In the first part of a three-part series focusing on notable Certified Financial Planners (CFPs), Erin Shields explains why a commitment to education, higher professional standards and personal development are an integral part of the way she approaches her job.
When Erin Shields received a phone call from the Financial Planning Association regarding her Certified Financial Planner (CFP) exam and assignment, she feared the worst.
“I missed the call. I was in a client meeting,” Shields says.
“When I got back to my desk and one of my colleagues said I’d missed a call from Judy Saunders at the FPA, I though, oh God, I’ve failed – resubmission, something like that.
“So I called her back and I was shaking. She said, ‘Erin, this is a really difficult phone call for me to make’ – and I’m going, just say it – ‘but I’m really happy about it’. And I’m having all these conflicting emotions in about one microsecond.
“She told me the story about Gwen [Fletcher]. I’d known about Gwen because I’d read about her. I didn’t know her personally, unfortunately, before she died. As soon as Judy started to talk about Gwen, and they’d started this award and I’d placed first I said, are you sure? Me? Really?
“I’d worked really, really hard, and it was a big commitment for me to go through that whole assignment and exam process, but I’ve never been the best at anything in my life. So it was actually quite nice. I was chuffed.”
The inaugural winner in June 2014 of the Gwen Fletcher Memorial Award for the top CFP candidate each semester says the CFP designation is an integral part of establishing her credentials as a professional financial planner, in the eyes of both clients and colleagues.
Give clients confidence
“It gives my clients the confidence to know that I know what I’m talking about, that I’m technically competent, that I’m interested in this as a career, not just as some fly-by-night sales role … and that I’m committed to ongoing education and personal development for their benefit,” Shields says.
“That is really important.”
Shields, a strategic financial adviser at Dixon Advisory based in the company’s North Sydney headquarters, graduated with commerce and liberal studies degrees, but compared to university she says the CFP course is “a whole other level of thinking”.
“At uni they try to teach you the skills to get through most jobs,” she says.
“The CFP is more about how are you able to help clients in very specific instructions. It’s very much a specialised path of study. And that in itself makes it tough, because not only do you have to call on all those skills you learned at uni, you’ve got to be able to apply them in a very structured sense.
“I loved my time at uni, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of the time it was, I don’t see the point to this – the assignments weren’t particularly engaging.”
Shields says she would get home of an evening “having done what I was supposed to have done in my assignment, all day with clients”.
“And I’d think, well, that client mentioned something, maybe I should put something like that into my assignment,” she says.
“It’s very relevant, and very real.”
Up to scratch
Shields says it is vital for all financial planners to be able to demonstrate objectively that their technical expertise is up to scratch and that their ongoing professional and personal development is adequate to cope with the changing demands of the job.
“What the CFP has really taught me is how to not put someone in a box,” she says.
“Just having that awareness that so much of what I do isn’t about the technical knowledge – even though that is incredibly important – but it’s about being able to work out what the client needs, synthesise that, make sure you understand that, make a recommendation that they then understand and are confident with to go ahead and implement – that’s the key thing that it taught me.
“Everyone is different, and that’s what makes good advice – being able to apply it to every situation differently.”
While Shields completed her CFP studies at the top of the class, her education is not yet complete. She is part of an emerging generation of financial planners for whom constant education and learning is simply part and parcel of how they work.
“I’m thinking about starting some kind of specific tax planning course, like a CTA [Chartered Tax Adviser] or something along those lines, to add another string to my bow,” she says.
Solving problems
“I’m particularly interested – and possibly because of my background with UBS and some of the exposure I’ve had at Dixon – in very complex financial situations and solving problems around unique situations that executives have, or complex family structures.
“Where I see myself is around a particular relationship with the accountant. You’re talking about family trusts, establishment of companies, things like foundations, where they are not stock-standard house-super-investment portfolios, and there’s a fair bit more going on.
“It’s not so I can take over that accounting role – I’m not interested in being an accountant – but just so I can be much more aware of what they are doing and understand, so we can work harmoniously and quite efficiently.”
On the face of it, Shields doesn’t seem to do anything by halves. In 2008 she applied for a job working for UBS in New York, followed up with a phone call – “this was the brave 19-year-old I was”, she says – and they agreed to an interview.
Ten minutes after the interview, UBS called back and offered Shields a job – what she describes as “an extraordinarily junior role, but still with the exposure that I needed to confirm that’s in fact the path I wanted to go down”.
Break the news
Then it was time to break the news to her parents, pack, and move to New York. She started on September 1, 2008. Within a week, Lehman Brothers failed.
“I was thrown in because everyone was in a state of shock, I think,” she says.
“Even though I was in a very junior role, it was about supporting the staff to support the clients. I was given some responsibility to actually call clients themselves, and say, look, the partners are quite comfortable, your adviser is very comfortable, do you have any questions?
“Having that proactive contact … taught me a lot about how to manage a relationship. One thing I saw, which seems hard to believe in hindsight and even at the time, was so many advisers put their heads in the sand and said we don’t know what to do – but didn’t reach out to their clients to at least discuss with them how they were feeling.
“These are people’s livelihoods you’re dealing with and this was a lot of money – these weren’t small accounts by any stretch, though that shouldn’t change [the response], obviously – but just the fact that we were making contact with them, inviting them to contact us, taught me a lot.”
Shields says being a CFP helps to cement trust and respect from her clients.
“The majority of people … would not know exactly what the CFP entails, but when I start talking to them about, I have the CFP and this is what it is, and I relate it, in layman’s terms, to being something like a CA or a CPA, that kind of ongoing education and commitment to the profession, then they get it. And they really do value that,” she says.
Benefits
With about 700 candidates enrolled in the current semester, the benefits and the appeal of the CFP designation are beginning to become more widely recognised. Shields says the more financial planners that do it, the more who will do it.
“It only takes one or two people in an office to start doing it, to get through it [so] they can see the benefits that it provides them, to start talking about it,” she says.
“I did mine last year, my colleague finished his in December, and now two other advisers have started it. You’ll get momentum behind it, eventually. It just takes a bit of time.”
Shields says the management and senior staff at Dixon were supportive of her decision to undertake the CFP course.
“They helped me right the way through with not just the tuition side of things. I got time off work to have study days in the lead-up to the exam, and [to] the assignment being due,” she says.
“There’s a big focus at Dixon’s from the day you start around your education and your technical development and your personal development.
“I never questioned that I was going to get the support I needed to get through.”
