“There are some things that occur that one would argue are outside of one’s control,” says Michael Guggenheimer, chief executive of AMP Financial Planning (AMPFP). It’s a familiar feeling for many people involved in financial planning – the sensation that one’s own destiny is
being determined by forces and interests outside the industry.

“Our research suggests there’s plenty of people who need advice who don’t get advice, or get it in one form or another, somehow or another, but do not necessarily access it through financial planners. “So trying to make things more transparent in terms of the structures that practices operate under, in terms of their fee structures, [and] that they’re explicitly agreed between the planner and the client; hopefully that will be some of the stuff that will allow confidence to build from the consumer’s perspective.

“I have a burning ambition that this is seen as a profession, and if you think about what does that mean, my sense is we’ll be looking to leverage up the qualification, leveraging up what people do and how they give effect to their responsibilities, and that sort of thing.

As an industry we’re relatively new; if you think about the evolution of financial planning, it’s not that old compared to other professions, and I think this step-change provides us with an opportunity to contemplate whether or not we can move into that area.

“I think everyone who operates in the industry would relish the thought of everyone coming and seeking advice; at the moment they do not seek it out, for a variety of reasons, and if the industry can think about what it wants to do – and I know there’s a lot of people thinking about what the prospects are in three to five years’ time – then you know, professionalism is one of the agendas we’d want to run.”

All of the changes Guggenheimer wants to have in place by July are underpinned by the recent roll-out of the Coin software platform. This has enabled AMP to put all of its planning practices on a common operating system, so change can be implemented as effectively in Broome as in Brunswick or Bundaberg.

AMP’s big-picture plan is to put financial planning practices wherever the market warrants it; its local plan is to make sure each practice is as close to its community as possible, yet backed by the infrastructure and resources of a major financial institution – in other words, to think globally, and act locally. But act now.

“Our strategy from a licensee perspective is pretty clear: we’re wanting to build confidence about financial planning and we want to translate that consumer confidence into more people seeking advice,” Guggenheimer says. “So we’ve been on a path of trying to do a number of things.

One is, how do we have one platform from which to work, in terms of practice management and advice? That’s the Coin platform, as you may be aware. “It’s gone into pretty well every single practice all around the country. In total we now have about 3000 or 3500 users of the system potentially on a daily basis or a concurrent basis, such is the scale of the network for authorised representatives; but because it’s practice management and CRM [client relationship management] it’s also all the other people in the practice as well.

“It was no mean feat to roll that out to the entire network. So we have now got a common platform and obviously we’re working on things like how do we get our advice policies in a manner that can be deployed through the platform, which obviously will drive the efficiency from a practice perspective, and drive a solution from the client’s perspective that they can relate to and obviously take up.

“That’s the next evolution of the productivity efficiency agenda.” Guggenheimer says AMP has also completely reviewed the approach it takes to supporting its planning network with high-quality research.

“We have an in-house research team and we also leverage the external research houses, so we went through a program of review that looked at what tools does the external world have that could support our research team or a financial planning practice, and how do we then leverage the expertise that the external research houses have that look at all the super funds, all the managed funds, et cetera, and how do we bring that together?” he says.

“We went through a request for proposal, and we’ve ended up selecting van Eyk and Lonsec to support the research team with the external research. “Also, there’s an element of the modelling tools that van Eyk have that make sense from a practice management perspective.

“One of the really important components when giving advice is contemplating clients’ existing circumstances, existing products and services. Under the requirements under Section 945 [of the Corporations Act], if considering a replacement product they’ve got to look at the features, the benefits, the losses, et cetera.

When we went through this process, we also saw that there were super comparator tools that were available in the marketplace, which is the Chant West solution. “Again, it’s saying, how can we give support to our practices to give effect to what they need to do as a financial planner?

The Chant West super comparator is part of that solution, to say well, how do we enable the practices to do what they need to do, which is the provision of advice, and to have the background and the research and everything to support it?”