MoneyManagement’ssecond Business Development Manager (BDM) of the Year Award has once again proven extremely popular with the financial services community, drawing a large number of nominations from NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland.
Size does not matter — BDMs from a variety of institutions, large and small, were well-represented.
However, one group —AXA Australia— has proven particularly popular, drawing no fewer than eight nominations for the award, four of whom made the list of finalists.
Spokesman for AXA, Ron Burke, says AXA is a much more confident organisation today compared with a year ago.
“Our view is that if you are an industry leader then you will promote your advisers and encourage them to promote themselves,” he says.
Finalists for the BDM of the Year Award were determined as those people who were nominated by a number of discrete individuals. Three previous finalists — Tony Batkov, Rory MacIntyre and Matthew Stovold — also made it to the final round this year.
In the running for the 2004 award are, in alphabetical order: Tony Batkov, Aviva Australia; Reon Botha, Jason Brown, and Teliy Fidas all from AXA Australia; Robert Holloway, Merrill Lynch; Andy Laing, AXA Australia; Rory Macintyre,Perpetual; Mark Neil,ING; Boyd Peters,Equity Trustees; and Matthew Stovold, Goldman Sachs/JB Were.
Anyone within the financial services community was eligible to nominate a BDM, however, only financial planners are eligible to vote from the list of finalists (see voting form below).
Financial planners are invited to score the BDM they think best deserves the title ‘BDM of the Year’ across three categories — how helpful the BDM is with practice development, how well the BDM relates to the financial planner, and the BDM’s level of technical skills and/or product knowledge.
Finalists will be judged via a qualitative and quantitative process. The number of votes received by each candidate will be tallied and their aggregate scores calculated.Money Managementwill interview those candidates in order to profile their achievements and history in the industry. This information will then be forwarded to a panel of industry experts, including last year’s winner, Tim Browne fromMLC, who will determine the outright winner.
Money ManagementandResnik Communicationswould like to thank everyone who nominated candidates for the BDM of the Year Award for their overwhelming interest in one of the industry’s newest and most popular awards.
