John Hewison: fighting the good fight

It isnot every financial planner who can count a meeting with the Prime Minister as a career highlight.

Even fewer can claim such a meeting as not only a personal triumph, but also as the spark for a memorable victory for their industry.

So it is with John Hewison, the managing director of Hewison and Associates.

The year was 2001 and Hewison, as chairman of theFinancial Planning Association(FPA), was invited to meet with the Prime Minister to discuss the application of the Alienation of Personal Services Income (APSI) tax legislation to financial planners.

The issue had been looming as a major threat to financial planning businesses for the best part of a year, and the debate was delicately poised.

Until, that is, Hewison and FPA chief executive Ken Breakspear were granted a face-to-face meeting with the Prime Minister.

“It was a groundbreaking experience when Ken Breakspear and I went to see the Prime Minister. It really just indicated that the Government took us seriously and had regard for what we had to say,” Hewison says.

“The Prime Minister had done his homework, listened to what we had to say, challenged us, and at the end of the day he agreed to pursue a legislative change [in favour of financial planners].”

The APSI case is just one of many industry issues Hewison has taken a lead role on.

Having stepped down as FPA chairman in late 2001, Hewison is now leading the association’s Professional Indemnity Insurance Task Force, which is close to finalising what it feels could be an industry wide solution to the crisis in indemnity insurance for financial planners.

It is this sort of industry involvement that has taken Hewison to his third nomination for the Financial Planner of the Year award. Hewison was the runner-up for the award in 1999 and a finalist in 2000.

It is the type of leadership Hewison has also displayed in his own business. In 1989, he developed his own internal portfolio administration system that was, in essence, a forerunner to today’s wrap accounts and individually managed account services.

“Back in the late 1980s, most of our clients were in what were the forerunners of the master trust. But there were a lot of inefficiencies, so we just developed our own system. We weren’t looking to develop a style of product, but a style of service for our clients,” he says.

Hewison also describes himself as a fierce advocate of fee-based financial planning and staunch supporter of professional standards for advisers.

“From the time I first came into the industry, I had a dislike for the commission system because I felt a professional adviser should be seen as adding value and therefore worthy of payment by the client.

“It also seems to me, that whilst I agree with the generally held view that it doesn’t matter how you are paid as long as the client knows what they are paying, there is a distinct difference between a client paying for your time as a professional and you being paid by a third party,” he says.

This is just one of the lessons that Hewison is passing on to up-and-coming financial planners through RMIT University in Melbourne, where he is a voluntary guest lecturer talking to graduate students about the financial planning profession from a practical perspective.

But the best piece of advice Hewison can give to his students is a simple one: “The only way to get the most out of your profession is to put something back into it.”