Right on track

You’d think that winning Money Management’s Financial Planner of the Year Award back in 1996 would be a good way to top off a great career. But for Bendigo-based financial planner and professional runner, George Flack, it was just the beginning. And winning the 2004 Financial Planner of the Year Award proves that Flack hasn’t dropped off the pace.

In the past eight years he has been awarded Bendigo’s Citizen of the Year prize, carried the Olympic torch, co- authored his third book, On the road to retirement, and been a guest speaker at big financial planning gigs at Sanford University, New Orleans, Colorado and Boston.

In 2003 he wrote the ‘Social Security’ section of the Australian Financial Planning Handbook 2004 and helped the Securities Institute launch two new financial planning courses. In February 2004 he was appointed to a major working party to ensure all RetireInvest employees could keep up with the Financial Services Reform legislation, and in July 2004 he was elected state president of the Victorian Athletic League Board.

Flack got started in the financial services industry 34 years ago, when he scored a job at the Department of Social Security (DSS) straight out of high school. But he became frustrated with the job. At the time DSS employees could only provide limited advice to their clients.

“I believed that there must be a better way to provide advice to people claiming entitlements,” Flack says.

So in 1978, Flack decided to take up a planning role at Beyson Financial Planning. But when the group was forced to close down two years later, he moved on to the Bendigo branch of RetireInvest.

Now Flack heads up that branch. He is also the representative of the RetireInvest Proprietor’s Advisory Council (PAC), a body set up to voice the concerns of practices that have franchise agreements with the ING-owned dealer group. Last month the PAC struck up a new franchise agreement with RetireInvest and ING that aims to provide a more competitive dealer split for franchisees. Flack can take much of the credit for making sure advisers’ concerns were expressed and understood by the RetireInvest executive.

But although he has spent much of the past two years representing fellow RetireInvest franchise holders, Flack says helping his clients understand what they can do with their social security entitlements is still his specialty.

And Flack says offering that help is not exclusively about selling products.

“The last thing that ever gets considered in any client situation is the actual product. Most financial planners, I dare say, have been doing it that way for a number of years. But what those planners are going to have to realise is that offering a more holistic advice model is going to be the only way for them to go in future.”

Flack says a good financial planner is “an all-round balanced person who has empathy with their client, and who knows quite well how to handle their client and everything they do”.

“Being a lifestyle planner isn’t just about financial planning. It’s about knowing everything about the client, it’s knowing and caring about their family and where they’re moving and when they have their illnesses and deaths. We have generations of clients in our practice, grandparents, parents and children — and it’s delightful to play such an important part in helping them achieve their goals.”

As his practice is based in a country town, Flack thinks community involvement is a key to his success as a financial planner.

“Being active in the community lets people see who you are and what you have to offer,” Flack says.

“Living in the country, your clients are living and working where you are so you must be involved. People like being on a winner so I want to continue to be involved in athletics as a professional. I have clients saying to me, ‘gee it was great to see you out on the running track the other day. Congratulations on winning that race’.”

As well as staying the course on the track, Flack still finds the time to help out at the local fire brigade at which he has been a volunteer firefighter since 1967 and he still occasionally plays the trombone in the Marist Brothers high school brass band.

Since 1996, thanks to what he calls “good time management skills”, Flack says he has been able to “blossom out”, becoming involved in another eight community groups, including becoming a board member of the Tourism Board in Bendigo and assisting the Otis Foundation, which supports women recovering from breast cancer. He has also driven from Melbourne to Brisbane and then from Melbourne to Kalgoorlie in a bright purple Valiant to raise money for the Variety Club.

Overall, Flack says the reason he has not only survived but succeeded in the financial planning profession for nearly three decades is his ability to adapt to change.

“The last 32 years of my life has been subject to change and challenges like the introduction of Financial Services Reform and the stock market crash of 1987.”

“To be a financial planner we have to adapt to change and anyone who can’t cope with change should not be in the industry.”