After surviving cancer in her 20s and giving birth to her daughter in 2009, Burcheart founder Sacha Burchgart wanted to do something that helped people.
“But I didn’t know what that was,” Burchgart tells Professional Planner.
Burchgart studied her Diploma of Financial Planning in 1996 but initially struggled to pursue an advice career.
“[I] hated it, got out of the industry, thought it was really boring,” she says.
But it was after her bout with cancer and birth of her daughter that she re-considered how being a financial adviser could help people.
“I realised in all my careers to date I was always good at strategy, whether that strategy is about money or timing or any of that. I studied again and found the strategic financial planning part really cool.”
She created her own business in 2014, and this year celebrates its 10th anniversary.
“My business has really been around since 2011 but I didn’t really go out on my own without being licensed under someone else until 2014,” Burchgart says.
“The reason I made the change to going out with myself is because I really got sick of trying to fit clients into the same strategy as everyone else,” she says. “I know it’s easier for scale.”
Burchgart says she also doesn’t like that some people aren’t able to access financial advice, because of the cost and accessibility.
“So many clients get told they’re not big enough for advice,” Burchgart says.
“My goal was to make financial advice accessible to people that wanted to start, and I find they’re the ones that generally follow the plan to the letter because they want to get to where they need to be.”
Burchgart says her advice process evolved to being strategy first, product second.
“We’ve really spent a lot of time working out what clients want to see in that strategy meeting and not getting bogged down in all the compliance jargon of an SOA,” Burchgart says.
“Our clients will pay for a strategy which doesn’t have any product or service in it.”
Burchgart’s dedication towards client-led outcomes led to her being crowned adviser of the year at the Financial Advice Association National Congress last November in Adelaide.
“I didn’t think I’d get through and I thought I bombed out of my interview process, but I didn’t,” Burchgart says.
“I guess my inbox is very full with BDM appointment requests. That’s a big change.”
Style and substance
The firm segments its client book into risk-only clients; “essential” clients, with basic needs such as cash flow, risk or estate planning advice; “enhanced” clients, where investments are involved; and finally, “excel” clients which covers small to medium enterprises, high net worth clients, and larger SMSF trustees.
“They’re the main type of things we separate,” Burchgart says.
“I can only look after so many of the high net worth in that bucket with that top-end stuff, but we have an on-demand approach for clients that don’t want to pay that annual fee. They know they don’t get the same automated service, we won’t rebalance them automatically, or we won’t engage with them.”
Burchgart adds they’ll touch base with these clients every year to see if they want to re-engage with the practice.
“That ends up being more expensive for them but after the [Hayne] royal commission and fee-for-no –service, a lot of clients are a bit funny about jumping into that annual fee [agreement], so we give them the choice whether they sign up to an annual fee or not,” Burchgart says.
Long lessons
The moment the government “twinkled an idea about higher education standards”, Burchgart says, she enrolled in the University of New England in around 2015, studying part time and completing her degree during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I’ve just tapped away at all the stuff I need to do even before the legislation came out,” Burchgart says.
“There were a couple of courses I had to change and re-wire, but I didn’t want to be in the situation where I had to quickly finish something in a tiny timeframe.”
Burchgart says it was important for her to get on it early as her husband is an international pilot who is away a lot and she also has a young child, two dogs and a business to run.
“Finding time to study was hard, so I wanted to do it slowly,” Burchgart says.
“I found it great because now I have a very good aged care business stream because I learned aged care. I really love the behavioural finance stuff. I believe it’s bettered my business for it.”
Bravo Sacha!