Resnik to change financial advice with launch of planning offices

FinancialPlanning consultant Paul Resnik is preparing to put his money where his mouth is with plans to launch a chain of financial planning offices.

And Resnik’s goal for the new venture is nothing short of revolutionary: to change the way financial planning is conducted in this country.

The new business, to be set up under Resnik’s CARM group, will concentrate exclusively on the lifestyle or holistic approach to financial planning, targeting a clientele of all ages and bank balances.

Resnik revealed his plans for the new business at the recent Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) conference, where he used a speech to admonish the financial planning profession for focusing almost exclusively on product sales to a small number of high-net-worth individuals, rather than the lifestyle goals of most people.

“It is unfortunate that we are turning into an elitist profession,” he says.

“The purpose of [lifestyle] financial planning is to assist individuals with the management of their personal financial affairs so as to achieve, as fully as possible, those of their personal goals that have a financial dimension.”

Resnik is also dismissive of suggestions that targeting a mass audience of clients with a lifestyle approach to financial planning cannot be profitable.

He says the key is for financial planners to make the actual process of developing a financial plan highly prescriptive and replicable, while at the same time ensuring each plan meets the unique needs of individual clients.

The Resnik planning businesses will be built around a new financial planning software system, developed internally by Resnik, designed to automate as much of the plan preparation process as possible.

Resnik says the system, which will also be made available to other financial planning dealer groups, will allow his financial planners to remain profitable, even though they may be working with clients at the lower end of the wealth spectrum.

“Lifestyle planning, because it is so process driven, provides the opportunity to do financial planning without incurring the huge costs,” he says. “If the financial planning process is systematised it is cheaper.”

Resnik, a long-time advocate of the lifestyle approach to financial planning, is looking to acquire a number of existing planning businesses as part of a bid to have the new venture established by the second quarter of next year.

“It is our intention to be acquiring planning businesses, mostly life insurance businesses,” he says.

And just how big does Resnik expect the new venture to get?

The aim is to initially acquire only a handful of businesses and concentrate on transitioning them across to Resnik’s lifestyle model of financial planning.

But in the long-term, Resnik says, the sky could be the limit.

“Financial planners have been too busy focusing on a small number of rich clients and retirees. The other 99 per cent of people need financial help too,” he says.