When Steve Helmich walks out of AMP’s Circular Quay headquarters in Sydney in September, he’ll wave goodbye to a place where he’ll have worked for 41 years, nine months and one day.
During that time, Helmich has driven significant change within AMP itself and the way its financial planning businesses are structured and how they work, and in the financial planning industry generally.
That change show no signs of slowing down, and Helmich, who is currently AMP’s executive director of financial planning, says he intends to remain closely involved, even as he departs the industry’s biggest single player.
“I’m not retiring,” he says. “It’s a good time for me to go and seek another challenge and I’m very happy with what we’ve done with AMP and the shape it’s been left in.
“But I’ll be staying around the financial services world and continuing to look to get involved with increasing the standards and increasing the profile of financial planning. You can’t get rid of me that quickly. Or that easily.”
Few individuals have given more of themselves than Helmich to the development of financial planning as a profession in this country. As well as overseeing Australia’s largest financial planning business, he has served the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA), of which he is a life member; he is currently a trustee and chair of the Future2 Foundation; and is chair of the global Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB).
A modern financial planning business
During his tenure, AMP’s old superannuation and insurance sales force has morphed into a modern financial planning business; AMP launched the Horizons Academy to assist individuals wanting to switch careers to financial planning; and AMP’s work in providing pro bono financial planning services leads the way in this area.
It was Helmich’s presentation to the Professional Planner Dealer Group Summit in 2012 that led to the creation of the Pro Bono Financial Advice Network (PFAN), which is designed to enable more financial planning licensee to offer pro bono financial services to those in need. And Helmich is also a member of the Professional Planner advisory board, providing guidance to the development of this publication.
Giving service to entities outside AMP is a hallmark of Helmich’s career, and is consistent with his philosophy that “you can only do so much from within”.
“You really need to try and not just change your own world, but change the total world,” he says.
“The idea of getting involved with those three organisations, for example, is to try and influence others. We all need to be in this to make a difference, and we all need to have some common views around professionalism and philanthropy.
“That’s one of my motivators to get into those other roles, to see if I can work with others to create a better environment for everyone.”
Helmich joined the FPSB in April 2010. His term has been extended twice – “and that’s never been done before, so I’m chuffed with that”, Helmich says – and expires in March next year.
His position at Future2 is up for rotation at the end of December this year. He started there in 2009 after receiving a call to say the Foundation wasn’t going so well, and a request for him to get involved.
“It’s in really good shape – robust and well run and disciplined,” he says.
“The grants process is the most disciplined I’ve seen in that space.”
A 41-year career
Looking back over a 41-year career, Helmich says “there’s a lot of things that stick in my mind”.
“But if I think about the key things, it would be moving the model to a financial planning model, with higher education standards. That would be the first,” he says.
“Secondly, I think the creation of the Horizons Academy, which is seen I suppose, as the way to get into the financial planning profession in Australia.
“And thirdly, I think it’s just around continually pushing professionalism and the move to fee-for-advice. Things like hat – not waiting for regulation to stipulate what we do, but trying to understand what was [happening] and moving before that happens to you.
“And the pro bono stuff – I could not have imagined it was going to be so successful, for so many Australians to be helped. Today two of the notes I got were from people going out on pro bono work today.”
Helmich says he will leave AMP with few regrets, although it’s in his nature to always want to get things done more quickly than they actually happen.
“I’m a Gemini; one of the real characteristics of a Gemini is you’re impatient, so I’ll put my hand up for that,” he says.
“You like to do things quicker. But there’s not many things I’d change. When I’ve sat down with planners to talk about their future I’ve always tried to think about all of the stakeholders involved – the public, the value for the planner, the value for th licensee and the value for the shareholder, when AMP became listed.
“By looking at all the stakeholders it gives you a really high-level view to help you make the right decisions.”
‘Shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much’
Helmich says he believes financial planning is in good shape and well positioned to achieve the status of profession that it craves. Even though only two in five Australians currently use financial planning services, “it is still a very young profession, so we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much with that”, he says.
“But then it is like anything: it’s got to be able to demonstrate the value it adds to people’s lives, and probably kill some of the misconceptions around it being all about investments. It’s really not,” he says.
Helmich says financial planning is really about four things: strategy, structures, contingencies – including insurance – and discipline, or the idea of the financial planner as a coach.
It was the recognition of the role financial planning could play in people’s lives that convinced a young Helmich that there might be a fulfilling career for him at AMP.
“I had only come to work [here] for a short time,” he says.
“But I saw the role that some of these people were playing, some of the really great agents, and I thought this wasn’t a bad place to work. So I stuck around at AMP.
The future was financial planning
“It became pretty clear to me as I did the Diploma of Financial planning very early in the piece when it first came to Australia, that the model of the future was a financial planning model. So we took about at AMP focusing on changing or moving the AMP advisers, who were mainly superannuation-style advisers in those days, and life insurance agents, towards a financial planning model in the mid-90s.
“That involved higher education standards. We became early supporters of the Certified Financial Planner [CFP] program. We brought in paraplanning and stronger compliance; we really got a bit of a march on our competitors in those days, and headed down that path. We had some really strong years of growth.
“One of the testaments to it, I always think, is all of a sudden we had existing AMP advisers bringing in their sons and daughters to join them in the business.
“Really, it’s continued growing as we’ve moved to fee-for-advice models, as we’ve extended into pro bono offering, and really just keep pushing up the level of professionalism.
“We’re not there; you never are there – it’s a continual journey. But it’s been great progress.”
