Harris rides tides of change

Retired secretary of Perth-based RAC Superannuation Fund Kerry Davey always knew Bob Harris was coming to brief employees when he saw a diminutive figure toting a brand new plug-in calculator “the size of a couple of housebricks” into the RAC building.

Retired secretary of Perth-based RAC Superannuation Fund Kerry Davey always knew Bob Harris was coming to brief employees when he saw a diminutive figure toting a brand new plug-in calculator “the size of a couple of housebricks” into the RAC building.

“This was in the 1970s. Bob was one of the first to have a mobile calculator. You could hear the keys turning over. This indicates the type of bloke that Bob is. Bob has kept pace with change,” Davey says.

Harris is a man who knows all about change. With the financial planning industry undergoing a complete reinvention of itself in recent years (culminating in CLERP 6), Harris has been in the thick of it all. Starting as an agent with AMP in 1951, he earned his Diploma of Financial Planning in April 1997 and topped this off by be-coming a certified financial planner (CFP) in August of the same year.

Harris, about to turn 78, is still working full time.

“When most people were hanging up their quills, he was going hell for leather at it, which is in itself an enormous achievement,” Davey says.

Another colleague of Harris is Robin Silsbury. Silsbury works in the same office as Harris in Perth’s Subiaco, under contract to David Buttfield & Associates to pro-vide self managed super fund accounting and compliance services. Silsbury was also company secretary and finance director of Foodland Associates Limited (FAL) when Harris serviced the FAL Super Fund as an AMP representative. Sils-bury says he has been amazed by Harris’ ability to keep abreast of change.

“I think he’s a person who does a tremendous amount of homework before he gives advice. He’s very knowledgeable. At times, people have driven into the car park at work thinking Bob was in his car asleep, but he’s actually listening to a legislative update on the radio. I think his strength is that he endeavours to cover all bases in his work so a client is fully informed.”

Harris has done a lot of work with superannuation funds, stretching back to before the Government made them compulsory. He says he concentrated on super in the beginning, because of a “desire to be useful to people”. During his career, Harris worked closely with superannuation funds in Perth such as the RAC Super Fund and the FAL Super Fund.

Davey says has the highest regard for Harris’ professionalism.

“Fifteen to twenty years ago, Bob was giving financial planning advice. He’d give a briefing on how the fund would function and invariably there’d be a one on one situation with fund members. He wasn’t your slick salesman type of person, who’d sign you on the dotted line, take the commission and you’d never see him again,” he says.

Apart from working with super funds, Harris has built up a solid client base in his 49 years in the business. He says he specialises in the retirement market, particu-larly in retirement income streams, and has “a small amount of clients, all high net worth”.

“It was a bit ‘hit where you see a head’ in the early days,” he says of his earlier marketing efforts. Many of his clients, though, have stuck with him throughout the years. He has spent most of his time with AMP working both from home and from the offices of David Buttfield & Associates in Subiaco (though he maintains he is “independent”).

“I’m still really doing the same job, just with a different title,” Harris says.

Besides his professional qualifications, Bob has kept the fires going on several fronts over the years: as husband, father of four and grandfather to two; as chair-man of the Liberal Party’s selection committee for candidates in Western Australia (“Sir Charles Court used to phone him and ask for his advice,” former AMP col-league and retired agency manager John Cooke says) and as a Commander in the West Australian Navy Reserve (Harris also served in the Royal Australian Navy during World War Two).

Harris was only the second West Australian to become a life member of the Liberal Party (first cab off the rank was the aforementioned Sir Charles). He is also a life member of both the Athletic Association and the AMP Representatives Associa-tion.

Harris says he’s never strived to be AMP’s top writer of business, or to build the world’s largest agency. Having said this, though, he hasn’t done too badly for him-self at all.

“I haven’t chased a client for years. People come to me,” Harris says.

When Money Management first spoke to Harris, he had just finished an appoint-ment with two long-term clients who had driven all the way from Albany to see him. “These were clients from one of my old super plans,” he says.

And when quizzed on how many clients he has, or how much money is under his direct advice, Harris says he simply doesn’t know. Yet, when you ask him about how he goes about serving his clients, he lets you know that he sees client service as his top priority.

“I’ve been working with some of the major super funds in Perth so long because I’ve tended to always make myself available to them. I’ve found it very hard to get the young fellas to operate this way. They just don’t see the short term gain of it,” he says.

Yet Harris often worries that he doesn’t do enough for his clients. “I feel I may have neglected my clients a bit, because I don’t want to pester them.”

However, retired AMP agency manager John Cooke who worked with Harris for 25 years says his former workmate has always serviced his clients well, maintain-ing a reputation for being “a genuine, clear thinking and honest man”.

Cooke says commission-wise, Harris will often take the lowest commission for the sake of his client. “He’s his own worst enemy,” Cooke says.

While Harris says he couldn’t tell young planners starting out the way to build up their bread and butter client base, education is the key to getting on in the industry.

“The first thing they should do is make themselves knowledgeable — you need practical experience, but you also need sufficient knowledge,” he says.

And with Harris’ credentials, who can argue with him?