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Cairns planner’s roaring 40s
You’re a fund manager standing in the foyer of the Cairns Hilton and you’re waiting to be collected by the principal of a major regional financial planning firm. Up roars Jo Tuck CFP® on her Suzuki Burgman 250 Scooter. And then she hands you a helmet.
Jo Tuck recalled what happened next: “He did a double take. And when we came to the office I had to do a u-turn. He was hanging off the back with a really scared look,” Tuck laughed.
“I just love that feeling of freedom. You pull up alongside a flashy convertible and you look at the driver and think ‘I’m having more fun than you!’ This business is too hard not to have something to enjoy.”
Tuck is 47, former chair of the Cairns Chapter, member of the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Committee, co-owner of Menico Tuck … and bikie. She’s also a keen cyclist and late last year completed the cycling leg of the Noosa triathalon for Financial Wisdom, Menico Tuck’s licensee.
“Sometimes it’s a challenge to work out which set of two wheels to take to work,” she said. “Risk? Yes, every time you get on two wheels you remember why you cover risk!”
She bought the motorbike and rode it from Coolangatta to Cairns “during my modest mid-life crisis”. She had just lost her mum after a three-year fight with cancer, during which time Tuck also helped organise the national FPA conference at Cairns. “It was a roller-coaster time. In fact, I thought I would leave Cairns.”
The bike helped “put the buzz back into life again,” she said.
She will share this buzz with her brother when he completes a 12,000km cycle trek from Cairo to Capetown.
“Four of the family are going to Capetown to meet him and have a few beers,” said Tuck. “He calls this trip his ‘horizontal Mount Everest’. He would have tried climbing but he’s afraid of heights.
“He’s 57 and a successful businessman but I think he’s just looking at life and wanting to challenge himself.
“I think a lot people of that generation are trying to find something that gets them going again.”
Insights drawn from life are important tools for Tuck when she deals with her clients.
“I share a lot with clients about my family. Our business has a philosophy of “reciprocal care” – we want to look after our families and we can do that only by looking after our clients,” she said. “By sharing experiences, clients tend to open up to you and unless you get that level of communication with your client, you can’t really do your job.
“As much as we talk about systems, corporatisation and segmentation, I think we are all involved in that heart side of the business. It provides a significant return to us as individuals and is something that our clients appreciate.”
Following her heart has taken Tuck through a few of life’s experiences. After growing up in Napier, New Zealand, she was en-route to the UK when a stopover in Sydney became a life-changing experience – she stayed in Australia, along with her partner and house-husband Puki.
“We’re members of the ‘order of the perpetually engaged’,” she laughed. “We’ve been together for 25 years and never married. There’s 1,001 reasons for a great party, but marriage is not one of them!”
Tuck had worked for a firm of accountants in New Zealand, helping process liquidations and receiverships. It was perhaps an unexpected career path for an Arts graduate with majors in Russian and Chinese history, and an Honours thesis on New Zealand history.
But her study has been surprisingly relevant to her eventual career, she said. “History is about understanding people and what motivates them. It also sharpens your research skills.”
The couple later decided to head north for the sun. In Brisbane, Tuck worked for a financial planning practice with a client base of doctors, dentists and lawyers; a workload heavy with superannuation planning and trusts. She then began studying her Diploma of Financial Planning by distance learning from Deakin.
“My personal crisis was finding what I really wanted to do and was good at. I found that what I loved was to help people,” she said. “Finding you could do that through financial planning was the nexus of it all. If I wasn’t doing financial planning, I’d like to join the United Nations – it’s the whole thing of making a difference,” she said.
In Cairns, Tuck met Anthony Menico, who had bought a former life business from his father John Menico OAM, and expanded its offerings to include financial planning. The pair incorporated the business as Menico Tuck Financial Services in July 2002.
Tuck explained: “Anthony’s background included all the skills that his dad had taught him and I had a more technical background. It is a combination that works well.”
Her technical strengths have seen her appointed to the FPA regulatory committee, where her major challenge is to help in the process of simpl-ifying the statement of advice (SOA) structure.
“I think we’re going to see a reduction in the size of SOAs, but it is not a simple task.
“We have to look at SOAs from the point of view of the licensee and that of the client and make sure the needs of both of these groups are well and truly met.
“We can’t leave the adviser exposed to litigation and yet we need to allow the client to take ownership of their financial decisions. This can only be done by [clients] understanding the advice we give them, and not drowning in a pile of paper.”
Tuck wants financial education to begin with multiplication tables. “If we’re ever going to have comfort in clients taking responsibility for their financial future it needs to start at schools,” she said.
“We are still running the Dollarsmart campaigns in our area but one hour in front of a class once a year is not enough; they need to be learning this sort of thing early and often. [Knowledge about] compounding on both investment and debt is powerful.”
Tuck is keen to see the Cairns Chapter resume operations after a one-year hibernation.
“We are lucky to have a Cairns-based BDM, Belinda Esler from Asgard, and she’s prepared to help to re-establish a Chapter.”
The area, from Cairns to Atherton/Port Douglas and down to Innisfail, boasts more 100 financial planners.
“We usually have an annual event around the Amateurs Race Day in September,” Tuck said. “This is a business that’s way too difficult not to have some sort of relief from daily pressures and there is a tremendous amount of support to be found in getting together with your peers.”
The reconvened group is planning a meeting with FPA CEO Jo-Anne Bloch this month “and we’ll be taking it from there, but given the great bunch of planners up here, I think Cairns will become a very strong Chapter again,” Tuck said.
In the meantime, when she’s not buzzing about on her Burgman, Tuck is hopping in planes to visit clients in Brisbane, Sydney and Gove (in the Northern Territory).
“We have a sub-set of miners in our client base,” she said. There are pockets of mining staff all around Queensland, as well as Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, on the database. But the Gove boys get the annual visit.
“They’re high-net-worth individuals and really good to deal with. They’re a lot of fun. The only thing is, I’m not into fishing, so these Gove trips are a bit wasted on me!”
21 May 2008
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