Put on hold? Talk to Gary

A lot of advisers do not appreciate the finer qualities of the business development executives whose job it is to tend to their every wish. Nick Bruining, however, won’t hear a bad word against them.

A lot of advisers do not appreciate the finer qualities of the business development executives whose job it is to tend to their every wish. Nick Bruining, however, won’t hear a bad word against them.

Let it be said up front that I love fund managers.

By golly, they are the greatest things that ever walked the earth and I’m particularly a fan of those terrific, hard working people the BDMs.

In a recent Money Management article, the editor unkindly referred to them as Brochure Delivery Men. I should think they would be better referred to as “Brave Decent Magnificents” (of Society that is).

Think I’ve lost my marbles? Well let me tell you, a death threat does wonders for your perspective of life and a conversation along the lines of:

“Bruining. It’s me. Listen, if you want me to fix this problem, make sure you keep my name out of that rag or I’ll kill you.” motivates the best of us to change our minds.

So Dan, now the whole world’s aware of your threat and I’ve told my Mum as well.

The origins of this conversation lie in those wonderful brochures distributed by certain well meaning fund managers that go along the lines of:

“We can show you how to increase your business by 20 per cent with our new system which allows you to spend more time talking to clients and less on administration.”

Now it seems to me that this is great stuff and no doubt, someone’s been heading up a special project team over the past 18 months getting the thing off the ground. The glossy looks like it cost more to put together than a SOCOG ticketing scam. And all of this to basically copy something that’s been done before. Whether it be a master trust, a wrap account (is that some form or plastic wrapped CPA?) or even a fund of funds, they’ve all got them.

What I would like to see is a brochure that contains something like:

“We’ll increase your business by 20 per cent with our revolutionary system — humans who answer phones.

“Yes, no more voice prompts, no more telling you how important you are to us, no more stupid messages, tunes that never finish or call backs that mysteriously disappear into the ether.

“We’ll answer it in 30 seconds or you’ll be diverted to our managing director, Gary, and you can tell him how long you had to wait and get your question answered.”

I reckon THAT would increase my productivity by 20 per cent and allow me to see more clients than any new system or product.

My record wait is around 12 minutes for one major player and the same fund manager consistently takes more than 2 minutes to answer a call. In this age of connectivity, you’d think things would improve.

Recently, I had the need to request a quote from all providers of lifetime annuities. It was fairly straight forward and basically asked for a female, lifetime annuity with CPI indexation.

This was poll-faxed to 10 providers with a big black line along the top — URGENT URGENT URGENT.

Now, company “A” whose share price most closely resembles the back end of a bloke on one of those late night SBS movies responded within the hour. Not bad really — given the client was due in 18 hours later.

Company “J” whose name resembles a garbled form of a French garden tool came in with a humdinger - six days later.

I received a phone call asking me exactly what a lifetime annuity was and I set about re-reading the fax I’d sent.

“A new what?” she asked.

After telling her which of her products was the one I was interested in, I told the pleasant young lady to forget it as the business had been lodged already with another company.

Surprise surprise, next day the quote turned up on the fax — seven days late. I’m just glad I didn’t head the fax up:

“Take your time, just get back to me before the client exceeds her life expectancy.”

Four other fund managers responded within 24 hours and it was great to see that they all knew what I was asking for. Tragically, some still haven’t replied.

Some fund managers are terrific. It is usually those with the least amount of staff and a state manager that pops out with a bottle of red under the arm to say hello (yep, we disclose that too!) and to find out what’s really going on.

These also tend to be the ones who have designated staff for advisers, automatically replace expired applications with a pre-agreed quantity of new ones and have one computer system that can access all areas of the organisation. They’re only little things but in this competitive world, it makes a difference to planners.

So, having given it a great deal of thought, here’s my fund manager wish list.

? Give me a direct line to a lady (or bloke) who’s been there at least 20 years and knows all the staff and the systems. I want her phone to ring engaged when she’s busy with someone. Oh and she should work from 11am until 8pm Eastern Summer Time so I can get questions answered when I’m still at work.

? Keep client access authorities on file and in the same office. One fund manager has a call centre in Queensland and the receiving fax in Melbourne — der!

? Rename one of your staff by deed-poll to Urgent Urgent so that any correspondence gets to one person who understands an urgent request.

? Give me Gary’s number (no, no, we’re not talking about Samantha Walker’s pink dollars here) so that I can ring someone when I’ve come up against a brick wall.

? Ask me if I actually want to receive the CD Roms and the floppy disks.

? Bring more red out and include me in your corporate box at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games - which will of course be disclosed. (Sorry, thought I’d try that one on — you never know…..)

Finally, my thanks to all that participated in the FPA practitioner elections earlier this month. I was delighted and surprised to make it through and am sure that Paul Brady will agree with me when I say that the two we have replaced have done (and continue to do) a great job for the profession.

I just hope you are not expecting From the Frontline to become a leak bigger than that which sunk the Titanic. If you are… forget it !