When you grow up in the hardscrabble Pilbara region of Western Australia and watch your dad face redundancy, you develop some pretty good life skills.
One of them is empathy, and another, in the case of Sharna Meinertz, is awareness of the importance of a back-up plan.
“I’ve always had a plan B. That is something I learned watching my dad go through redundancy,” she says. “He worked on trains and we moved across the Pilbara and into the Northern Territory and it exposed me to some really interesting people.”
Despite her penchant for organisation and making plans, it took Meinertz a while to discover just how suited she was to the financial planning world.
When the unexpected happens
When she left school, she took a job at the local branch of Bankwest, in Karratha, WA, where she worked as a teller before she was promoted to a job in Perth. It was here that the bank paid for her undergraduate degree, which she studied for in her spare time.
Then, unexpectedly some years later, Meinertz was made redundant, shortly after the birth of her first child.
“I couldn’t believe it had happened to me,” she says. “I had seen my dad go through it and there I was at 27, in middle management, and being made redundant with a whole bunch of other people.”
The bank offered her a job in another section, but she lasted only six weeks.
“I had just had my first child and the job was working in a call centre, and I thought I could make the shifts work around my child, but I couldn’t,” Meinertz says.
She left and eventually ended up working as a business development manager. Feeling restless, she and her husband decided to toss in their jobs and move to London.
“We were both looking at the next 30 years and thinking, ‘Is this it?’ ” she says. “We wanted a change; we were both bored. But it was very well planned spontaneity, mind you. You should have seen my spreadsheets.”
It was in London that Meinertz began working as a paraplanner for a firm dealing with high-net-worth clients, a job she enjoyed for four years before the English winters and a second child convinced her and her husband it was time to move home.
Back in Perth, she spent 10 years as a planner with Westpac before moving on to her current position at Panoramic Financial Solutions, where she manages about 70 clients.
Happy in her role
“I love what I do. I love the emotional connection I have with my clients,” Meinertz says. “I love when people come in with this financial mess and I am able to create a plan and organise, and create something that works.”
Meinertz is also passionate about more women joining the industry – or rather staying in the field after they have children.
“I have seen a lot of women leave to have children and not come back to the industry at all,” she says. “And I think it is a real shame because there is this collective brain power that is not being tapped.
“Women are very well suited to the planning field. They have a lot of empathy and they’re less about being bigger and faster and more about, ‘How will this help my client in the long run?’ ”
| Sharna Meinertz
Name of firm: Panoramic Financial Solutions Name of licensee (if not self-licensed): Securitor Financial Group Time in the industry: 20 years. Previously worked as a bank manager, business development manager, and in paraplanning and compliance. Academic qualifications: Advanced diploma in finance, bachelor of business (management and marketing), UK Certificate of Financial Planning Professional association memberships: FPA Other memberships: Most Trusted Adviser Network, Business Chicks |
