A potpourri of planners

What sort of person is drawn to financial planning? Are there particular types of training or particular industries that generate financial planners?

The answer is no. A quick look around the financial planning industry tells you that planners come from a wide range of callings — lawyers, scientists, soldiers, architects, engineers and even the odd butcher.

Indeed, it is neither training nor background that financial planners have in common, so much as a desire to establish their own presence and, to a degree, become masters of their own destinies.

Jeremy Gillman-Wells, the principal of Canberra-based financial planning business, Bentham Financial Group, came to the financial planning industry after a career in the army, including some notable work in East Timor.

Gillman-Wells, the son of an army officer, originally thought he wanted to be a pilot, but after being told his eyesight wouldn’t pass muster with the Royal Australian Air Force he opted for the army and an officer cadetship.

Thanks to the army, Gillman-Wells graduated with a science degree majoring in chemistry, and if you’d asked him at the time where his future lay he would probably have nominated anything but financial planning.

He says he developed an interest in the finance sector while serving in the army and originally considered a career in merchant banking. All that changed, however, when he was posted to East Timor and found himself not only undertaking military duties but delivering humanitarian assistance.

“That experience, particularly the humanitarian element, had a considerable impact on me and my attitudes and my desire to help people,” Gillman-Wells says.

On his return from Timor, while still in the army, he undertook an MBA in financial planning. He left the army almost five years ago and put his MBA to good use as an AMP licensed adviser.

Looking back, Gillman-Wells says his move into financial planning really just evolved, but he’s glad he made it.

It is a matter of record, of course, that a number ofMoney Management’sFinancial Planner of the Year recipients have come from professional backgrounds, seemingly only remotely connected to financial planning.

The current planner of the year, Robert Kiddell, for instance, was a lawyer.

Interestingly, his motivation for making the move is similar to that expressed by Gillman-Wells.

“It’s a socially useful job and is genuinely helping people. It is possible to achieve a 100 per cent success rate if you educate your clients, benchmark your performance and do the client reviews,” Kiddell says.

Kiddell began his career as a lawyer in 1978 and practised as a solicitor for a number of small law firms in the area of general civil litigation, with an emphasis on family law, personal injuries litigation and motor traffic law.

In the late 80s and early 90s, the practice he was in and his own work moved further towards the areas of commercial litigation, debt recovery and the development of a new area of investment advice and financial planning.

This led Kiddell to study for the Diploma of Financial Planning (DFP) from Deakin University, which he gained in 1990, and two years later he left the group, taking the financial planning arm with him.

AnotherMoney Managementfinancial planner of the year, John Wotherspoon, also came to the industry from a seemingly disconnected background. He was an engineer and began his financial planning career when he left the South Australian Public Service.

However, Wotherspoon is not alone, with a number of engineers now represented in the ranks of financial planners.

For some the move into financial planning reflects a desire for change — a feeling that their original career choice hasn’t delivered everything they hoped for.

One such is Maurice Goldberg of Ark Financial, who gave up his career in architecture to pursue financial planning — first with Financial Wisdom and now with his own group.

However, Goldberg didn’t entirely depart from his architectural roots. He is one of the few planners who specialises in direct property investments — via both mortgage brokering and real estate — something he says he owes to his belief that it represents a solid asset class.