations and product providers. 

“My licensee, Associated Advisory Practices, makes good use of webinars which are becoming increasingly popular and were very useful ahead of the implementation of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms. 

“The Financial Planning Association also did good work in this area and we have been able to access investment strategies and ideas from groups such as IOOF,” Stout said. 

“This type of access has helped because we do miss out on some of the CPD opportunities that come from road shows and conferences that are often expensive to attend.” 

Willey and Wakeling agree that technology has made compliance and education easier for the regional planner, but it has also lifted the bar in these areas. 

“We don’t see the value in a four-hour round-trip to attend one-and-a-half hours of CPD training, so we chose to do it remotely. But being a regional planner is not an impediment to being compliant,” Wakeling said. 

“Not all planners have embraced this idea and there have been failings in financial planning and accountancy. But the tools are available and planners need to run their practices along a corporatised model to ensure they use the resources and stay up to date,” Willey said.  

Recruitment issues surmountable 

While planners can readily access resources from licensees, education and product providers, they do find that human resources take much more work to find and retain. 

Ibessa financial strategist Ian Byrne in Cairns said regional planners find that the pool of talent is often smaller with many people drawn off to larger towns and cities – but good staff are still on the ground. 

“The pool we can draw from is smaller than the cities, that’s just a function of the size of the place where we live, but the quality of people is as good as anywhere,” Byrne said. 

“We also see an advantage in recruiting locally in that they have no preconceived ideas about what the profession is, and we can teach them the business from within the practice and the local community. 

“New recruits see this as a genuine opportunity for a career and not just as a step on the road to somewhere else.” 

Allen and Pahek agree that the talent pool is small, which makes the search for new staff even harder on some occasions. 

“You can be tempted to hire the person who is there at the time instead of waiting for the right person, but we find that when we do hire people stay for longer periods as well,” Allen said. 

“And we don’t poach from other professionals around town either because come five o’clock on a Friday we have to drink with them,” Pahek said.  

The essentials remain 

Byrne said that despite the challenges of being a regional financial planner their role is still an important one, regardless of location or client base. 

“Any discussion around regional versus city based planning can discuss the drive, skill and professionalism of the planners – and technology has made it easy to find information. 

“However we were still accessing this information before there was the internet and it is still an individual adviser who makes the difference for the client.” 

Stout agrees and said that while methods and means may differ between regional planners and their city counter-parts, the task of financial planning is the same. 

“My fly-in fly-out clients have the same needs as any planning client. They may be in a period of high cash flow but they are interested in debt reduction, investments, salary sacrificing to superannuation and risk insurance, and so I take the same approach as normal clients, because in essence they are normal clients.”