Necessity creates a vision for the future

In the future, financial planners will only deal with the advice part of a client relationship, while the backroom will produce the actual plan.

However, there is one planner who is already putting this model into practice and has done so for a number of years — and for good reason.

Peter Richards, the owner of a financial planning practice running under the Australian Financial Services (AFS) banner, is registered as partially sighted following a car accident many years ago.

While this has not stopped him acting as a financial planner, the practice has adopted a few strategies that aligns the business well with the financial planning business model of the future.

“I joined with AFS because I needed support and somebody to fall back on. Because of my eyesight, that has been more important,” he says.

“I have ended up running a business that would seem to be based on the future model through necessity.”

Good technical support from the group has been important to Richards, and he relies on two other planners plus an administrator to handle the day-to-day running of the business.

“I want to be able to open a file and find out exactly what position we are at with that client,” he says.

Richards started his career in financial services as a National Mutual agent in 1986.

“It was good training and I got to the stage of not being able to sell certain products, so I had to do the Diploma of Financial Planning (DFP) unit 1,” he says.

To achieve this, Richards had his secretary put the course on tape and every night he would listen to part of the course.

“I kept falling asleep and had to go back to the start every night,” he jokes.

Richards passed DFP 1 and had to get a qualified financial planner to help him with the compliance and the paperwork.

“This was another reason for joining AFS, as they were open-minded about how we had to run the business,” he says.

“AFS has handled compliance for the company, which has helped to build a team relationship between the pair of us.”

Richards was joined by planner Andrew Carrigan, who has subsequently become a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). More recently, Adrian Vidotto, an RMIT graduate with a financial planning degree, has joined the company, and he is now also studying for his CFP exams.

Richards says he always has either Vidotto or Carrigan present when meeting clients.

“They do the plan and it also helps them to get to know our clients. We have a lot of referrals and I think people now realise they get two planners for the price of one when they use us.”

According to Richards, the dual planner relationship works well — he has both the presentation skills and experience, which also helps the younger planners in the firm.

“I am the front man and behind me is a professional team,” he says.

AFS professional standards manager Paul Thompson says the dealer group was very happy to provide the professional support to enable Richards to continue.

“We helped with PS 146 by arranging an assessment based on Peter’s skills and experience. Peter passed, which was important, as not everybody can do the assessment option,” he says.

The initial interview with the assessor involved Vidotto explaining how the pair operates.

“The way we run is as a business, not a one-man band,” Richards says. “We also had to show examples of our work, including a full financial plan.”

The company operates on a fee-for-service basis, with trails also helping to build up the infrastructure needed to run an office.

“We are about building a business with succession planning in place. We have got a five-year plan for the business,” Richards says.