The CertifiedFinancial Planner (CFP) Question and Answer phone-in has attracted more than 1,000 enquiries on topics ranging from superannuation to tax and borrowing to buy investments.
The CFP phone-in is part of the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) Financial Planning Week and was held last week with around 100 planners based in the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane offices taking calls over a four hour period. This year is the second year the phone-in has taken place.
Peter McAdam, an adviser with Godfrey Pembroke who has worked in the financial planning industry since 1981 and spent time manning the phones, says the benefit of such a day is the exposure it gives to people who don’t normally use financial planners.
“Those calls mean 1,000 people were exposed to financial planning for the first time,” McAdam says.
He says at least two of his callers had never used a financial planner and in fact were scared of them, and were unaware they could receive an initial consultation for no charge.
Watson Wyatt Australia financial planner Andrew Jones says all the calls he took were from mum and dad type investors who had not seen a financial planner before.
He says questions centred around debt management and debt reduction, which was not a surprise, given we are in a low interest rate environment where “people borrow up to the eyeballs”.
SBP Financial Services planner Nigel Janson says while the questions were not overly technical, tax and superannuation issues did dominate.
“Also, a lot of people asked questions based on the amount of money they have and given that, where should they invest,” he says. The amounts of money ranged from $2,000 to $500,000.
While Janson says he did offer callers a few investment suggestions, most planners sent out the FPA’sDon’t Kiss yourMoney Goodbyebrochure.
Janson also says he had a few callers who said they had been to see financial planners and were still not sure what they should be doing.
“It was great experience talking to a wide variety of clients,” he says.
