Almost 35 years ago, financial adviser Suzanne Haddan had a unique vision for her own firm. In 1990, she made that vision a reality and founded BFG Financial Services.
When Haddan founded BFG, the financial advice sector was focused on people who were retiring. She noted that advisers having younger clients was unusual and decided to incorporate this into the firm’s objective.
“I took the view that we wanted to broaden our offering to be able to start engaging with younger clients, which was quite unusual [in the ’90s],” she says.
BFG is a Sydney-based privately owned boutique wealth management and accounting advice practice that operates on a flat fee-for-service basis. The firm provides advice on wealth creation, management, protection, distribution and taxation.
Today, BFG advises more than 500 clients, many on the younger side.
The firm has a strong and competitive offering for younger clients. Haddan says that she recognised a gap in advice for younger people when she founded the firm and now has advisers with clients in their 30s and 40s.
“We’re finding the younger ones, sort of 35 to 40, certainly want to know how to employ their savings,” she says.
“One area they don’t identify but we often do is about insurance. Specifically, making sure you protect what you have and your ability to earn income is probably one of your biggest assets.”
As Haddan started as a young adviser herself, she has been able to take clients through 30 years of their life cycles. She emphasises that this has been “professionally rewarding” for her as an adviser and for the firm.
Haddan recognises that while taking on younger clients may not at first be highly profitable, it provides the firm with “a wonderful connection and a wonderful bank of people we can work through over the years”.
This translates into what Haddan calls their “family offering”. The firm utilises the family connection to build a long-lasting network of clients.
“I look after a lot of children of my original clients who might be closer to my age in their 50s or 60s,” she says.
Haddan ensures that BFG considers the age of their clients and adapts accordingly to meet their changing needs as they get older and transition into a new phase of life.
“One of my other views is that clients should be broadly your own age or older,” Haddan says.
“If I took on a client who was much younger than me, I’m likely to drop off.”
This allows BFG to continue to add value to clients along many more years of their clients’ life and strengthens the relationship between adviser and client. It also distinguishes the firm from many other adviser practices.
To be able to serve younger clients, the firm started to take on younger people.
“We identified about six, seven years ago that we wanted to bring on some younger advisers,” Haddan says.
Haddan believes that this has improved the firm’s capabilities “personally and professionally.”
The firm went with self-licensing “to give us freedom from being with bigger groups as it was restricting our growth”. She says they wanted the freedom to offer unbiased services to a wide range of individuals.
The initial growth of the firm was the result of personal and family referrals and building long term relationships.
“Back then, we very much focused on ongoing service and building those long-term relationships, which I really think gave us a strong foundation,” she says.
