In the shake-up of AMP’s financial planning operations last month, and after almost eight years running AMP Financial Planning (AMPFP), Michael Guggenheimer was also appointed managing director of Hillross Financial Services.
The move is aimed at streamlining AMP’s management and Guggenheimer says it won’t affect the day-to-day operations of either AMPFP or Hillross financial planners.
He says an aim of management being consolidated will be that the strategic plan of AMP for its advice businesses will be implemented consistently across both AMPFP and Hillross.
“The group is focusing on its strategy being more and more relevant to the customers that we seek to serve,” Guggenheimer says.
“Within the advice businesses, what we’ve decided to do is combine some of the management in order to create efficiencies to enable us to ultimately invest in achieving some of that strategic intent.
“The position I’ve now been given the privilege of looking after is in fact two businesses that have two important propositions in the marketplace, and it’s strictly the supervision and management that has been combined, not the businesses.
“In a day-to-day sense, the support we have located all around the country to a Hillross firm or an AMP Financial Planning firm is no different [from before]; what we’re doing is looking at the management, oversight and supervision and saying how can we be more efficient at that?
“The group strategy is all about putting the customer at the centre of everything we do. We may locally articulate that in the way in which the propositions apply to various businesses, but the overarching theme is the group is clearly centring its strategy for the future around the customers. Therefore everything we do should be in support of servicing the needs of the customer though whatever means the customer chooses to deal with us and our financial advisers.”
Financial freedom
Hillross has adopted an approach to client relationships that centres on its advisers asking clients a simple question: What is your idea of financial freedom. The response to the question then helps set the scene for an ongoing financial planning relationship focused on what’s really important to each client.
At AMPFP “it’s not dissimilar”, Guggenheimer says.
“We have a customer proposition which is about ‘what is your picture of tomorrow, and how can we help make it real?’,” he says.
But Guggenheimer says it’s more than just the same question using different words. It reflects the same conclusion, reached by a related but separate business, about how to place the client’s interests first.
“I’m saying that when we’ve both independently looked at it, we’ve come up with the same logic that says it starts with the customer,” he says.
“It’s subordinating everything we do in the service of the customer; and [addressing] how do we work back from what’s really important to that customer and how do we have a role in the achievement of what’s really important to that customer?”
Opportunities ahead
Even though the past five years has largely been spent with the financial planning industry preoccupied with regulation, Guggenheimer says the opportunities for financial planning to reach a wider audience are “no less today, and in fact are probably just as great” as they have ever been.
“The question is: How do we go about connecting and engaging with people who today have not yet chosen to access the opportunity of seeking advice from a financial adviser?” he says.
“And when you think about that, the thing that jumps out to me is that we as a profession follow a six-step advice process, but the truth of it is that not the way the client thinks about their advice requirements, or indeed their needs. So whilst we have to appreciate there is a process we have to go through, we should never forget that at the end of the day we will only grow and prosper if we can be more relevant to clients.
“It’s about thinking about the experience that we’re trying to create when we’re trying to engage with them. Regrettably, people do not wake up in the morning thinking I need to go and see a financial planner; the do not think about their superannuation. What we’ve got to do as a profession is connect to them in ways that resonate with them. And if it resonates, then we’re more likely to create an experience which they value and want to continue.”
Matching goals and processes
Guggenheimer says the answers by clients to the question of what’s their financial future looks like are always illuminating, and they almost never directly reference the established underlying financial planning process. He says success comes from matching the aspirations the client reveals to a process that fully discharges the financial planner’s legal and professional obligations.
“What we’ve got to do is never allow the process to dictate the experience that’s created with the client. If we think that through to its fullest, what we’ve got to do to make it relevant is connect with them about things that are really important to them in their lives – and then say, now that we understand that, how do we now consider any financial planning strategies that may assist in making that a reality.
“I think that’s the tipping point for me, when I think about the future. It’s less about what we do, and it’s everything about how we connect with the client and have that experience be one that resonates and that they value, and the other dimension is it’s also in a way that works for them.”
Guggenheimer says clients increasingly dictate to service providers how they want those services provided. While a traditional model might involve the client sitting in the planner’s office, that’s not how all clients want to interact.
“If we want to be relevant and we want to create that experience, we also have to be mindful of doing it a way that works for them,” Guggenheimer says.
