Day job leads to community success

A number of things strike you about Robert Kiddell’s application for this year’sMoney ManagementFinancial Planner of the Year award. The most obvious is that it’s thick. It is also full of career information, taped interviews, news clippings and references.

Couple these observations with the fact the interview for this story took place on a car phone, hands-free of course, while Kiddell was driving home from Mirboo North to Morwell in Victoria. Given these, an impression of Kiddell starts to emerge — a modest, high achieving country bloke, who leads a very busy life.

“It is a great honour. Being from the country, you think of the big name planners in the city or people in large practices rather than rural practices,” Kiddell says when told of his nomination as a finalist in the awards.

Modesty aside, what sets Kiddell apart is his obvious ability and willingness to integrate his academic and professional qualifications with aspirations to help the community.

His community involvement is nothing short of amazing. An edited list includes reference to his life membership of the Apex club of Mirboo North, church councillor and elder of Mirboo North Uniting Church, Mirboo North Secondary College school councillor, fellow of Gippsland community leadership program, and RAAF legal officer squadron leader

Born in Melbourne’s southern suburbs, Kiddell moved to the Gippsland area following the completion of his legal studies at Monash University in 1978.

In his university holidays, Kiddell worked at the general store at Wilson’s Promontory. That was also where he met his wife of 24 years, Dianne. Together they have four daughters, ranging in age from 13 years to 21 years.

“It was a conscious decision to move to Gippsland. Very few people come and then leave by choice, and it’s a pretty good spot to bring up a family,” Kiddell says.

For the first 17 years of his working life, Kiddell practiced as a solicitor for a number of small law firms in the district. He practiced mostly in the area of general civil litigation, with an emphasis on family law, personal injuries litigation and motor traffic law.

While working as a partner at Rennick Verhoeven between 1989 and 1992, the emphasis of Kiddell’s work shifted increasingly to commercial litigation, debt recovery and the development of a new area of investment advice and financial planning.

“My first financial planning company was an adjunct to Rennick Verhoeven. Securitor was the licensee at this stage and I was given this role because work was running down. I was told to have a go at it,” Kiddell says.

In 1990, he was awarded a diploma of financial planning (DFP) from Deakin University. In 1992, Kiddell left Rennicks, and taking the financial planning arm with him, worked as a consultant solicitor with Davine Fitzpatrick and Bennett.

Here he continued to work on his own accounts as a financial planner under the name of Kiddell Fitzpatrick Financial Services and as an associate of Securitor Financial Group Ltd.

Kiddell says in hindsight, it was a fairly smooth transition from a career in law to financial planning. He believes the main difference between the two professions is the amount of contact financial planners have with their clients, an aspect Kiddell enjoys.

“The beauty of financial planning is continuity. With lawyers, you may not deal with the client ever again, despite having worked closely with them. In financial planning, you see clients every six months and all our profiling is done face-to-face,” Kiddell says.

In September 1995, Kiddell registered the Delburn Group, which covers areas of personal and corporate financial planning including investment, superannuation and succession planning. It includes Delburn Garrisons, Delburn Masterplan Pty Ltd, Delburn Foundation, Delburn House Unit Trust, Delburn Financial Services, and Delburn Lawyers and Consultants.

The firm currently employs three full-time and two part-time staff, with its head office located in Morwell and offices in Pakenham, Warragul, Mirboo North, Moe and Sale.

“Today, I mostly do wills and estate planning. However, our approach to financial planning is a whole solution. All planners should be talking to clients about the need to have a will, a power of attorney, planning and risk,” Kiddell says.

He believes there are certainly differences to a rural-based financial planning practice and a city practice, and he loves the rural nature of his practice.

“This is a people business and people here are the salt of the earth. The practice made a conscious decision to work with the mums and dads and we enjoy working with them,” he says.

It is an attitude which probably led Kiddell to one of his highest career and community achievements, and which was formally recognised last June when he was awarded a Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Community Business Partnerships in Canberra.

After the Commonwealth Bank withdrew its business from the Mirboo North community in Victoria in 1998, leaving the town without a financial institution, Kiddell established Ridgway Financial Chambers in 1999 (Ridgway being the name of the main road in Mirboo North). The establishment of Ridgway Financial Chambers provided the community with a new home for a wide range of financial and professional services.

The Mirboo North community then formed the Mirboo North Cooperative Ltd, whose primary function was to return a comprehensive banking service to the town. A joint venture partnership was established between the Cooperative and Ridgway Financial Chambers, and Bendigo Bank came on board to provide the ATM services six days a week.

Bringing a financial institution back to Mirboo North has given the town a new chance to prosper, and lifted the reputation of joint community projects to new heights.

Last month, Ridgway Financial Chambers opened its 1,000th account, representing 10 per cent of Mirboo North’s residents. Kiddell estimates they are opening 30 to 40 accounts a month.

While the project is an obvious success, Kiddell says it took a lot of time away from his practice, particularly in the first year, but says that has since decreased to about an hour per day.

In May this year, Kiddell’s business was responsible for organising the inaugural Ethical and Alternative Investment Expo for the Latrobe Valley, and also hosts the local representative of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) out of the offices in Mirboo North.

Kiddell was also the inaugural chairman of the Gippsland Chapter, which started life as the second regional chapter of the International Association for Financial Planning (IAFP).

Kiddell is positive about the future direction of the financial planning industry. He predicts its development will be similar to that of the legal profession, where there is an emergence of accredited specialists in areas such as risk or estate planning. He also believes that in the next 5-10 years, planners will need a Masters qualification to practice.

“When I first started, there really were a lot of rip-off merchants going around. The industry has really come of age,” Kiddell says.