Emma Oliver has been working in the financial planning industry since she was 18.
When she left school, her father was working as a planner for a large bank and he employed her as his personal assistant.
“He was out of the office a lot working and I had a lot of time to myself in the office so it wasn’t so bad,” Oliver says. “I was also studying legal studies at TAFE during the evening. I had decided I wanted to be a criminologist or a forensic scientist.
“I wasn’t really thinking of following in Dad’s footsteps at that stage.”
But things changed when Oliver went on a four-month working holiday to the US, where she was well and truly bitten by the travel bug.
“I then came home for a bit, saved some money and moved to London for six years,” she says.
“I was working as a tax consultant, but it was really one big party at that age.
“I was living in a share house with lots of other people, and travelling to Europe for long weekends.”
Eventually, her father managed to convince her to come home and take over the business. While she was in London, he had started Complete Financial Planning and he wanted his two daughters, Kathy and Emma, to take over the reins.
“We became his succession plan,” she says.
Oliver knew planning would be a good fit for her, and she started studying for her diploma before she left London.
But the real training started on the job.
Rather than walking in and assuming full responsibility of the business straight away, she shadowed her father for two years.
He taught her not just the nuts and bolts of running a business, but the importance of maintaining connections and networking.
She learned to play golf — joining her father and his buddies on the fairways every Wednesday — and she would make sure she was the last to leave after-work and conference drinks.
“He always taught me to take the time to network,” she says.
By the time Oliver was fully qualified, it was August 2007; she walked straight into the storm of the global financial crisis. It was sink or swim.
“It was actually a good learning curve because if you can survive that you can survive anything,” she notes.
“I wasn’t able to give a positive return to some clients for two or three years.”
But Oliver and her clients emerged fully intact from the crisis and she believes she is a stronger planner for the experience.
In 2010, she and her sister took a 50 per cent stake in the business, while her father stayed a silent partner.
Although Oliver still confers with him from time to time.
“Kathy and I can often over-analyse a problem and Dad will sometimes come up with a more simple and straight forward take on things,” she says.
The pair has, however, put their own mark on things.
“We have modernised the business,” she says.
“We have given all our clients the option of moving to a flat-fee model or to stay with an asset-based fee.”
She is keen to see more women enter planning, but thinks that will happen naturally as the industry transforms.
“It will be interesting to see what happens to the industry with the new degree requirements,” she says. “A lot of the older guys did a diploma 20 or 30 years ago and some of them won’t want to get a degree-equivalent qualification on top of that and may not stick around.
“It would be good if some of the experience counted towards the new requirements.”
| Emma Oliver
Name of firm: Complete Financial Planning Name of licensee: Self-licensed Years in the industry (previous jobs?): 10 years as Financial Planner, six years as tax consultant in London prior to that Academic qualifications: Fellow Chartered Financial Practitioner, Advanced Diploma Financial Services, SMSF Accreditations: FChFP Professional association memberships: AFA, TPB Other memberships: Most Trusted Advisers Network |
