Financial advice industry veteran Steve Helmich has been awarded the 2026 Noel Maye Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Profession by the Financial Planning Standards Board, in recognition of his work to raise financial planning standards globally.
Helmich, a former executive director of AMP’s advice businesses and current chair of Count Financial, also chaired the FPSB for three years, from 2013 to 2016. He is a former chair of the Financial Planning Association – a forerunner of the Financial Advice Association Australia – and former chair of the profession’s charity, Future 2 Foundation.
In a statement the FPSB said the award recognised that Helmich’s leadership had “helped strengthen financial planning as a distinct global profession and supported governance reforms that continue to shape FPSB’s global network today”.
The Denver, Colorado-based FPSB administers the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation outside the US. Australia was the first non-US territory to introduce the certification, and Helmich was instrumental in that move in the late 1980s.
FPSB chief executive officer Dante De Gori told Professional Planner earlier this month that there are 236,000 CFPs around the world, more than there are CFA charterholders.
Helmich was never CFP-certified himself, and he tells Professional Planner that he “always believed it was a practitioner designation”.
“I didn’t seek to get it,” he says. “Some others did who were in management, but no, I was training [and] leading financial planners early in the piece, and it gets back to even before that – when I started doing it, I was actually a manager at an office at Eastwood for AMP. I remember creating the first fact finders back then – this is in the 1980s.
“But I was never a practitioner myself. I was a manager and then a head of a licensee.”
Helmich says “CFP certification really is for me the benchmark” of professionalism in financial advice.
“I’ve been actually talking to the people at Count, where I’m involved, [about] making it the next stage for people after their professional year.
“They should look at CFP certification as the next step. It’s a global certification; it’s probably dropped off a bit in Australia because of what happened with [the Future of Financial Advice reforms] and completing accreditations and degrees or qualifications. But I would say this: I’ve never had a bad word from anyone who sat the CFP certification course and completed it.”
Helmich says that throughout his time at AMP and Count, and as chair of Affinia – then owned by TAL – in between, he has “always been a really firm believer in financial planning, not just promoting it”.
“Kim, my wife, and I have always had our own financial planner, and naturally he’s CFP-accredited, as you’d expect,” he says.
“People do not realise the value it can add to their lives. I’ve said it before, as we’re talking here today, there’s some guy throwing a fishing line out of a boat on the New South Wales Central Coast somewhere, there’s someone living in a debt-free home, there’s someone going to a private school, or getting a good education, all because a financial planner cared enough to talk to them about their situation and help them.”
Helmich was also a catalyst for the creation of the Pro Bono Financial Advice Network (PFAN), following a presentation he made at a Professional Planner Licensee Summit in 2014 showcasing the pro bono financial advice provided by AMP advisers in collaboration with the Cancer Council NSW to people with terminal illnesses.
“That was a really big thing, because professions do that sort of thing, great professions do pro bono work, and that was what we wanted to get to,” Helmich says.
“The Cancer Council really had a big need there. And there’s no doubt that people’s lives were changed by the advice that was given them, which was given all pro bono.”
The FPSB also announced a Noel Maye award to Canadian Cary List for his contribution to the global profession, including as chair of the FPSB Council and as president and chief executive officer of FP Canada, previously known as the Financial Planning Standards Council.
The award is named for the founder and former chief executive officer of the FPSB, Noel Maye. Helmich says he had no inkling he was in line for an award before being contacted by De Gori.
“I got a text from Dante asking if we could have time for a phone call, and it got me wondering what’s this about, does he want me to do something, what do they need?” Helmich says.
“I was literally gobsmacked. I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. It just came out of the blue, and I was surprised.
“It’s really amazing to get an award for something that you actually love doing and really believe in with all your heart, the value of financial planning, and especially CFP certification.”
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