Former Perpetual and MLC chief executive Geoff Lloyd has been named chair of Conexus Financial, the publisher of media titles including Professional Planner.
Lloyd says his interest in leading the company comes down to the domestic impact of Professional Planner, its super fund CIO-focused sister publication Investment Magazine and the decumulation phase-focused Retirement Magazine, and the global influence of Top1000funds.com.
“Australia is very mature but more complicated than we should be for our size,” he says. Australia’s pool of national savings is “bigger than expected from our population”, and it has “a lot to share with the globe in this space”.
“The world is deglobalising in a way… but for wealth management, financial services and the clients, there’s so much in common still,” he says.
Lloyd notes the “threat and opportunity” presented by “fake media” and the impact and obligation that established media brands have to inform and educate the public.
“Known mastheads have a potentially greater responsibility and attraction to their audience,” he says.
High profile
Lloyd is one of the financial services industry’s most high-profile leaders, having led both Perpetual Group and MLC – then National Australia Bank’s wealth management division – as chief executive.
He has also held executive positions for BT, St George Bank’s wealth management arm, and was chair of the Financial Services Council.
Lloyd also has philanthropic and not-for-profit director experience, including as prior chair of the University of Technology (UTS) Sydney Law School Advisory Board, UTS’ inaugural Philanthropy Board and The Fathering Project.
He is currently chair of direct-to-consumer investment platform Stake and adviser platform/fintech Dash Technology.
When it comes to the strategic priorities of Professional Planner specifically, Lloyd says he’s “excited” to help drive the final change of the transition of advice into a profession.
“Let’s really start to see kids leaving school wanting to become financial planners,” Lloyd says.
He’s also a big believer in the publication’s ability to help drive and raise the standard of the thousands of small, adviser-led practices.
“I worry about the large number of sole practitioner licensees or two- and three-person practices and their ability to run their business – which is tough as an SME – to service their clients and keep up with all the regulatory changes and needs they have,” Lloyd says.
“It’s hard work.”
Lloyd says over the next five years, technology will play a significant role in improving productivity and in the provision of scalable, compliant advice to clients.
“If we can double or triple – through technology – an even better service delivery in a compliant way, financial planners can see 300 clients in a connected way like they see 100 clients,” Lloyd says.
Strategic advice
Lloyd will commence the role as chair of Conexus Financial on 2 February, leading the board of the corporate entity and providing strategic advice to Conexus Financial founder and managing director Colin Tate AM and the senior leadership team.
Tate says the financial and geopolitical complexity in the world right now cements the important role that Conexus Financial plays in “hosting challenging conversations designed to inspire our readers, delegates and stakeholders to be better fiduciaries”.
“Geoff’s corporate leadership, strategy, technology and governance experience will add firepower as Conexus Financial continues to position for growth, influence and social and industry impact,” Tate says.
Lloyd says having the right team is every leader’s greatest challenge and part of his role is to ensure “[Colin doesn’t] lose his passion, his energy and his curiosity”.
Throughout his business career, Lloyd has variously been a commercial client and sponsor of Conexus Financial editorial publications and events, in addition to being a keynote speaker, author and provider of thought leadership content.
While Lloyd’s career background has largely focused on the advice and wealth management sector, he still has a keen interest in Australia’s superannuation system.
New battleground
Lloyd says the battle over investment performance in super is over. Instead, member service and experience is the “new battleground”.
But he’s also optimistic that the rise of superannuation will help improve financial literacy.
“It’s also created a huge tailwind that’s hard to measure – financial literacy to Generation X and their kids,” Lloyd says.
“Money is discussed in the home around super, saving is discussed because of super. That’s a huge advantage. It’s now a discussion in homes and that’s a healthy thing for financial literacy and a healthy thing for saving and investing in our country.”
Lloyd’s appointment comes as Conexus Financial unveils its event calendar for 2026, with 11 premium and invitation-only conferences scheduled, across all mastheads and the company’s philanthropically-funded think tank, The Conexus Institute.
It also comes as the company ramps up its podcast and video production output after a strategic investment in a state-of-the-art studio in the Conexus Financial head office, which is believed to be one of the only remaining broadcast-quality operations in the Sydney CBD and is available to select industry stakeholders to dry hire.
Geoff is correct when he says it is too complicated in Australia.
Like everything in life, everyone starts their journey with baby steps until they gain experience and then venture further.
What we have now in Australia, is a system whereby everyone is thrown in at the deep end and expected to swim with little “REAL WORLD” help to get them to first float, then progress to more progressive activities.
I started in the financial services sector as an Adviser in February 1987 and we all started with limited knowledge and limited scope to go out and talk to clients until we attained some knowledge.
We did thousands of hours of ongoing studies to improve our abilities to provide good advice and like all Industries, there were bad apples, which were NOT weeded out due to the obsession of getting in New Business and ignoring blatant wrong doing by a minority of Advisers, which led to the eventual Government intervention.
Let me give everyone some sage advice after being involved in Business for 40 years. The moment the Government gets involved in running an Industry, then it ALWAYS turns to SH-T.
The Financial services Industry has been turned upside down and hit with incomprehensible and unworkable red tape, designed by self-interest Lobby groups, who hoodwinked incompetent and uninterested Public servants and Politicians, of which, 90% failed the commonsense test.
Australia has reached close to 29 Million people (unofficially) who desperately need Financial advice, though NOT comprehensive Advice, as a starting point.
I have spent over 15 years trying to explain to Politicians, Regulators, Licensees, Life Insurers about the need for a stepped process of Advice, whereby new people interested in coming into the field, can do it in a staged process and still be able to put food on the table, something that highly paid Public servants and Private sector managers don’t recognise, or think about, as they earn thousands of dollars a week and cannot think further than their own needs.
The end result which I have written about for over a decade and have been proven right, is a trickle of new Advisers due to a one size fits all mentality and a flood of exited Advisers due to the Education lobbyists who took control of the agenda and said experience and prior learning counted for little and people like me would need to do further University degrees, of which our specialty, being Life Insurance Advice, 95% of the studies were completely irrelevant to the work we performed.
Ideology does not work in the real world, though the inane and insane end result of the new education ideology, led to myself and 12,000 Advisers exiting the Industry as Advisers, which has led to a disaster in the Life Insurance sector with premiums more than doubling and very little New Business being written.
16 million Australians needing Advice, divided by 16,000 Advisers = 1000 clients per Adviser, an impossible number.
16 Million Australians needing Life Insurance Advice, where the sector has been decimated to less than 1000 risk Advisers and in the last 5 years, virtually NIL new risk Advisers entering due to the insistence of forcing people to starve while they study irrelevant topics with NIL bearing on the Life Insurance sector, which has led to this farcical situation, is an embarrassment and economic atomic bomb of incompetence.