The departing chief executive officer of the Financial Planning Association, Mark Rantall, has urged all financial planners to remain highly vigilant in protecting and nurturing the emerging profession against forces and influences that would seek to stymie it.
Speaking at a farewell function at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney last week, Rantall said every individual financial planner has a responsibility to ensure the profession flourishes.
“Everybody in this room has got a responsibility,” he said. “I’m not walking away from this. I’m staying and I’ll come back and haunt you – you know that – if we don’t uphold that responsibility.”
Rantall said that after “many years and many people’s efforts, we now have a profession – would you agree?”.
“We need to nurture that profession,” he said. “We need to protect that profession, and we need to grow that profession, because it is very, very fragile, and unless we’re vigilant we may well run the risk of losing it.”
Focus on three things
Rantall called all participants in the financial planning community to focus on three things.
“The first is we need to focus on culture,” he said. “What we need to do in the advice space, and we need to be vigilant around this, is make sure – and you’re the leaders – that we cultivate a culture that protects the financial planner to act in the best interests of the financial planner every time.
“The second thing that we need to do is focus on a lifelong commitment to further education and ethics. You all know my views on that.
“And the third and final thing we need to do and be vigilant about is make sure that when it comes to advice we separate the product that is the solution and the advice that we give, prioritising at all times the advice that we give to be in the clients’ best interests.
“Culture, education and ethics, and a focus on advice are the three things I would like you all to try to remember to do and I will make my commitment to you to continue that crusade as well.”
Rantall thanked Neil Kendall, Rowe and Julie Berry as the three chairs of the FPA he served under as chief executive, as well as the staff of the FPA.
“They have been absolutely wonderful, and you know it doesn’t happen without the people who are around you,” he said.
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Testament to evolution
The event farewell event attracted a group that stood in testament to the evolution of the FPA over the past five or six years, and the esteem in which it is now held with multiple stakeholders. It included ASIC chair Greg Medcraft and commissioner Peter Kell, Financial Ombudsman Service ombudsman Alison Maynard, The Ethics Centre executive director Dr Simon Longstaff, Industry Super Australia chief executive David Whiteley, the heads of institutional, aligned and non-aligned licensees and individual practicing financial planners.
“I’m embarrassed, I’m humbled, and I’m proud,” Rantall said. “As many of you know, and as many of you know me well know, I’m just a bloke – a bit of a knockabout bloke at that.
“It is me who owes a debt of gratitude to the FPA, not the other way around. It is me who owes a debt of gratitude to the industry and all that it represents for all the years I’ve been part of it, not the other way around. And it’s me who owes a debt of gratitude to every one of you in this room. It’s a very select group and…it’s a very eclectic group here tonight.
“That’s right. That’s kind of the nature of what’s happened in my life. I feel so privileged to be part of all of your lives and to have played a part, to larger or lesser degrees, along the way.
“It’s me who needs to thank you; it’s me who needs to hank the FPA and it’s me who needs to thank the directors and chairs both past and present, because as Matthew Rowe always says, we stand on the shoulders of others. All I have done is play my small part in hopefully leaving the organisation in a better place than when I found it. And [incoming CEO] Dante [De Gori] will do the same I’m sure.
“From the bottom of my heart: thank you to all of you.”
