Sharon Walker’s mum reckons Walker was a financial planner in the making from the moment she received her first pocket money.Last year that belief was vindicated when Walker won the Financial Planning Association’s Value of Advice Award, in the wealth accumulation and protection category.
But ironically, Walker’s interest in financial planning as a potential career was first piqued when as a teenager she received some “advice”, and it turned out to be dud.
“When I was in my late teens, someone I knew, who called themselves a ‘financial planner’ at the time, got me to go into an investment, and it ended up being a very bad experience,” Walker says.
“I wanted to learn more about why it went wrong. What were the problems? What had he done wrong? What had I done wrong? And I started to learn a bit more about financial plan¬ning.”
That education continued after Walker joined the National Australia Bank 24 years ago, in Traralgon, in Gippsland, Victoria. Over time, she started referring clients to the bank’s in-house financial planning division. She would habitually sit in on the meetings between client and planner. She started reading about what financial planning was, and what it meant to be a planner.
Eventually, one of the bank’s financial planners suggested Walker would make a good planner herself, and that she should consider becoming one. Walker completed her Diploma of Financial Planning in 2000. Today she’s based in Wangaratta, in the north-east of Victoria, and is senior financial planning manager at NAB, overseeing 19 bank branches and a team of seven planners and four assistants.
Walker says the resources of the bank mean she’s free to focus on the aspects of the job that add greatest value – strategy, goal setting and high-level advice – and less time on the issues that distract from that in the day-to-day running of a financial planning practice.
“A lot of work has to be put into business planning, cashflow of the business and compliance, and that sort of thing. And all of that would take me away from the clients,” she says.
“I truly believe in the value of advice,” Walker says. She says it’s the strategic advice that adds value, not product selection. In any case, she says, “the underlying return really is being generated by the underlying market”, not by anything clever that a planner can do.
Walker says the value of the strategies, tax planning and Centrelink interaction that financial planners provide is undervalued by the public generally. “They think all it is is investments. But the value of advice is more important, now that we are going through a downturn in the markets, than ever before. “People who have the correct structures in place are not as worried about it,” she says.
Walker says the greatest satisfaction in her job is being able to leave the office and know she’s made a difference in people’s lives. “I love the fact that at the end of the day I can go home and [know I] have helped people,” she says. “It’s about building relationships, helping people set goals, and helping them to achieve those goals, [helping them] reduce taxes, save more, get more Centrelink benefits.
“Every person you meet is different and has different lifestyle goals, and needs different strategies.“It’s problem solving. I love puzzles and all that, and so it’s an extension of that.
“No two people are the same – it would be a pretty boring world if they were.” Walker also values the mentoring aspect of her work. She’s responsible for assisting with the training of of younger planners as they move through the ranks, and being part of the NAB network means there are opportunities to meet her peers, swap notes and pass on ideas and experiences.
There are professional development days twice a year, once-a-year get-togethers for the bank’s senior planners, and regional meetings of planners every four months or so.“And all of us in the local team get together at least once a month,” Walker says.She believes the industry is well on the way to achieving true professional status, but it still has some hurdles to clear and some misconceptions to clear up.
“I think the FPA is on the right track by focusing on the value of advice, and I think advisers need to focus on the value of advice,” Walker says. “Unfortunately, a minority [of planners] that focus on product sales give the majority a bad name. That’s my personal belief. Unfortunately, the majority of the public thinks that’s what financial planning is.”
“What they’re not talking about is that the majority of people in industry funds don’t understand what they are in. They don’t have any strategy in place. And they don’t have any goals in place.
“I would love the FPA to put an ad right after [the industry funds’ ads on TV], or for a big financial planning organisation to do that.”
