Next week is Financial Planning Week, when the financial planning profession seeks to raise consumer awareness of the benefits of using a financial planner’s services.
This year the week is running under the theme “Dare to Dream,” designed to focus attention on the role financial planning plays in helping individuals to realise their financial goals, and Jane Caro has been appointed as an ambassador to help raise its profile.
Caro says she was surprised to be approached by the FPA to become an ambassador.
“I had a think about it, because I thought, that’s an odd request – why me?” she says.
“My philosophy is, the more surprising the thing is you’re asked to do, the more you should do it.
“But also, perhaps because I am a woman of a certain age, and there are not a lot of women of my age in the public eye.”
Caro says she often receives emails from women who have found themselves under severe financial stress after things have not worked out quite as they expected.
“A lot of them have fallen through the cracks,” Caro says.
“They may have been brought up to believe ‘a man is a financial plan’… and they now find themselves in a really precarious financial position, and my heart goes out to them.
“And all I have been able to do until now is write a few columns about it.”
Caro says she is keen to impress upon people that looking after one’s finances is “not mercenary, it’s not unfeminine, and it’s not uncool.”
Caro also has first-hand experience of the financial planning process – she is currently working with her adviser to divest her investment portfolio of companies involved in producing fossil fuels – and she will use that experience to relate the aims of objectives of Financial Planning week to the public.
Sixteenth consecutive year
FPA chief executive officer Dante De Gori says the Dare to Dream theme is underpinned by the idea that financial planning is about a lot more than just finance. He says it is about helping individuals to realise their goals and aspirations by mapping out a reliable way of getting there.
“Financial Planning Week has been going now for 16 years – it’s the sixteenth consecutive year,” De Gori says.
“We sat down and we reassessed what is our objective here. We want to connect with Australians and engage with Australians about what is important to them and what is it that they feel is important around their situation, their life and their future?”
“The Dare to Dream theme came about by thinking, do Australians have dreams and goals, and are they thinking about their future? Research tells us people are dreaming and have goals and aspirations – not necessarily about being rich, but about things like buying a home. But what we also know is a lot of Australians are unable to put into place actions to realise those dreams.”
Caro is the first Financial Planning Week ambassador appointed by the FPA and De Gori says she has an uncommon ability to speak across generations and to connect with people on multiple levels. He says Caro has first-hand experience of the financial planning process, and will be able to communicate her own financial planning experience effectively.
“Jane has a great profile,” De Gori says.
“She speaks to everyday Australians and most people can engage with her and understand her, and she is able to put things into language and in a way that most people will engage with.”
Online personality test
De Gori says Financial Planning Week this year encompasses a range of activities, including consumer-focused video content and an online “personality test” to enable potential users of financial planning services to become familiar with the kind of personality they are and how that affects their finances.
De Gori says financial planners are generally familiar with risk-profiling questionnaires, but for most people they are a foreign concept. He says the aim of the online quiz is to start to break down some of the mystery around the basics of financial planning.
De Gori says that over its 16-year life, Financial Planning Week has contributed to better general understanding of financial planning and of what financial planners do. As with previous years, anyone whose interest is piqued by the activities taking place during the week will be referred to the FPA’s online “Find a Planner” service to be put in touch with an FPA member.
De Gori says he hopes Financial Planning Week this year will form the basis for more ongoing public engagement over the course of the next 12 months.
“The hope is to get some profile for the week, but we will continue to promote some of the tools we are building over a longer period of time,” he says.
“If we can get more people making the leap to start thinking about their finances, I would be ecstatic. If they then start to talk about it with someone – because most people don’t even talk about their finances with anyone – and it ceases to be a taboo subject around the dinner table or the barbecue, that would be a great step.”
