Margaret Liu’s entry to financial planning was anything but straightforward, but now she’s here she intends to make a real difference. Simon Hoyle reports.
Margaret Liu’s original career path would have taken her squarely into the IT world. But after finishing high school and starting an IT degree, Liu had a change of mind, and a change of heart.
Her career path since then has been something of a long and winding road, to her current position as a financial planning manager for NAB, based at the company’s 500 Bourke Street building, and aligned to the bank’s Chinatown branch.
But having identified financial planning as a career, and having worked hard to find a way into it, Liu, 29, is determined to make it count. She says she is passionate about educating people to make better use of their financial resources.
“I’m very interested in financial literacy,” Liu says.
“This is just my personal view, but there is a financial literacy need in Australia. I find that even though maths is taught in schools, where we all know the basics of maths, applying that to real life and how things function is really quite different.
“I’ve spoken to a few of my friends – and quite a few of my friends happen to be schoolteachers – and you come to the realisation that a lot of them are starting to say the same thing. They say you’re taught maths in school, you’re taught all these things academically, and it’s wonderful, but when it comes to applying and addressing issues in real life, such as managing your money [and] knowing how things operate, a lot of them have little clue.
“This has been said before anyway, but a lot of our habits and the way we manage money comes from family and friends. That’s where you first learn them. If there was no other option and no one else who knows any better, then the cycle continues, and will keep repeating itself.”
Liu says she’s talking to “a few people in NAB who are also very passionate about this particular area”.
“I hope to be able to assist in putting together or being involved in a project or a programme of some sort to address this issue and to help the community in that particular way,” she says.
But she says she’d like to make contact with anyone who shares her passion. As well as serving the community, Liu says, it would “really help them understand what role and function we have as planners, as well”.
“I’m happy to speak to anyone who shares my passion, because that’s how ideas are born and things are done; it’s by talking to people who share similar vision or beliefs,” Liu says.
“And if everyone is working towards the same goal…there should be a lot of innovation and it can be done…without too much difficulty.”
Liu has worked her way into her current position by a fairly circuitous route. It’s testament to her drive and her commitment to financial planning as a career that she got there at all.
“When I graduated from high school my heart was set on IT, so I got into an IT degree, and about a semester in I realised that programming required a lot more patience and lacked the level of people interaction that I enjoyed,” Liu says.
“So I put that on hold and decided to find what it was I really wanted to do. I worked for a while and during that time I realised that a lot of people I came across were telling stories about how they’re working really hard for their money, but in most cases their money isn’t working hard enough for them. It’s a bit one-sided, and I thought there should be something that everyone can do in order to improve their position. And also, you see there’s a lot of people out there who are successful financially, and you’re not really sure how they did it. So [my interest] came out of a desire to understand the situation.
“I’m from a Chinese background and a lot of people, friends and family, were first-generation migrants; when they came to Australia they worked very hard and they were fantastic savers. I wouldn’t say they didn’t get anywhere financially – they did – but it just seemed like it wasn’t as easy as it could be. There was something missing.”
Liu says that when she realised that, she started looking around for roles that could help people achieve their financial goals. That was when she came across the concept of financial planning.
“I got an understanding that financial planners were supposed to be trusted advisers, who helped people with improving their lifestyles, reaching their goals, and also helping them understand how to make their money work harder for them,” she says.
Liu’s experience illustrates an issue that the financial planning industry needs to address as a collective: how to attract the best and the brightest – from whatever walk of life – and smooth their entry to the industry. Even having identified financial planning as an attractive career, but with no contacts in the finance world, getting a foot in the door proved to be challenging for Liu.
“I didn’t know how to do it, so I worked backwards,” she says.
