Corinna Dieters: Seeing the process through

Ascending to the summit of an organisation is an achievement people usually rank as a life long ambition, but Corinna Dieters’ decision to stand for election as chair of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) was made with a lot less fanfare.

She describes her appointment to the role as a natural progression due to her three year involvement on the board of the association and her resulting familiarity with the issues facing the industry.

“I don’t think I’d actually consciously sat down and thought this is my next step. I think it was really a decision that both Sarah Brennan [deputy chair] and I had discussed in so far as we had been on this journey for three years and it was an appropriate next step to put our names forward for the position. So it wasn’t a planned ‘my next move is to do this’, it was really a decision based on where we were at. It wasn’t any grand plan,” she says.

However, Dieters’ involvement with the FPA board is not the only factor that made her an appropriate candidate to chair the professional body. She has been a part of the financial planning sector from the time the industry was in its infancy back in 1989, and moved to HLB Mann Judd in 1997 to run the dealer operations of the licensee.

Although Dieters has never actually held an advisory role within the industry, she feels this fact has helped her acquire a better understanding of the overall processes and issues surrounding planners.

“My roles within financial planning have been more around business development, marketing, training, and compliance. So my role has always been an operational role rather than an advisory role. But in that role, I guess I have to deal with every bit of what we do from the business process.

“That includes how the advisers interact with clients, what they provide them, how they go about giving their advice and so on. So I’ve always had a fairly hands-on approach to understanding the issues that have to be faced by advisers without actually having to do it myself,” she explains.

By the time Dieters’ stint as FPA chair has concluded she will have seen the association’s deliberate program to raise the professionalism of the industry run its full course.

The process began three years ago in response to criticism over the quality of advice from bodies such as the Australian Consumers’ Association. It was an effort to address the issues detracting from the standing of FPA members.

It has been implemented in three parts, comprising of a code addressing alternative remuneration, a paper on how to deal with rebates, and a set of principles dealing with conflicts of interest.

Dieters wants to ensure the process is finished properly and that all of the initiatives are successfully implemented. She has made this the number one priority during her term as FPA chair.

“How financial planners have been perceived in the past, from the outside looking in, we addressed very much through those key programs and we want to make sure it’s finalised at the end of this fourth year.

“So by the time I finish my term I’d like to see that the conflicts of interest paper is understood and embedded and that when members join the FPA they understand that they are signing on for a higher level of professional standards than they would if they were perhaps joining another association.

“That’s really about setting themselves apart as professionals compared to others. If we can achieve that it would be great,” she says.

An effective system of regulation for the industry that participants can easily abide by and which will raise consumer confidence regarding quality of financial advice is another objective Dieters has targeted. To this end, she thinks the relationship the FPA has with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and Treasury is set to strengthen.

“At the moment we’ve got the draft regulations for changes to FSR [financial services reform] and we’ll be meeting with Treasury to discuss those. Until we get a situation where there are some less onerous requirements in certain areas, we will continue to make submissions. We have over the past 18 months built a very good relationship with ASIC, with Treasury, and with various politicians, so that will only continue to strengthen,” she stresses.

However, under Dieters’ leadership the interaction with the regulatory bodies will not stop at FSR. Discussions with ASIC regarding some of its consumer protection schemes has already taken place.

“We’ve been through the Super Switching Report that ASIC provided, which has had a bit of air time of late. And we know that ASIC will be working through the shadow shopping exercise as well, so no doubt there will be some further discussions about what we can do together to improve things,” she says.

Despite her 17-year history in financial services, Dieters still finds the industry interesting due to its constantly changing nature, particularly in the area of regulation, which she has had to deal with throughout her career. As a result of this continual evolution, Dieters believes the industry has been left to tackle one permanent challenge.

“As our business has grown, it’s about making sure you communicate with people. We are making changes from business perspectives that are actually about improving things from a client’s perspective as well. The challenge is often getting the two ends to be working effectively together. That is, to remember you are always doing something for the customer and not necessarily just doing it because it says so in regulation,” she explains.

“We’re trying to take the issues we have to deal with from a regulation point of view and turn them into something that’s much more meaningful from a client point of view. I think that’s been a continual challenge but more so with FSR,” Dieters adds.

The standard term as FPA chair is for one year only and in this regard Dieters is happy to stick with convention.

“It’s not the standard way of doing things [running for a second term], so I certainly don’t have an expectation to stay on after that one year unless there’s any extraordinary reason why I might be asked to,” she says.