Clarion call for Hornery as women lead the charge

Christine Hornery, winner of the 2012 Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) Female Excellence in Advice Award, says the award should be a clarion call for women to play a greater role in the financial planning industry.

“When I became a financial planner 11 years ago, there were very few women in our profession,” Hornery said, as she accepted the award. “Over the years those numbers have grown, but we still need to attract more women.

“Why? Because we bring a different skill set. We bring – sorry for the guys in the room – but we bring emotion. We listen and we connect with others.

“Do you know that in 80 per cent of households, women make the financial decisions?

“You need a woman working in your business. We need to encourage more women to be in business for themselves. Working as a team, we can encourage more women into our profession.”

The ultimate accolade

Hornery (right) thanked the AFA and the award sponsor TAL for “believing that women have a profound role to play, for making a positive difference in the roles of ordinary Australians and recognising the contributions that we make”.

She beat a strong field of finalists to take out the 2012 award, which was presented at the AFA national conference on the Gold Coast yesterday, and said winning an award judged by peers and colleagues was the ultimate accolade for a professional.

In an interview before yesterday’s win, Hornery told Professional Planner Online that women in the financial planning industry “typically undervalue ourselves”.

“We tend to undervalue the relationship we have with clients, “she said. “So, I think some of the challenges we face are ourselves. Because it’s such a male-dominated profession, it’s hard to have a large voice in what is happening within the profession.

“There’s flexibility, there’s opportunity and there’s reward, so the challenges are more around how the profession is seen. It’s not seen as one of caring and sharing or relationships. It’s more seen as having a product focus than a strategic and advice focus.”

CLICK HERE to read an interview with Christine Hornery.

Look for an in-depth profile of Hornery in the December/January edition of Professional Planner magazine.

Camphor laurel crowns winner

The trophy (right) presented to the winner of the 2012 Female Excellence in Advice Award is fashioned from Australian camphor laurel and was handcrafted by TAL’s national marketing manager, Aranka Nolan.

Nolan says the trophy is designed to symbolise something of what the award represents.

“The thing with a piece of timber… is that you only expose the beauty underneath when you apply sandpaper to it and you take off the rough edges, and you take a little bit of chiselling to it and shape it into something worthy of hanging on a wall and attracting attention,” Nolan says.

“We put a mirror in it because we want the concept of self-reflection, which is part of the process of Female Excellence in Advice. Every woman, every nominee, has quite a journey to go through to assess and analyse what they’ve done, and pretty much get that supported by others. There’s a validation process, which is pretty big. It’s very hard to go and ask people what they think of you.

“If you like, that’s the symbolism in the trophy.”

Nolan, a keen woodworker, says she wanted the winner to “receive something that reinforced how special they are in our industry, especially as it’s such a new award, and [which would] reinforce it on a daily basis with staff and clients and members of the community who come into their offices”.

“And I also wanted to give something of myself. I’ve been in the industry since I was in my twenties, which is a fair while,” she says.

“These women give so much of themselves, so why not?”