Accountants and financial planners must be well matched

It is important when establishing a referral relationship between accountants and financial planners that they are properly matched – or there is the risk of the relationship turning sour for both parties, according to the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA).

Many IPA members have been coming forward with stories about how they’ve been burned by financial planners, according to IPA executive general manager – representation and innovation, Vicki Stylianou.

The IPA itself recently announced a partnership with both AXA and MLC to provide its 22,000 members with a comprehensive financial services package. Stylianou stressed that when a relationship between accountants and financial planners failed it was not necessarily the planner’s fault and that there were stories on both sides.

What the IPA has built into its system is an attempt to minimise the opportunity to have people mismatched, she said.

"A lot of the time, apart from competencies, you have to match people up properly, look at what the accountant’s speciality is and the types of clients, the things they might be interested in," she said.

"You’ve got to spend a fair bit of time working out what that relationship is going to be. Sometimes it’s not just one planner or planning group; different clients might have different needs and specialities," she said.

The times that accountants had been let down through a relationship with a financial planner had been the result of things such as their clients being given inadequate financial advice, the planner not taking their full circumstances into consideration, or referring clients on to another provider.

"You have to match them, it’s a relationship like any other," she said. "If you put the right relationship in place from the beginning you’ve got a better chance."